What it takes to teach the next STEM generation

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It’s 12:09 p.m. at Buena Vista Horace Mann school in San Francisco’s Mission district

Laura Ramirez, a curriculum technology integration specialist, is waiting for 14 girls to stream into her classroom. She’s laid out old Dell CPUs alongside tool kits that contain screwdrivers, Allen wrenches, and pliers. The girls’ job today is to carefully open the computers, explore and label the components, and then put the hardware back together again.

The girls, who are in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, arrive and place their backpacks into cubbies. They’re here for Tech Chicxs, a club Ramirez founded to encourage girls at the K-8 school to explore science, technology, engineering, and math. Approximately 80 percent of the school’s students are Hispanic or Latino, and Ramirez is particularly set on engaging girls who are rarely represented in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry.  Read more…

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Step targets teens and parents with a no-fees mobile bank account and Visa card

A new mobile banking startup called Step wants to help bring teenagers and other young adults into the cashless era. Today, cash is used less often, as more consumers shop online and send money to one another through payment apps like Venmo. But teenagers in particular are still heavily burdened with cash — even though […]

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It’s time to pay serious attention to TikTok

If you haven’t been paying attention to TikTok, you haven’t been paying attention. The short-form video app hailing from Beijing’s ByteDance just had its biggest month ever with the addition of 75 million new users in December — a 275 percent increase from the 20 million it added in December 2017, according a recent report […]

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Screen time inhibits toddler development, study finds

In news that will surprise few but still alarm many, a study has found that kids 2-5 years old who engage in more screen time received worse scores in developmental screening tests. The apparent explanation is simple: when a kid is in front of a screen, they’re not talking, walking, or playing, the activities by which basic skills are cultivated.

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Can kids hear Grover dropping an F-bomb in that viral audio illusion?

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At the end of December, Redditor u/schrodert was watching Sesame Street with his daughter, when he thought he heard beloved monster Grover drop an F-bomb.

“Yes, yes that’s a fucking excellent idea!” he seemed to say.

The clip went viral, like the whole Laurel/Yanny debate, even Jimmy Kimmel heard it. But the late show host wanted to know if it was just adults who could hear it. So, he sent his crew to ask a bunch of kids if they could catch a naughty word in the clip.

Some of these kids don’t hear it at all, or hear “sounds like an excellent idea,” but a handful hear the forbidden word — and their reactions are frankly adorable. Read more…

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Wearable sensor may help screen for anxiety and depression in kids

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Welcome to Small Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2019 and we have the entire internet to contend with.


When Ellen McGinnis started her career as a psychologist several years ago, she realized just how hard it can be to spot anxiety and depression in young children. Though they have complex inner lives and sometimes develop mental health disorders, preschoolers don’t always show the traditional symptoms you’d expect to see in older children or adults, nor do they always have the words to express their feelings. Read more…

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Screen time might not be so harmful or toxic for kids, experts say

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Leading UK paediatricians have advised parents to worry less about the effects of screen time on their children. 

A new guidance published by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) — a professional body in charge of the training of paediatricians — contests research suggesting that children’s screen time is harmful. 

“The evidence base for a direct ‘toxic’ effect of screen time is contested, and the evidence of harm is often overstated,” reads the guidance. “The majority of the literature that does exist looks only at television screen time.” Read more…

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Consumer advocacy groups call on FTC to investigate kids’ apps on Google Play

A coalition of 22 consumer and public health advocacy groups, led by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), have today filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asking them to investigate and sanction Google for how its Google Play Store markets apps to children. The complaint states that […]

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