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Welcome to the online community for contestants, fans and anyone interested in debate, social issues, history and energy independence.

The twelve first-person films that make up this series explore three related themes, each in its own way at the center of current debate about what works, and what's needed, to help students succeed during school and in life.

Remix America gives you the tools and raw materials you need to remix America Then with America Now. Declare your patriotism by adding a little historical flavor to the current political debate.

How is energy generated? How much does it cost? How does it affect the environment? These are extremely important topics today, and are no longer just the domain of engineers and industry experts. ElectroCity was developed to increase public awareness - particularly among students - of the basic "common knowledge" of these topics. That is, the general terms and concepts of the industry and the dilemmas that go along with them. Our goal is not to provide students with a sophisticated understanding of the controversies in the various energy debates. Rather, our goal is to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning.

What is Big Think? bigthink.com is a new and growing website, currently in its beta version, with a simple mission: This is a digital age, one in which a wealth of accessible information empowers you, the citizen-consumer. But where is the information coming from? How accurate and unprocessed is it, really? Ask yourself this: how empowered do you feel debating a television screen or a newspaper? Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think's mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy's views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar's assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring. Big Think is yours. We are what you think.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) are pleased to present the 2006-2016 Map of Future Forces Affecting Education. Created by a range of experts and analysts, the map is a forecast of the future, and each element on the map represents forces that could affect learning in the next decade. Many of these forces can work in tandem, and they could also appear seemingly unconnected. Nothing is definite. We don't encourage debating with the forecast, but rather encourage you to explore the map, think about what you've seen, and use the map and its interactive features for group and online discussion. Think of the map as a catalyst for conversation.

"About Our Motivation: Challenges and opportunities, created by our global society, invite teachers, administrators, and students to rethink the way they teach, lead, and learn. The rise of social networking, the ease with which information is shared, and the growth of our global economy are just a few factors that have made it obvious that the 21st century is a much different world than the 20th century. And yet, when we take a good, hard look at the culture within our schools, do we see that much has changed from yesterday to today? We may see more technology used in the classroom and maybe more discussions on the "content vs. skills" debate in the faculty rooms. But underneath it all, have things really changed? Have we successfully forged a culture where life-long learning, personal growth, and collaboration are valued and practiced among all members of the school community? In Richard DuFour's article "Why Look Elsewhere?: Improving Schools from Within," he states that "it is context-the beliefs, expectations, behaviors and norms that constitute the culture of a given school-that plays the largest role in deciding whether a professional development program will make a difference in that school." If a school's goal is to improve student achievement, and a school considers learning to be the crux of its community, then effective professional development-where teachers and administrators themselves become learners-is the bridge to achieving that goal."

"Talking History, based at the University at Albany, State University of New York, is a production, distribution, and instructional center for all forms of "aural" history. Our mission is to provide teachers, students, researchers and the general public with as broad and outstanding a collection of audio documentaries, speeches, debates, oral histories, conference sessions, commentaries, archival audio sources, and other aural history resources as is available anywhere."

Historypin is a way for millions of people to come together, from across different generations, cultures and places, to share small glimpses of the past and to build up the huge story of human history.Everyone has history to share: whether its sitting in yellowed albums in the attic, collected in piles of crackly tapes, conserved in the 1000s of archives all over the world or passed down in memories and old stories.Each of these pieces of history finds a home on Historypin, where everyone has the chance to see it, add to it, learn from it, debate it and use it to build up a more complete understanding of the world.