Stargazers of all ages will enjoy the latest Google experiment designed for Chrome. One Hundred Thousand Stars (access it here) is an interactive map of space including the locations of—you guessed it—more than 100,000 stars. (Note: Before you experience the map, you will need to download the Chrome browser.

We got busy during the Thanksgiving holiday and put together a long-planned collection of free educational resources for K-12 students and their parents and teachers. We’re just getting started with the list, and we’re hoping you could help make it better with your own suggestions.

Non-profit Khan Academy, an organization dedicated to “providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere,” does so primarily through online video courses and lectures.

When YouTube Space Lab launched a competition calling for experiments to be conducted aboard the International Space Station, thousands of high school students around the world responded. The two winning experiments will be performed live Thursday at 7:30am PDT / 9:30am CDT / 10:30am EDT / 3:30pm BST / 4:30pm CEST.

In an early, abortive flirtation with art school, I learned the technique of sauntering around a gallery, looking alternately bored and engrossed in whatever happened to be on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, never committing to any emotion, especially one that might betray my absolute befuddlement with a good bit of modern art.

Bill Nye will tell you that he’s a man on a mission. He’s out there trying to “help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work.

This week, Salman Khan returned to his alma mater, MIT, to deliver the commencement speech to the 2012 graduates. As you know, MIT helped spark the open education movement when it launched its OpenCourseWare site in 2002.

If you ever wondered whether professional scientists are skeptical about some of the incredibly fun, attractive and brief online videos that purport to explain scientific principles in a few minutes, you’d be right.

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the question, his teacher replied, “Oxydation.”
Unsatisfied and still curious, Alda went on to help create the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.

Love, or the promise of it, sells clothes, cologne and many a compact disc—but who’d think love could sell chemistry? Sixteen-year-old Eli Cirino did, and was he ever right. The tenth grader submitted an extra credit video for his chemistry class and what he got was probably way more than he bargained for.