In her final semester as a business major, Jade Trinh was uninspired by the obvious career paths open to her. In her 2011 BIF Talk, Trinh recounts her story of stumbling into an entrepreneurship course that revealed an unexpected and exciting new path. She argues that students crave the kinds of real-world, experiential learning environments she was fortunate enough to encounter and urges that experiences like hers should not be the exception, but the rule.

What if educators could see what a student knows, what they need to know, and how to motivate them...all by looking at a map? Danny Hillis, Chairman and Co-Founder of Applied Minds, asks us to imagine a learning map that goes beyond existing search engines to show educators just that.

STEAM stands for "Science & Technology interpreted through Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements," and aims to bring FUNctional literacy to students. Founder/teacher Georgette Yakman describes how her immigrant grandparents, brother with Asperger syndrome, and artistic stepfather led her to bring Arts into STEM.

At the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, this engineering professor and her team demonstrate that science or engineering lessons can be found in almost anything -- and a sense of play can make those lessons accessible and incite young minds.