Today on CNN, I spoke about the need for us to become more creative in our approach to inspire more youth to pursue STEM (Science, Technology Engineering & Math). Bottom line: we need more students to aspire to be future PhD holders in tech-related areas or the U.S. will ABSOLUTELY lose its competitive edge.

Many organizations are doing what they can to address the issue but what else needs to be done? I had an opportunity to participate on the Northrop Grumman Foundation Zero G flights, it was an amazing experience that I still today use as a highlight to talk to young students.

Matell recently had a contest for Barbies new career and the voters choose Computer Engineer. You may or may not agree with the look of the doll which will be out in November 2010 but in my little opinion – whatever it takes to get more young girls interested in technology I am ALL for it.

There are also great programs like Alice.org from Carnegie Mellon or Scratch from MIT. Everyone needs to do something to keep the momentum going.

I co-founded the Urban Video Game Academy and founded the TechTechBoom.com social network to encourage more students to pursue tech education and careers.

Teachers looking to participate in the flights come back after 3p edt & I’ll have the updated info for you.

What would you like to see done and what are you doing? (tell me in the comments, I’d love to hear about it).

For those in the Illinois area – I’ll be delivering a keynote speech at the Illinois Computing Educators conference about this topic-register and come by if you can — http://www.iceberg.org/ice_conference