message about trying to change the world from c in. n heroes to schools across the country. he has teamed up with samsung trying to boost the next generation of mathematicians and engineers and computer scientists, key jobs to get ahead. through a video submission contest with $1 million in prizes. it is called the solve for tomorrow initiative and joining us to talk about it, is singer, john legend and david steel, executive vice president of samsung. first of all, why did you do this and what was the point behind the video project and what you found? well, the exciting thing about this is samsung inspired these young people to be creative and say, convince us why you deserve this technology we are going to give $1 million worth of technology to schools around the country. show us why you deserve us at your school. so these kids made videos. they talked about local issues and how science and math related to those local issues and how they could do something about
somebody really smart thought about that. a lot of these kids were turning in videos that had an environmental focus or renewable energy. the whole green field, that s science, energy, math and technology. tell me a little bit about that. we kind fids akids are gettie interested in the environment. teachers want to use that as a way of getting kids excited. we had kids looking at water quality quality, carbon emissions all sorts of issues. imagine in japan the kind of conversations they are having where we are all trying to understand the background of nuclear energy and cleanups. it is interesting that s the trends kids are seeing. john, you are famous for being a musician. kids look up to you. they love you are a superstar musician. how do you convince them that
it. they were inspired to be creative and reach high for this great technology they were going to receive. they did such a great job, the finalists and the winners were awesome. we need more kids like this. when you take a look at how we are in this country and where we lag, the u.s. lags internationally in both math and science. and reading and all kinds of things. unfortunately, yes. you are trying to focus on these. 17th in science, 25th in math in the latest testing. how do you hope that this program as well as others can sort of help people in the u.s., help these kids move up on that list? a lot of it is about making it exciting. it is about taking stem out of the classroom, not being a formal learning environment but getting kids outside and realizing that stem, science, technology, engineering and math is behind everything we do. you go out and look at the community around you and think about how you can apply science and math. that makes it more cool. if you like you