Schools are increasingly using blogs, e-mail, and other online tools to bring scientific research within students’ reach. Around the country, scientists and education-advocacy groups have become ever more intent on making scientific studies and careers more attractive to young people, particularly underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. One goal is to quash the stereotype of the scientist conducting obscure research in dreary isolation.

To correct that view, numerous organizations have for years sponsored print and online resources offering biographical information and testimonials from scientists explaining what they do in simple and colorful terms. Online exchanges between students and scientists attempt to make that point in a different way, by allowing students to reach out to scientists in more of a real-time manner as they go about their work.

Read the full story from Education Week.