china. i'm john siegenthaler, we'll see you back at 11:00 eastern, 8:00 pacific. you can always get the latest news at aljazeera.com. i'll see you at 11:00 eastern. >> on "america tonight", a sporting chance? as the clock ticks down to one of the biggest sporting events we'll ask, will brazil be ready? >> we have to decide if the stadium will be ready to organize to all world cup games. >> also tonight, turning learning on its head. our in-depth look at american education, the flipped classro classroom. and why inverted instruction may be trickling down to more students. >> i like when it's not the

typically lecture. i do really bad in lecture halls. >> and putting a spin on the megaclassroom artist setting his collaboration with beyonce? >> good evening, thanks for being with us. i'm joie chen. what if you were to host one of the world's biggest sporting parties, and it just wasn't ready? we're not talking about the winter olympics, but soccer. soccer has become the second biggest sport among 12 to 24-year-olds. only baseball has more fans.

and u.s. soccer has put the strict rationing in place because the world cup is the hot ticket right now. but brazil is up against a tight deadline and at the moment, things are not going good. gabriel elizondo brings us up to date. the city is still one giant construction zone. a flurry of vehicles and construction. so far behind schedule that fifa secretary generally gave ad the line or have the venue pulled for the world cup. >> we meaning the local organizing committee, the development, the city of s se between now and the 18th of

february give us the confidence that the stadium will be ready to organize and to hold world cup games. >> this is big because this is the first time anyone from fifa has admitthat maybe one of the host cities will not be ready. >> four matches scheduled in the group stage, change venues now would be highly complicated and a slap to brazil, something the sports minister wants to avoid. >> forced innocent people to -- >> all of our energy is being put into putting measures that guarantee the piranha stadium for the world cub in 2014. this is the effort we are making. >> fifa officials are spending a week touring the host city's most delayed, six of the 12 promised stadiums are not yet completed and fifa is ratcheting up the pressure reminding everyone there will be no world cup without stadiums.

but privately brazilian officials think they will get everything done on time and annoyed by what they see as heavy handedness on the part of the soccer world cup community. it's not ready to pull but moving the that direction. gabriel elizondo, sao paulo. >> joining us now is marcello zoravich. you teach at sao paulo and you must be a football fan yourself. how big a risk is this. is it likely that brazil will not be ready? >> thanks for having me. i think brazil will be ready but in the last minute. we see that there are major concerns with these stadiums and with the infrastructure in general. but in the brazilian way, i think brazil will be ready. right now the country is not ready as yet, unfortunately.

>> is this a black eye to have fifa all over them, fifa's irritation is showing is that much of a black eye for brazil? >> well, i think the way fifa is playing is to put a lot of pressure on the brazilian government and correctly. because things need to be fixed as soon as possible. not to put the world cup at risk. political mismenting on the part of the brazilian government but also public and private authorities engaged in the world cub. >> why is it so difficult to get things ready? nearly $4 billion for 12 stadiums, how did they get so far behind? >> i think it's part of -- there is a cultural aspect in this process. it is part of the brazilian culture but also, it's part of many actors that are engaged in

this process. we have the municipalities, the cities, we have the states. we have the federal government. we have the football clubs themselves. and particularly, in the case of the south of brazil, irana bashad and kurtiva this football club is facing many financial issues. so the money doesn't flow in the way it should be and that situation holds many, many investments but also there is the bureaucratic system in brazil that prevents from moving forward in a faster paste. >> i december i am not alone in thinking brazil, you know this is one of the fast growing economies. things have again going well for brazil, right, they should be able to handle all this? >> well, i think you look back into 2011 the brazilian economy was doing well. but in the last two years, particularly 2012 and 2013 i don't think the economy is doing so well. so part of the money that should be channeled to stadiums in a

faster way are not going. and part of that also involves the corruption that is very high in the country. so i think money laundering plays an important role in this aspect. that's 80 think you know, when we combine these aspects you know the country's not ready. >> quick thought here because we're going to run out of time. but it just seems to me football'salities played such a big role in brazilian culture. it's almost home away from its original home. i just can't imagine that the brassian people aren't ready to do whatever possible to make the world cup a great success. >> exactly. that's the way it will be. i think they will span a lot of timer and energy and work overnight to make these stadiums ready. and everything else will you know follow this path until the last minute. >> all right the brazilian way.

marcello zorovich, thanks so much for being here. >> thanks for having me. still to come on "america tonight". flipped out. in our in depth focus on american education, we look at the trend taking teaching out of the classroom. al jazeera america. we understand that every news story begins and ends with people. >> the efforts are focused on rescuing stranded residents. >> we pursue that story beyond the headline, pass the spokesperson, to the streets. >> thousands of riot police deployed across the capital. >> we put all of our global resources behind every story. >> it is a scene of utter devastation. >> and follow it no matter where it leads - all the way to you. al jazeera america, take a new look at news.

>> i'm phil torres, for techknow contributor rachelle oldmixon... >> so the first thing i have to do, i get to fill it with saliva... >> this time, it's personal. >> you can fast-forward through this part... >> it's a test that promises to predict her medical future... >> my health risks just loaded, and the first one would give any woman reason to pause... nobody in my family has ever been diagnosed with breast cancer... >> techknow on al jazeera america >> tonight in our in depth look at american education, an event that's trickling down perhaps to your school. the flipped classroom, changing the notion of what students get

inside their classes and what homework means. it is a method that started at the college level but increasingly at lower grades. "america tonight" looks at flipped classes and the promise they may hold for american students. here is adam may. >> fixology is a fast growing technology company, in trouble. >> you have five positions? >> some open for four months. >> pixelagent manipulates molecules. the nanotechnology is used inside led lights, making them brighter. selling the product isn't a problem. but finding qualified employees is. >> we're making this new material, we have major

commitments out there to customers all over the world and we have to have the people to deliver. and for us unemployment is zero percent. we find somebody, we're using recruiters, we're having a full time hr person to scour the country. >> what ceo mike bandy needs is people with stem degrees, science technology engineering and math. and they're scouring the united states for them. >> let me make sure this is something you work on as a tream. >> physics professor bob beakenr at northwestern university, has come up with a solution, beakman introduceintroduce introductione physics. higher ed turned on its head.

no more lectures. students learn the facts outside of class. >> there's videos they can watch, do the searches on wikipedia, i don't care where they get the information. >> students work on the problems in teams of three. >> i knew they could get better when they get hands on experience. you can see when they are explaining to somebody else, that's the best. >> it's definitely different than my chemistry class last semester. i'm at home taking notes trying to figure out how to do the work in class. >> beakner designed the first flipped classroom almost 20 years ago and the professor has been perfecting ever since and like a good scientist collecting data along the way. more than 16,000 students over five years. even though beakner raised the

standards, the failure rate was five times what it had been. it was five times lower for women, five times lower for aring minorities. beakman went to the lecture class, pimp pichtion pitching td classroom idea to other professors. >> it is hard to make changes. there are egoation involved. i would give a talk and after the talk, a faculty member would say, when you get done playing these games, when do you actually teach physics. >> you might want to summarize what we did and explain why we did it. >> it requires a philosophical change. what should go on in the classroom? what is the role of the teacher? is the role of the teacher to

dispense, transmit information? that was true 15 years ago, before there was google. but right now i can pull out my cell phone and find something more up to date than what the lecture is about. >> i like that it's not the typical lecture, i do not very good in lecture halls. it is easier to learn at a way, not just reading out of a book or powerpoints, so definitely better. >> beakner's formula for success is as much psychology as it is physics. each table has one superior student to motivate the group. to reward the best students, to motivate the laziest students, teams drop contracts allowing them to fire a team mate for slacking. leaving the fired student to do all the work solo. >> we've only had two or three

people get fired in the 17 or 18 years we've been doing that so it works really well. and the nice thing about it is, it's on the student to manage all that. >> another key ingredient in beakner's formula, the seven foot diameter table. he tried six feet, too small and nine feet, too big to communicate without shouting. >> you are more likely to actually grasp it. you are asking questions, if you don't understand something couple you can ask them, instead of someone talking at you. >> this is a good match for the way the students think these days. the interaction, the single most important ingredient in success. >> beakner's flipped classrooms are now taking hold. including mit.

bob beakner says the flipped classroom will help ease the u.s. shortage in graduation in stem. >> we can get those tangentially interested in stem, physics no longer is the filter it used to be. it used to be the toughest job on campus was physics. to filter out the unworthy, now more and more are getting through. >> a white house report says if only 10% more students who sign up for stem classes in college get through, that would eliminate host most of the expected shortfall in stem fields. leland mel melvin is a big proponent of hands on learning. he met us at the goddard space center. >> i think biggest thing we can get a kid inspired about is building something with their hands. my mom gave me a chemistry set

when i was in school and i created the huge explosion in her living room. >> explosion? >> she loved that right? this is something that was really cool, curious, innovative and i became a chemistry major from that one intervention. >> melvin eventually became an astronaut, flying on two shuttle missions. he's now pooh big proponent of the flipped classroom. >> i think it's a big answer because you have kids going home and watching the lectures and coming to the classroom as team solving problems. >> kennedy inspired a generation to go into science as part of the space race. >> that day at rice university when he said we're going to send humans to the moon. >> in this decade and do other things. not because they are easy but because they are hard. >> he just galvanized the country with this solitary goal.

we were trying to beat the russians to the moon and all these things. but we had a focus to do something that no one had ever done before. giving us fire extinguishers and heart base makers and tie taken use hips, what is the next thing we have to invent or create to help save our civilization from something we haven't thought of yet? >> back in bob beakner's classroom, the day is not as lofty. students are trying to figure out momentum. >> what is momentum a measure of? >> whether the economy soa soarr stalls. >> what is it doing? it's moving, that's all. >> "america tonight"'s adam murray reporting here. and coming up on "america tonight": ♪ >> a different arrangement who this classical musician is

teaming up with for his next performance and why it's going orock your world.

>> tonight in our in depth look >> so how much do you want to know about yourself? with a variety of gent tests readily available, it is possible to know quite a bit about medical conditions you might face in the future. but do you really want to? that is the case for "techknow"

contributor rachelle oldmixon. >> that's done. and with that i joined half a million people who have sent their saliva to 23 and me. the first direct-to-consumer personal genome test. the samples go to a dna sequencing lab where they begin with our 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent filled with our dna. dna is a double helix with based paired with double nucleotides. inserted into a chemical soup, precisely defined sequences. those sequences undergo another

process that splits the double helix into a single strand. those strands are duplicated over and over and over. so the sequencer has nuft materiaenoughmaterial to determs gs cs and es. >> makes you you and me me. >> a professor at stanford university. >> we are determining the orders of those bases. we look at how you differ from the referenced consensuses. what might go wrong with you. >> how many the $99 human genome kit is going to change medicine. over a decade ago, the human genome project estimated they could sequence a human genome

for $16,000. but today, you could have it done for $5,000. the results are far more details than what i got from 23 and me. professor mike schneider runs his lab at stanford in part around himself. >> i think we've done in four years over 60 samples. >> schneider tests himself in almost obsessively frequent intervals. >> makes me vulnerable for aplastic anemia. i've gone from a 27% to a 45% chance to get type 2 diabetes. i went to my own doctor and sure enough, my glucose level went

higher and i was diagnosed as diabetic. i changed my whole lifestyle. >> what implication does that have for medicine? >> you'll be able to get your dna sequence early and hopefully be able to predict diseases earlier, catch them or avoid them if you change your lifestyle accordingly. >> you can see exactly what rachelle's dna showed this weekend on al jazeera america. a young from star from china is getting ready to rock the grammies mixing metal with mozart. he is nothing less than a rock star in the classical world. putting the cool, back in classical music for a new generation.

>> some friends have a problem image-wise, to think about classical musicians. they probably think we are pretty stiff and a little bit like a robot. but actually we are not. we are very passionate and exciting. so here we go! >> if you don't know who 31-year-old chinese pianist long long is, you certainly will after sunday's grammy awards. he is playing alongside metallica, one of the heaviest heavy metal bands on the planet. >> a cool coloration, listening to the music one, the sound, performing and listening at least 30 times a day. >> long long has played to sold-out concerts in the world like the royalal better hall in london. but his crowning achievement was

playing before the 2008 beijing olympics. >> it was kind of like dreaming because it blows my mind. >> growing up in northern china, long long's love of music and the piano began at two and a half whether he was watching cartoons. >> i was a big cartoon fan and i listened to the music from tom and jerry. and i start to, hmm, listening to music by ear and start playing by ear. so somehow i start to get interested in music. >> his passionate style has inspired millions in china and the world to take up classical music. >> classical music has changed my life, makes me a better person, is the best communication breach that we can

build for ourselves. and so i think that kids in the world should have possibilities and opportunities to learn an instrument. >> and while not nominated himself for a grammy this timed around, his performance is expected to be a show highlight. it might also bring him some new and exciting rock collaboration. >> always unique to have a synergy between different type of musicians. but certainly i see jayzee and beyonce will be coming at a. i owould love to work with them in some ways. so we'll see. >> hear that beyonce? for this weekend it's just going to be metallica. that's it for merritt. if you want to see any more log on to aljazeera.com/americatonight.

tell us what you want to see in our nightly current affairs program. also join the conversation with us on twitter or at our faiks page. facebook page. we'll have more of "america tonight" tomorrow. >> melvin eventually became an astronaut, flying on two shuttle missions. he's now pooh big proponent of the flipped classroom. ♪ ♪ i have an american sitting here and he said to me, are you actually running a kind of a holiday camp for criminals? and my answer to him, immediately, was so what? >> wow. i think this might be the only prison in the world with a sun bed. ♪