TED speaker Rick Smolan is asking students between the ages of 13 and 18 to become “Data Detectives” for a new project he’s unveiling today — and that he will talk about at TEDYouth this Saturday.

By answering a 20-question online survey, teenagers will help build a data set that will let then compare themselves to teens all over the world. Some sample questions from the survey: “Are you more like your mother or father?” “How do your parents discipline you for bad behavior?” “How do you get to school: by bus, public transportation, limo, donkey, or skateboard?” The survey is anonymous and takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Take the Data Detective survey here >>

You can watch a FREE livestream of TEDYouth on Saturday, Nov 17, 1-6pm EST. Just bookmark this page and check back at 1pm Eastern on Saturday: http://new.livestream.com/tedyouth

Instead of simply coloring with crayons, imagine a drawing session with special paper and pens that let you create light-up circuits out of doodles. Or instead of old-fashioned construction paper cut-outs, creating a pop-up book with working lights.

In this talk from TEDYouth 2011, electrical engineer Leah Buechley describes how she and her team at the MIT Media Lab often feel bored by the slow, expensive process of designing circuit boards, that almost always come out looking the same. Their idea? To make designing electronics more like child’s play. In this talk, Buechley shares two projects that make this concept a reality, showing how drawn squiggles can be connected into a playable musical instrument, and how a cut-out cityscape can glow and twinkle like a real skyline.

To see demonstrations of these projects, watch this exciting talk. And after the jump, view three more talks from those who’ve aimed to make electronic design lots more fun.

May these talks inspire you not to miss TEDYouth this coming Saturday, November 17, where Carl Zimmer will reveal a parasite that turns cockroaches into zombies, NASA flight director Bobak Ferdowsi will share how he got a two ton machine to Mars and Jay-Z’s music producer, Young Guru, will talk about the future of hip hop. Even if you aren’t registered for the conference, you can still take part in the fun as the event will be fully livestreamed in English, Spanish and Arabic. (Sign up for a livestream reminder notification here.) At the same time, more than 100 TEDxYouthDay events will be taking place in 42 countries around the globe this weekend. View those events, as well as the 26 of them that will be livestreaming, through the TEDxYouthDay website >>

Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teach
TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir introduced us to the next generation of LEGOs at TED2012. Called littleBits, these interchangeable blocks contain transistors that let kids build projects that buzz, blink, dim, pulse and sense — all while learning about programming at the same time.

On November 13 — just a weeks after Hurricane Sandy left downtown Manhattan without electricity — Bdeir held a workshop called “Why did the lights go out?” There, kids were invited to create light-up models of New York City. Bdeir tells the TED Blog, “LittleBits’ mission is to make people understand electronics and electricity in a world that is governed by it. For us, the hurricane was a reminder of how dependent we are on electrical systems, and how little most of us understand how they work. In the workshop we demonstrated how electricity connects to our everyday life — in both simple and extremely dramatic ways — and why Sandy made us lose power.“

Kate Hartman: The art of wearable communication
Kate Hartman is both an artist and technologist, and her projects explore the bounds of human communication. What does that mean, exactly? Well, she’s created a hat that lets the wearer talk to themselves and an inflatable heart that shows the outside world what the wearer is feeling inside.

Neil Harbisson: I listen to color
Artist Neil Harbisson wears an electronic eye. Born with a visual condition called achromatopsia, which only lets him see shades of grey, this eye converts the colors of the world into sounds, allowing him to hear them. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Harbisson explains how this piece of electronic equipment has made going to the supermarket like strolling through a nightclub.

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Want to see Buechley’s cut-out cityscape that glows? Below, a picture.

TEDYouth livestreams!
In English: http://new.livestream.com/tedyouth/en
In Spanish: http://new.livestream.com/tedyouth/es
In Arabic: http://new.livestream.com/tedyouth/ar

On Saturday, Nov. 17, more than 20 speakers, performers and kids will take the stage at TEDYouth, a TED event for high school students. It happens 1-6pm Eastern in New York, and it’ll be livestreamed for free — and translated into Spanish and Arabic!

Sign up for an email reminder of the TEDYouth webstream — you’ll get one email on Friday and another email one hour before the show starts.

And read more about the amazing speakers planned for TEDYouth. Each one will be bringing a great short lesson, poem or demo to share with the audience in New York and around the world.

TEDYouth is just one part of a larger event happening this weekend across the globe. TEDxYouthDay is a series of TEDx events for and by young people on Saturday, November 17, and Sunday, November 18. Themed “Dream Big … Then Do It,” more than 100 events in 46 countries will be inspiring curiosity, igniting new ideas and empowering young leaders.

Check out the live simulcasts of speakers from TEDxYouthDay events around the world at tedxyouthday.ted.com >>

Find a TEDxYouthDay event in your area >>

At TEDYouth, music producer Young Guru will talk about the future of hip hop, Curiosity rover flight director Bobak Ferdowsi will explain how the heck he got a two ton machine to Mars and science writer Carl Zimmer will present his favorite parasite. But at this event — taking place on November 17 at the Times Center in Manhattan — the audience members will be just as cool as those on stage. Among the 450 teens signed up for the conference are origamists, aerospace scholars, gymnasts, web developers, roboticists and founders of non-profits.

Here, meet a random selection of soon-to-be attendees, all students at public high schools in the New York City area.

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Sean Simonds, 17. Sean uses his stop-motion skills to create claymation animation. Why? Says Sean, “For other people to enjoy and because I like making them.”

Lily He, 14. Lily is an expert speed stacker. She explains, “In elementary school, I was introduced to Speed Stacks, a sport where you stack and unstack special cups in a specific fashion, in the least amount of time. It involves hand-eye coordination, swift movements and balance. I like to play it during my free time, and my fastest time is around 14 seconds.”

Sofia Degtyar, 18. Sofia loves reciting Russian tongue twisters. She is the founder of Free English 4 Kids, a nonprofit project organized by American teenagers supporting speaking skills of English language learners.

Gloria Wan, Michelle Chan and Mandy Wong, 16 and 17. These three comic artists applied to attend TEDYouth together. “Sometimes we forget we’re human beings. We become a factory line of reproduced ideas,” they wrote in the piece above. “Then I came across other people with ideas, with opinions, with thoughts.”

Shayne Coplan, 14. A musician who plays the guitar, bass, keyboards and ukulele, Shayne has written a variety of songs, which you can listen to at Sound Cloud.

Jeremy Uys, 14. Back in the day, kids put together model Zeppelins — a type of airship that once docked on the spire of the Empire State Building — as they did model airplanes. Jeremy, however, creates Zeppelin models using 3D graphics.

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Check out the full lineup of TEDYouth speakers here.