The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is investing a lot of resources in promoting innovation in America's schools, including a project getting under way in Tampa that is intended to improve teacher effectiveness. Foundation co-chair Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, writes in a column in this week's Newsweek that ingenuity can help make the difference between a bright future and a bleak one.

"Our education system has been fundamental to our success as a nation, but the way we prepare students has barely changed in 100 years. If we don't find ways to improve our schools, making them more effective and more accessible, we won't fulfill our commitment to equal opportunity, and we will become less competitive with other countries," Gates writes.

Gates is promoting incentives and processes to help teachers teach better, and his foundation is also looking at ways that interactive technology can help schools deliver the right resources to students.

You can read more about the programs the foundation is supporting in Bill Gates' annual letter here.