DLESE Teaching Boxes Scope Statement

About DLESE Teaching Boxes

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is the sponsoring organization for the Teaching Boxes Project. Teaching Boxes are classroom-ready instructional units created by collaboration between teachers, scientists, and designers. They contain materials chosen from the DLESE Community Collection (DCC) that model scientific inquiry, allowing teachers to build classroom experiences around data collection and analysis from multiple lines of evidence, and engaging students in the process of science. Teaching Box features:

• A conceptual framework with the key scientific concepts that students should understand as a result of conducting the investigation
• National and state science, math, and language arts standards
• In-class lessons and activities
• Suggestions for homework and ways to extend the lessons for advanced learners
• Learner assessments and rubrics help determine student understanding
• Culminating activities to assess learning
• Selected digital library resources

Purpose of the DLESE Teaching Box Collection

The Teaching Box Collection is an annotation collection designed to link teachers of middle (6-8) and high school (9-12) who find Earth system resources in DLESE to Teaching Box classroom-ready instructional lessons and activities which show how these resources are used in an educational setting. Teaching Box materials model scientific inquiry, allowing teachers to build classroom inquiry based experiences from multiple lines of evidence, and engaging students in the process of science.

DLESE search results indicate when a resource is used in a Teaching Box. This allow teachers to discover examples for how a resource is used in lessons and activities in a Teaching Box.

Collection Policy

Data and resources for the DLESE Teaching Box Collection are chosen by a collaboration of educators and science content experts for their pedagogical appropriateness and their usefulness in assembling curriculum units. Resources are selected to fit the six topic areas currently covered by the Teaching Boxes: plate tectonics, weather, seasonal upwelling in the ocean, sea level changes, earthquakes, and mountain building.

Collection contacts

Please email the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)(support@dlese.org) about any questions regarding resources or metadata of the collection.

Terms of use

Terms of use issues have two components, a resource's terms of use and metadata terms of use.

Resource terms of use

Most of the resources in the collection are held by third-parties. Therefore, the collection does not own, serve up or directly maintain the resources in the collection. Copyright information or information on how resource may be lawfully used is available through the DLESE catalog or at the resource itself. Library users are encouraged to read such information or go directly to the cataloged resource to obtain the latest copyright or terms of use information for a resource. If a copyright statement cannot be determined readily, the collection follows the DLESE protocol by trying to indicate this by including the following statement: Copyright and Other Restrictions Information is Unknown.

Metadata terms of use

For those learning resources and annotation information that the project directly catalogs, the metadata copyright is 2006 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The Teaching Box Collection metadata may be used as long it is consistent the DLESE Intellectual Property Policy, which can be found at: http:www.dlese.org/documents/policy?DLEE_IP_approved.html. This allows for the redistribution and reformatting of metadata records to work in DLESE systems and services. Individual metadata records are available for harvest from DLESE.

Quality Assurance

Resource quality assurance

The resources made accessible via the collection will vary in quality because the DLESE Teaching Box Collection consists of individual resources chosen by the Teaching Box design collaborators and created by various organizations and at different times. However, resources are checked to ensure they meet the criteria to be part of DLESE. If library users find errors or have suggestions for improvement for the collection, such changes are considered and changes are made as appropriate.

Metadata quality assurance

Metadata for Teaching Box Collection records is generated by DLESE personnel using the DLESE Collection System (DCS) to enter annotation information about DLESE resources. Quality reviews and final approvals are con about DLESE resources. Quality reviews and final approvals are conducted by DLESE.

Persistence

The collection is expected to exist indefinitely as long as funding is reliable. Currently, funding is available through September 2007. If the funding situation changes dramatically enough to impact operations, the collection will cease to exist.

Last updated: 2006-10-16
Maintained by: Katy Ginger (support@dlese.org), DLESE Metadata

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