February 2006 - Vol. 3, Issue 2          All issues index         Submit newsletter content          DLESE home

Contents

Teachers' Domain has just released its Earth and Space Science collection of classroom-ready resources and lesson plans. Lesson plans incorporate multimedia resources from public television programs such as NOVA and ZOOM, including video and audio clips, interactives, images, and documents. Teachers' Domain, produced by WGBH Boston, is an online educational service designed to help teachers build content and pedagogic knowledge and enhance their students' learning experience. The Teachers' Domain collections include classroom-ready multimedia instructional resources; and professional development courses which utilize many of the same resources, along with videos of exemplary classroom practice. DLESE Program Center staff and community members acted as core science advisors, resource reviewers, and lesson plan developers on this NSDL Pathways project. Other Teachers' Domain collections on the web site address life science, physical science, engineering, and civil rights.

USGS commemorates Great Quake anniversary by unveiling new educational resources

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released two new educational resources to help teachers explain earthquake science. The educational tools are part of the USGS commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Great Quake of 1906. A new USGS publication Earthquake Science Explained highlights how scientists study earthquakes, what evidence they collect, and what they have learned since the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Other topics in the publication include liquefaction of sandy soils during earthquakes, tsunamis produced by earthquakes, and how scientists and engineers are helping to make buildings safer. The other new release, Living in Earthquake Country: A teaching box, is an online earthquake hazard resource providing teachers with lessons, including fully developed hands-on earthquake curriculum, teaching points, and easy-to-reproduce handouts. For more information about Teaching Boxes, contact support@dlese.org

Multiple professional development opportunities: TeachSpace, Cutting Edge workshops

TeachSpace is a national program of free, summer in-service workshops created to help high school teachers bring the excitement of the human exploration of space to their math, science, and technology classrooms. These workshops provide the training and tools to help teachers introduce space exploration topics into their curriculum in the form of modules specifically designed to integrate seamlessly and to motivate students in grades 9-12. Participants are chosen by nomination only and are selected for attendance based on merit and leadership potential. On the TeachSpace home page, scroll down to Nomination Procedure to submit a nomination for a deserving teacher. Selected teachers are invited to attend a three-day workshop in their home state and will be provided with texts, instructional materials, access to web-based materials, free room and board, and a $300 stipend. Continuing education credit or graduate-level credit through Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is available.

Two professional development workshops for geoscience faculty are offered this spring. The On the Cutting Edge Workshops for Current and Future Geoscience Faculty are funded by the National Science Foundation via Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement grants (CCLI) from the Division of Undergraduate Education:

1) Designing Effective and Innovative Courses in the Geosciences, May 31 - June 4, 2006 at the College of the Siskiyous, Weed, California; or July 31 - August 4, 2006 - Distance learning format.

These four day face-to face or online workshops will provide faculty with time, energy, inspiration and resources to assist them in the development of a new course offering or redesign of an existing course:

2) Early Career Geoscience Faculty: Teaching, Research, and Managing Your Career, June 7-12, 2006 at College of William and Mary, Williamsburg , VA. The application deadline is March 17, 2006.

Early career faculty are invited to participate in sessions on topics including effective teaching strategies, course design, establishing a research program in a new setting, working with research students, balancing professional and personal responsibilities, and time-management. Participants must have a full-time faculty position at a two-year or four-year college or a university at the time of the workshop and must be in their first four years of full-time teaching or starting a full-time position in the fall.

DLESE services highlights

The DLESE Concept Map Service (CMS) is a REpresentational State Transfer (REST) service API that lets developers search through concept maps and find related digital library resources. The service provides a rich search API and gives full access to the concept maps metadata in DLESE. Developers can use the Concept Space Interchange Protocol (CSIP) to dynamically generate concept maps and digital library resources supporting concept maps. The service supports text-based as well as navigational searching over the concept maps. Developers can use text-based search features to locate appropriate concepts and concept maps. The navigational search allows users to build complexity of scientific understanding by searching through a map of linked and progressively more sophisticated concepts. Currently, the service contains 10 concept maps from the Atlas of Science Literacy published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Project 2061. See the Concept Map Service area to get started using the service.  

DLESE has also added a display on the Services and APIs portal main page to show real-time data detailing the uptime of its search Web services and APIs. These services are designed to be responsive and reliable for use by developers in real-time, high-availability applications and Web pages. DLESE service availability is monitored by Alertra, which is a third party company that monitors DLESE's servers from multiple locations around the globe at regular intervals. To view the uptime statistics, visit the Services and APIs portal area at DLESE.

2006 NSDL program solicitation available

In FY2006, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking proposal submissions to the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Pathways track under program solicitation NSF 06-533. Pathways projects provide stewardship for the content and services needed by major communities of learners, supporting STEM education that is inquiry-driven, active, and engaging. Proposals for Pathways projects should describe prospects for continuing to make project capabilities available beyond the period of NSF funding. Requests for supplements to existing awards from other tracks within the NSDL program (including active Collections projects) will also be accepted. The Letter of Intent due date is March 15, 2006 (optional); the full proposal deadline is May 1, 2006. See the full solicitation for complete information.

Call for papers: EWOC 2006

The Seventh International Conference on School and Popular Meteorological and Oceanographic Education (EWOC 2006) will be hosted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado from July 3-7, 2006. The meeting is co-sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the European Meteorological Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, the World Meteorological Organization as well as other meteorological and oceanographic societies from around the globe.

Papers for both oral and poster presentation are solicited. Workshops featuring hands-on activities for the classroom will be included in the program. Please submit your abstract electronically via the Web by February 28, 2006. For more information, please see Call for Papers.