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Resources of Interest: World Ocean Day and Transit of Venus
Professional development opportunity: PBS TeacherLineMost teachers are happily contemplating the end of the school year. For those who would like to sharpen their skills over the summer, PBS TeacherLine offers an opportunity to do so without having to go anywhere. PBS TeacherLine's summer professional development courses begin June 16th, and courses are now open for enrollment. 30 online courses are offered on a national basis this summer, and your PBS member station may also be offering additional local courses. PBS online courses are six weeks in length and have been designed for pre-K through 12 classroom teachers in the areas of Reading and Language Arts, Mathematics, and Technology Integration. Graduate credit is also available. Enrollment for the summer courses closes soon—on June 9th. Whether you are interested for yourself or for a group of teachers from your school or district, please contact PBS TeacherLine with questions, or if you need assistance with registration: call (800) 572-6386 or email teacherline@pbs.org. California science teachers pilot programA group of San Francisco Bay area science teachers is collaborating with DLESE, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, San Francisco State University, and the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), to create a collection of exemplary, contextualized resources for Earth system science topics at the middle and high school levels. Two workshops have taken place this spring at UCMP, and the teachers will be attending a final week-long workshop in Boulder in mid-June. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project combines the creativity, energy, and experience of the Bay area teachers with the subject matter expertise, inquiry-based educational design, and technological know-how of the other project partners to produce virtual teaching boxes. These teaching boxes will aggregate a wide variety of supporting information about specific Earth system science topics: student activities, teaching tips, assessment information, reviews, place-based resource discovery, standards and benchmarks information, etc. The teachers plan to report on the project at the California Science Education Conference in San Jose in the fall. The program is intended as a model for DLESE outreach activities with teachers in other states and regions. Meet DLESE Steering Committee nomineesAs a community-based digital library, DLESE has been well-served for the past five years by its Steering Committee—a diverse group of individuals whose experience and backgrounds span the geosciences, information technology, library science, and all educational levels. Three current Steering Committee members will retire in July 2004: Chair Chris DiLeonardo, Geology Dept. of Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA; John Snow, Dean of the College of Geosciences, University of Oklahoma, and Bob Wilhelmson, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. A slate of three nominees has been chosen from 27 nominations. The Steering Committee has approved and will present the adopted slate to the general DLESE community for ratification at the 2004 DLESE Annual Meeting, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, July 10-13:
This slate holds great promise for the addition of valuable experience and vision to DLESE, the strengthening of ties between research and education, and increased visibility for DLESE in the the K-12 and informal education arenas. Find out more about the 2004 Steering Committee nominees. Call for participation: DLESE session at GSA 2004DLESE is sponsoring topical session T141 at the 2004 meeting of the Geological Society of America: Building a Digital Library that Supports Diversity: Goals, Lessons-learned, and Future Directions. Speakers will explore current and ongoing efforts to promote diversity in DLESE, focusing on early successes, lessons learned, and strategies for moving the library forward. Co-chairs Rajul Pandya (SOARS Program) and Mary Marlino (DLESE Program Center) invite volunteered abstracts to the session. Here is a chance to present, compare, and discuss your experiences and efforts in DLESE education and outreach activities promoting diversity. See the full session description. Help us make this a viable and vibrant session by sharing your innovations with the larger community! Abstracts are due by midnight, Pacific time, July 13, 2004. DLESE 2004 Annual Meeting registration deadline extended to June 7If you have not already registered for the DLESE 2004 Annual Meeting at the University of Wisconsin, take the opportunity to do so now—the registration deadline for funded participants has been extended to Monday, June 7 at 5 PM CDT. Don't forget that you must simultaneously register for a meeting strand, a skills workshop (Saturday, July 10), and/or submit a brief abstract for a Share Fair, taking place on Sunday evening, July 11.
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