Vol. 3, Issue 6, July 2006         All issues index         Submit newsletter content          DLESE home

Contents

Resource of Interest:

Windows Into Wonderland, from the National Park Service, takes visitors on a series of electronic field trips (eTrips) into Yellowstone National Park. Animations, illustrations, and video footage reveal Yellowstone as you've never seen it before! The currently featured eTrip is "Yellowstone Exposed: Mysteries in the Living Laboratory."  Each eTrip is equipped with curricular materials for teachers and an Ask an Expert area that provides an archive of questions and answers. Many of the 15 eTrips (e.g."To Eat or Be Eaten") have won awards. eTrips are available with and without audio and video to accommodate most internet connections. Designed for middle school students, it is appropriate for general audiences.

Professional development opportunity/Call for participation:

Do you have a great classroom activity that you know works extremely well with students, or that teachers you work with give rave reviews? NESTA offers the opportunity for its members and colleagues to share their favorite activities with teachers at high-energy "Share-a-thons" held during regional and national NSTA meetings every year. One Share-a-thon is held at each regional meeting and three are held at the national meeting. This is your opportunity to sign up to share your activities at a regional Share-a-thon and simultaneously have a chance to meet an extended group of your colleagues in a professional meeting setting. Some school administrators are more likely to agree to allow you to attend the conference if you are a presenter, so this can also be a good way to attend an NSTA meeting.

Presenting at a Share-a-thon is not the same as a "talk" in front of your colleagues. Instead, Share-a-thon attendees circulate through the session (of ~1 hour in duration), coming by a table and chair that NESTA provides presenters. This gives you a brief opportunity to share your activity with attendees, explain how it works and your experience with students, and also to get to know your colleagues a bit. Share-a-thons are typically attended by ~100-350 teachers, depending on the meeting location and if it is a regional or national meeting - the environment has been variously described as a round robin, a flea market, and a feeding frenzy! Presenters need to bring 200 copies of their activity as a handout for a regional meeting, including a copy for each of the other presenters at the Share-a-thon. A benefit to presenters is that they receive a full set of their colleagues' best activities in a packet delivered to them before the end of the event, so you don't go home empty handed. NESTA can accommodate up to ~20 presenters at a regional Share-a-thon.

If you are interested in presenting at one or more of the NESTA Regional Share-a-thons this year, contact Roberta Johnson at rmjohnsn@ucar.edu by July 31, 2006. The schedule below gives the Share-a-thon opportunities coming to regional NSTA conventions over the coming year. Share-a-thon presenters will need to register for the NSTA meeting, provide complete name and address, and return a confirmation form in order to participate in the event.

Omaha, Nebraska
NSTA Mid-Western Area Conference, October 19 - 21, 2006
NESTA Share-a-thon October 20 from 2 - 3 pm

Baltimore, Maryland
NSTA Eastern Area Conference, November 2 - 4, 2006
NESTA Share-a-thon November 3 from 3:30 - 4:30 pm

Salt Lake City, Utah
NSTA Western Area Conference, December 7 - 9, 2006
NESTA Share-a-thon December 8 from 2 - 3 pm

New dlese.org feature: Choosing and using this resource.

In answer to our users' requests, we have introduced a new feature called Choosing and Using to the results you get when you do a search in DLESE. Give it a try! Do a search and when you see the list of results, click on Choosing and Using this resource... to find information like teaching tips, reviews, education standards, and other information to help select a particular resource.

Podcasts for your classroom:

NOVA Science Programming on air and online. This site currently offers four different podcasts. For instructions on how to subscribe, refer to the Q & A section of the web site.

NOVA Podcast: Hear brief audio stories from the world of science-from hurricanes to mummies to neutrinos-that expand on topics from NOVA T.V. programs.

NOVA E = mc 2 podcast: NOVA asked 10 top physicists to explain Einstein's famous equation. Subscribe to this feed to hear them.

NOVA Vodcast: Watch NOVA where you are with a video podcast, offering excerpts from NOVA T.V. programs, video dispatches from producers in the field, animations, and more.

NOVA scienceNOW podcast: The companion podcast to NOVA's news-magazine series, NOVA scienceNOW, offers brief, often irreverent conversations with scientists and science journalists.