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Share Fair AbstractsKnowledge-Discovery Applications with Environmental and Ecosystem Policy Documents Integration-engine applications for discovering knowledge from environmental and ecosystem policy documents will be demonstrated in the context of Earth system science education. Associated group decision-making activities that provide practical learning experiences to solve interdisciplinary problems in our world also will be illustrated with examples from an undergraduate capstone course that has been taught for the last 22 years (see Berkman, P.A. 2002. Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica. Academic Press, San Diego). Knowledge involves understanding relationships among different types of information. Currently, search engines are the primary tools for accessing electronic information. However, search engines produce lists that hide relationships within and between different information resources. Such lists are like stacking books in a library rather than organizing them within a building, on different floors, on different shelves. To overcome the limitations of lists, integration-engine technologies from EvREsearch LTD are being used to dynamically generate expandable-collapsible hierarchies that comprehensively display relationships within and between information resources for each search query. These integration-engine technologies provide automated solutions for increasing the granularity of digital records at scale without modifying the authentic record with mark-up tags that otherwise would be needed to organize and display the underlying information granules. For this project, EvREsearch™ integration-engine technologies are being applied to the Marine Mammal Commission Digital Library of International Environmental and Ecosystem Policy Documents with funding from the National Science Digital Library program. These public-domain documents reflect the scientific, economic, social and government perspectives that have been combined into legal strategies for managing human impacts in the Earth system. Understanding the conceptual trends, solutions and frameworks as well as the overlapping jurisdictions of these Earth system policies is essential for the sustainable development of our society at local to global scales. Hands on the WOA 1998 3D data viewer As an outcome of the previous DLESE meeting, where the ocean science strand determined that there was a lack of data viewer technologies in DLESE, Dr. William Prothero and a team of programmers from The New Media Studio built an ocean data viewing application. the WOA 1998 Viewer application accesses all of the data from NOAA's World Ocean Atlas 1998. These data can be interactively chosen and visualized in 3D and time sequences. The application development is a part of the Data Discovery Toolkit and Foundry (DDTF) project in the NSDL. Free software and information about the application and the project will be provided. For more information about the DDTF visit the Foundry portal at: http://www.newmediastudio.org/DataDiscovery/ CruiseViewer CruiseViewer is an interactive query tool which has been developed under the SIOExplorer Project funded by the NSF through the NSDL. CruiseViewer gives users a rich interface for searching for data, viewing metadata, and in some cases, interacting directly with the data within CruiseViewer(Image Viewing, PDFs, 3D models). With a solid technology base in place, the SIOExplorer project is changing gears and moving towards levaraging our technology for the development of educational resources. You can launch CruiseViewer from our web page at http://nsdl.sdsc.edu/tools.html. Stop by and give CruiseViewer a test drive, we would love to hear from you on what direction we should be going in developing educational resources. Project Oceanography: Ocean Science for Middle School Classrooms The mission of Project Oceanography is to broadcast affordable, age-appropriate educational programming to middle school students, incorporating current topics in marine science to teach basic concepts and promote active learning, thereby enhancing the traditional classroom experience. Since 1996, this university-based program has been distributing TV broadcasts to classrooms across the nation via satellite and cable television broadcast networks. The number of registered sites, comprised of schools, school districts, and instructional TV stations now totals more than 520 in 45 states and 17 foreign countries. More than 92 instructional television stations now broadcast Project Oceanography. Many videotapes are archived and can be viewed directly from our website, along with accompanying background materials for teachers and students. All material are available at: http://www.marine.usf.edu/pjocean Starting in Fall 2003, Project Oceanography format will change from live programs, hosted by research scientists, to a completely pre-produced program in which the scientists continue to play a major role. Our new, unreleased demonstration program will be available for viewing and comment during the DLESE Share Fair. Teaching with Dynamic Digital Maps We utilize Dynamic Digital Maps (DDMs) in our undergraduate petrology courses to bring inaccessible and exciting volcanic field areas to the students in the classroom and to engage the students in authentic research experiences. A DDM is a stand-alone "presentation manager" computer program that contains interactive maps, analytical data, digital images and movies. They are essentially complete geologic maps in digital format, available on CD-ROM and the web at http://ddm.geo.umass.edu/. We have developed two different kinds of exercises that use DDMs to provide field-based context for undergraduate research projects in petrology. In one, the students use the DDM of the Tatara-San Pedro volcanic complex of the Andes Mountains of central Chile to develop a group research poster on part of the volcano's evolution, to present to the class, modeled after what would be presented at a national meeting. The second exercise focuses on the Springville Volcanic field, where the stu! dents try to understand the magma evolution using both field relations and quantitative modeling skills. Both programs and the associated exercises will be displayed at this Share Fair, and cross-platform CDs of these DDMs will be available. For those wishing to make their own DDM, a preview of the DDM-Template and "how-to-make-it" Cook Book will also be available . Contributing a Collection to DLESE Staff from the DLESE Program Center and Collection Committee members will be available to discuss the process of building and sharing your collection with DLESE. Details about metadata frameworks, collection-building tools, required policy documents and accessioning processes will be highlighted. Tools, such as the web-based DLESE Catalog System (DCS), and the DLESE Open Archives Initiative (OAI) software will be available for participants to experiment with. Information on downloading and installing these tools will be available as handouts, as will examples of some of the required policy documents. My World and WorldWatcher: Accessible, Research-Based GIS Tools My World and WorldWatcher are tools that have been developed by Learning Sciences researchers at Northwestern University to enable students to conduct sophisticated visualization and analysis with geosciences data. Both tools are designed to provide accessible user-interfaces that enable students and teachers to engage in inquiry-based learning with scientific data, with only minimal training on the software itself. My World is a full-featured GIS tool that imports data from widely-used data formats. WorldWatcher is a tool for the visualization and analysis of gridded (raster) data, such as remote-sensing, climate modeling, and GAP analysis data sets. These tools have been widely used in secondary and undergraduate courses, and are incorporated into a growing collection of curriculum materials. The tools are available from the WorldWatcher Project at http://www.worldwatcher.org ISS EarthKAM: Earth Imagery Studies in the Classroom ISS EarthKAM, a NASA sponsored education program, has designed and built an online Earth image Datasystem specifically for the educational community. The Datasystem includes Image Exploration functions, with various image views, maps, and metadata, that support teachers and students as they try to figure out and learn from the Earth images. Additional support for using the Datasystem and integrating the images into classroom curricula is provided through tutorials, activities, and educator guides. Come learn about the Datasystem, as well as the ISS EarthKAM program, which involves students in actually taking images of Earth from space. Generating Learning Materials from the Perkins Geology Museum Image Archive At last year's DLESE meeting we reported on our procedures and criteria for developing a quality library of digitized images of the items in the collections of the Perkins Geology Museum, University of Vermont. Construction of the archive of over 10,000 images was supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The resource allows online access to images and related information through SQL procedures. The educational value of the specimens was increased by including such laboratory preparations as polarized light, fluorescence, magnifications, and 3-D rotations where appropriate. The educational value of the pictures themselves was enhanced through the addition of interpretive annotations and descriptions supported by a glossary and/or external URLs and by linking images of field sites with specimens and specimen preparations. Collection locality information was converted to decimal coordinates thereby allowing geospatial interactions. We are now creating an array of learning applications for this resource guided by feedback from last summer's meeting with area teachers. Our digital archive will support earth science education through the generation of field trip packets, online learning modules, online teacher-constructed units, and interactive museum exhibits. Digital Image Interpretation Software from GSS Global Systems Science (GSS) is an interdisciplinary course for high school students comprised of nine Student Books with Teachers Guides. Each book deals with societal issues that require science for full understanding of the issues. The books may be used in a one-year integrated science course; or individual guides may be incorporated into existing high school biology, physics, chemistry, Earth science, or social studies courses. The GSS series is available for free download from the GSS website at http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/GSS/. GSS is in the final stages of a NASA grant to start making GSS a part of DLESE. In that effort, we have created software for analyzing digital images (e.g. from satellites or digital cameras). The software enables students to understand what they are seeing in Earth images and analyze them qualitatively and quantitatively for changes in ecosystems over time, including effects of urban growth, fires, volcanic eruptions, etc. GSS is based at Lawrence Hall of Science (UC Berkeley) and Museum of Science in Boston. Rich Annotation Service of Images (RASI)
Rich Annotation Service of Images (RASI)--an innovative web-based image annotation application will be demonstrated. With RASI users can create annotations with drawing tools in a transparent layer placed on top of the image. Users can then assign properties to the marked features. The geometry and properties of the annotation are stored in a database. Examples of drawing tools are: Eye of storm, cold front, warm front, boundary of vegetation and user-customized tools. The annotations created above are stored as metadata of the image. This feature level metadata describes in detail geometrical and other properties of features in the image. The application provides tools to record data, interpretations and conclusions at the feature level. Users can then search the annotations database based on keywords and property values, and retrieve annotation layers and underlying images. RASI may be used as a tool for educators to present concepts to students through annotated images. It is also a hands-on learning tool for students to identify and associate properties with features in an image. User created annotations is saved in a layer. Layers created by different users on the same image, or layers created on different images by the same user can be overlaid to compare and track features. Electronic Encyclopedia of Earthquakes The Electronic Encyclopedia of Earthquakes (E3) is a collaborative project involving the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE), and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), and supported with multi-year funding from the NSF's National Science Digital Library (NSDL) initiative. Information and resources in this collection will be organized into more than 500 Earth science and engineering entries pertaining to the causes, effects, study, and societal impact of earthquakes (over 150 entries are already in some stage of development or review). These entries are similar to those in a traditional encyclopedia, but thoroughly cross-linked using hypertext and, by means of a relational database system, associated with resources in our collection. A discovery system will also allow users to search the collection for resources, independent of entry topic. The Encyclopedia supp! orts high-quality K-12 and undergraduate education by providing educators and students with tools and resources for instruction and research, and connections to curricular materials useful for teaching Earth science, engineering, physics, and mathematics. Faculty-student teams at universities across the nation perform our content collection and organization. All content is then incorporated into the E3 databases by means of a web-accessible interface developed specifically to meet the needs of this project. Content review is accomplished through the same online interface. Our Share Fair exhibit will allow you to explore the Encyclopedia, interact with our collection and content development system, and learn about your opportunities for contribution and collaboration! The Community Review System: A Pathway to the DLESE Reviewed Collection The Community Review System is aimed at selecting the ?best? resources from the DLESE Broad Collection for inclusion in the DLESE Reviewed Collection. The criteria for admission to the Reviewed Collection are scientific accuracy, pedagogical effectiveness, ease of use for teacher and learner, quality of documentation, importance or significance of content, ability to motivate or inspire learners, and robustness as a digital resource. The Community Review System combines two types of reviews: (a) reviews delivered via a Web-based recommendation engine from educators in the DLESE community who have taught with the resource or learners who have learned from the resource, and (b) specialist reviews mediated by an Editorial Review Board. The testbed for the Community Review System is at: http://crs.dlese.org At the sharefare, particpants will be able to walk through the process of reviewing a resource through the Community Review System, and to view examples of the kinds of reports that the CRS provides to the resource creator, to the Reviewed Collection editors, and to the public. The developers are actively seeking feedback on the useability of the web-based recommendation engine, the kinds of information provided to the resource creator and the public, and the ways in which the DLESE Discovery System interacts with the Community Review System.
Exploring The Earth with USGS Resources The USGS represents a wealth of information for DLESE developers, including over 57,000 topographic maps, satellite imagery, aerial photographs, 18,000 thematic maps, 10,000 books, posters, and web-based information on a varity of earth system topics: wildfires, real-time streamflow, ecoregions, invasive species, urbanization, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, biodiversity, online map development, water quality, minerals, aeromagnetism, gravity, geochemistry, and more. The USGS site at the Share Fair will feature a large variety of these resources available for free. Joseph Kerski has been working with educators on geography, science, and GIS-based education for a decade, and will also offer a variety of standards-based lessons on hurricanes, tornadoes, registering imagery, GPS, the Titanic, locating the best site for studying native prairie ecosystems, using topographic maps and satellite imagery, locating a fire tower using elevation and hydrographic data, and siting an I! nternet cafe in a metropolitan area; as well as ideas for conducting training and development, research in GIS in education, and more. Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) presents examples of educational uses of Earth science datasets and scientific tools, including step-by-step instructions that provide users with practice using the data and tools in a meaningful context. Each chapter guides the user through a compelling case study, including suggestions for further exploration of the data and other ways to use the tool. Teachers and/or students can perform the steps in a chapter to become familiar with a software tool, a specific Earth science dataset, or an analysis procedure. After completing the chapter, users are able to move beyond the example and use the tool or dataset to carry out their own explorations. Topics currently covered in EET chapters include Annotating Change over Time in Satellite Images, Investigating Earthquakes through GIS Mapping and Analysis, Investigating the Relationship between Precipitation and Streamflow, Analyzing Population Statistics in the United States and Mexico, and Comparing Climate Changes Across the United States from 1900 to 2100. Federation of Earth Science Information Partners: Bringing Earth Science Data and Information to Education The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a community that encompasses government, non-profit, and business organizations that is dedicated to creating public benefit from Earth science results. Our members work with curriculum developers and educators to create access to 1) high quality Earth science datasets; 2) scientists and technicians who can help educators use Earth science datasets and tools effectively; and 3) educational materials developed using Earth science data through the ESIP Federation Education Center. ESIP Federation representatives committed to providing the educational community with access to Earth science information will present web-based, digital media, and printed learning resources for teachers and students to study Earth system science in classrooms, laboratories, and homes. The representatives also want to hear your suggestions for developing and using Earth science data and information products in education. GIS Resources for Educators from ESRI ESRI provides a variety of GIS products and services, including software, data, books, and training. Staff from ESRI's Educational Outreach team will demonstrate software suitable for use in Earth Science education, including ArcView, ArcView Spatial Analyst, and ArcView 3D Analyst. In addition, we'll have examples of GIS-based lessons from ArcLessons, our online clearinghouse of classroom activities, and copies of GIS workbooks such as "Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators" and "Community Geography: GIS in Action". We'll also have information about ESRI Training options, including web-based and instructor-led courses. Come see the variety of educational resources available from ESRI and let us know what additional resources you'd like to see us develop. The National Science Digital Library: Developing a User-Based Assessment Protocol The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Texas A&M University Libraries are collaborating on a joint project for assessing service quality in digital libraries. The goal of this project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to adapt the LibQUAL+(TM) survey instrument for use in the Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library community. LibQUAL+(TM) is a research and development project undertaken by ARL and LibQUAL+Texas A&M to measure library service quality across LibQUAL+institutions. The LibQUAL+(TM) instrument is a web-based survey LibQUAL+of library users' perceptions of service quality; it identifies LibQUAL+gaps between desired, perceived, and minimum expectations of LibQUAL+service. Some of the goals of the NSDL Digital Library Assessment project include: (a) define the dimensions of digital library service quality from the users' perspectives; (b) develop a tool for measuring user perceptions and expectations of digital library service quality across NSDL digital library contexts; and (c) identify digital library best practices that permit generalizations across operations and development platforms. The first step in this assessment project is to re-ground the survey for the digital library environment. This will be done by obtaining qualitative feedback about digital library service quality from users at a series of focus groups, including two at the DLESE Annual Meeting in August 2003. Comments gathered from focus group participants will be used to modify the existing survey instrument so that it better measures service quality in digital libraries. Promoting Change in Undergraduate Geoscience Education-Examples from SERC The Science Education Resource Center is engaged in several projects aimed at using DLESE to motivate change in faculty classroom practice. We will demonstrate four of these sites: Starting Point: Teaching Introductory Geoscience--This site provides information on instructional methods and issues in teaching customized for geoscience faculty, examples of their use in entry level geoscience courses, and opportunities for sharing, feedback, and discussion. On the Cutting Edge--This site uses DLESE thematic collections to support participants in our professional development workshop series and incorporates these resources in websites that make workshop content broadly available. DLESE Community Issues and Groups--This site provides an entry point to what is happening in our community. Content is organized by issues such as improving diversity or increasing quantitative skills and by interest groups such as undergraduate faculty or solid earth sciences. NSDL Using Data in the Classroom--This NSDL specialized portal is designed to provide faculty with information, examples, tools and data that support their use of data in the classroom. A special section for developers provides information about faculty needs for data access and manipulation. Our sites are built using a content management system that exploits the DLESE Cataloging System and OAI protocols for resource management and sharing, enable tracking and cross-referencing of resource links, and supports content authoring by faculty across the country with minimal html expertise . Demystifying Climate Change with the Climate Timeline Information Tool The National Research Council (NRC) finds in its study "Improving the Effectiveness of U.S. Climate Modeling" (NRC, 2001) that public exposure to climate change is often in the form of sound bites explaining the latest weather disaster in terms of El Niño or global warming, which do not provide an in-depth understanding of the topic. Attempting to convey the difference between naturally occurring and anthropogenic climate change, for example, involves many issues, including i) the fundamental physical processes involved (especially radiation);ii) how climate change is measured over different time scales; and iii) what determines climate variability, such as changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-surface properties, solar output, ocean system. The Climate Timeline Information Tool, developed by CIRES and NOAA educators and scientists and evaluated through the University of Colorado, has been catalogued in the DLESE system and offers a variety of background resources on weather and climate variability and its human dimension, as well as access to a variety of climate-related databases. Plans for the next generation of the Climate Timeline include detailed lesson plans correlated to appropriate education standards, and a collection of visualizations and datasets that can help students, teachers and others lacking technical research backgrounds use and understand climate related data. The NASA Earth Science Education Digital Library The NASA Earth Science Education Digital Library (formerly known as the JOINed Digital Library/JDL) is a web-based decentralized digital library being developed in the Earth Science Enterprise at NASA. It is as a multi-collection, multi-Center, and multi-Enterprise effort with multi-agency collaboration, to tie together the myriad of NASA Education collections available on the World Wide Web. The pilot project links distributed database-driven collections together and provides a streamlined web-based interface. To minimize operational and maintenance costs, the backbone of the library utilizes JiniTM technology to join individual collections together in a peer-to-peer system with a shared communication network and owner built collections housed in MySQL databases (a free, Open Source software) or in flatfiles. Individual collections are maintained by their owners and retain control of their collection holdings, further minimizing costs to the JDL system while allowing for co! llection branding. The ESEDL project of NASA is a collaborating partner with the DLESE Program Center Mapping Our World &Community Geography: Revolutionary GIS tools for the classroom With the release of Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators in March, 2002, GIS has been made easy and within reach for any teacher who wishes to integrate GIS into their 5-12 curriculum. Colleges and universities across the country are also adopting this "laboratory" resource as a solution for their entry-level geography and GIS classes. In May of 2003, ESRI Press released their second book, Community Geography: GIS in Action! that follows eight teachers from the U.S. and Canada and their students who have authentically taken GIS from the classroom into their communities. Both books feature teacher's guides, lesson plans, standards-based lessons, authentic assesments, and rubrics to aid teachers in integrating GIS into their curriculum in a simple yet meaningful way. This Share Fair session will encourage you to sit down at a laptop and "test-drive" lessons from both books to see for yourself the ease at which you too can use GIS in your classroom! Online Support for Intro Oceanography that Uses Earth Data Large introductory courses may be the only exposure to science that our non-science undergraduates get. Because of this, it is vital that we do our best to offer our students opportunities to learn science process and scientific argumentation. To achieve this goal, I have created online software that supports the management and delivery of automatically graded homework assignments, on-demand grade computation, collaborative projects, online writing (including online grading and commenting), and integrated access to earth data viewing software. Currently, the "Our Dynamic Planet" (earth data related to plate tectonics) and WOA-98 ocean data viewer allow students to easily display, capture, and upload data to their online storage area. Then, these graphics can be edited and linked to the online writing and presentation assignments. The writing assignments are available to the instructor and teaching assistants for commenting and grading according to an integrated rubrik. Th! e writing management system allows the professor to review teaching assistant's comments and provides a record of student work. The software has been evolving through many forms for ten years, and has been used in its present form for two years. Student feedback is good. Challenges arise from student computer literacy, the variety of operating systems and hardware they use, accommodating changes in operating systems, and fixing software bugs. Instructional Architect The Instructional Architect is a web-based tool that enables instructors to find, annotate, and sequence digital library resources into new learning modules. This is done in a non-technical way, without requiring technical knowledge such as HTML or FTP. We have recently completed a portal to DLESE, which will be available for demonstration. Earth System Science Education for the 21st Century (ESSE 21) ESSE 21, sponsored by NASA through the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), is a collaborative undergraduate/graduate education program offering small grants to colleges and universities to engage a diverse interdisciplinary community of faculty and scientists in the development of courses, curricula and degree programs and sharing of learning resources focused on the fundamental understanding and application of Earth system principles for the classroom and laboratory. Through an expanded focus including partnerships with minority institutions, ESSE 21 is further developing broadly based courses, educational resources, electronic learning materials and degree programs that extend Earth system science concepts in both undergraduate and graduate classrooms and laboratories. These resources emphasizing the fundamentals of Earth system science advance the nation's broader agenda for improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics competency. The thrust to establish Earth system and global change science within the classrooms of colleges and universities is critical to laying and extending the foundation for knowledge-based decision making in the 21st century by both scientists and society in an effort to achieve sustainability. ESSE 21 released a Call for Participation (CFP) in the Fall of 2002 soliciting proposals from undergraduate institutions to create and adopt undergraduate and graduate level Earth system science content in courses, curricula and degree programs. In February 2003, twelve college and university teams were competitively selected through the CFP as the Year 1 and Year 2 Program participants. Eight of the participating teams are from minority institutions. The goal for all is to effect systemic change through developing Earth system science learning materials, courses, curricula, degree tracks or programs, and departments that are self-sustaining in the coming decades. ESSE 21 offers an expanded infrastructure for an interactive community of educators and researchers including minority participants that develops interdisciplinary Earth system science content. Emphasis is on the utilization of NASA resources involving global change data, models, visualizations and electronic m! edia and networks. The ultimate aim of ESSE 21 is to expand and accelerate the nation's realization of sound, scientific interdisciplinary educational resources for informed learning and decision-making by all from the perspective of sustainability of the Earth as a system. The next Call for Participation will be released in late 2003. Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA) The Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA) is a partnership between the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and the Center for Educational Technologies (CET) at Wheeling Jesuit University, through funding from NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. The program is based on a trio of peer-reviewed courses for K-12 teachers, developed within the CET, that have been rated outstanding by an independent review and are offered through a unique partnership involving over 20 colleges, universities and other science organizations across the country. To date, over 800 teachers have completed at least one of the semester-long, graduate level courses. ESSEA uses an instructional model that has proven effective and successful for K-12 science teacher education. This model: Addresses content and process, i.e., knowledge of Earth system science and the appropriate inquiry-based methods to teach it. This gets at the lack of professional development of ESS teachers, especially those in grades K-8. Demonstrates the effectiveness of the World Wide Web in the promotion of professional development of K-12 Earth system science educators. Discover Our Earth Discover Our Earth is a fully web-based module containing a variety of mapping and information extraction tools and virtual experiments developed for educators and students. It is accompanied by curricular materials designed to help teachers quickly see which data sets may be of interest and how to best use them. Discover Our Earth primarily consists of four components: first is a Java applet, the QUEST (Quick Use Earth Study Tool) mapping and analysis tool. The applet provides access to spatially referenced data sets, selected for their wide applicability in the study of the solid Earth system. The tools allow students to query earthquake, volcano, and topographic data sets in order to construct maps of geological/geophysical interest. Through combination and spatial overlay of these data--and ancillary data provided as background images--students are encouraged to construct their own understanding of Earth's dynamic processes. The second and third components of Discover Our Earth are user guides, one for students and the other for teachers. The user guides are not meant to be a comprehensive resource on the topics addressed by the data sets. Rather, they provide a brief overview of the topics, and guidance to both teachers and students in how they might use the QUEST resource most effectively to study the topic areas. The student guide provides background information, then presents students with a series of exercises designed to encourage exploration. The teacher guide is coordinated with the student guide, and provides answers to the questions as well as giving teachers more information about the data sets and how they might be further utilized. The final component of Discover Our Earth consists of a series of interactive experiments designed to support the QUEST applet and the questions in the two user guides. The experiments cover topics such as isostasy, viscosity, sea level change and continental drift, giving students the opportunity to further explore the physical processes that govern the accompanying data sets. (http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/education/) Earthview - Enabling student visualization and analysis of data Earthview is a project, originally funded by the NSF and created at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Now available as commercial software, Earthview enables students to explore a variety of datasets in a simplified GIS (map based) environment. Data that can be explore includes (but is not limited to) sea surface temperatures, ocean depths, phytoplankton activity, ozone depletion, air temperatures, sea floor age, etc. Students have a number of tools through which they can explore their world. Stop by and explore! MicrobeLibrary.org In 1997, MicrobeLibrary (ML) founders envisioned, “The proposed library is analogous to an electronic journal of peer-reviewed scientific articles for the research community. The ML will be an electronic journal of peer-reviewed educational resources for the teaching community.” Five years later, with support from the NSF, the ML website provides peer-reviewed resources about the microbial world. As a community-driven initiative, faculty are the ones who use, contribute, and review submissions. The ML promotes ASM's commitment to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning by providing a venue for sharing and building upon good works in undergraduate biology education. All resources, reviewed for scientific accuracy and instructional value, promote ASM’s curriculum recommendations. There are over 850 learning objects contributed by scientists worldwide. Thirty-five percent of resources within the ML are visual resources with translations; 35% are scienc! e and education feature articles and journal papers; 25% are reviews of books, videos, software, and websites; and 5% are curriculum resources. The ASM conducts periodic surveys of its membership and other ML visitors to learn about resources used and needed. The ML serves over 30,000 visitors, accessing over 500,000 pages, per month from the United States and over 30 other countries. The most cited uses for the ML were visual resources (75%), and curriculum resources (50%). This year, ASM is building its online infrastructure to enhance online features, expand inventory, and establish a subscriptions-based model to sustain the Library.
The ADEPT Concept-based Digital Learning Environment We describe the design and application of a Digital Learning Environment (DLE) that is integrated with the collections and services of the Alexandria Digital Library (ADL). This DLE is in operational use in undergraduate teaching environments. Its design and development incorporate the assumption that deep understanding of both scientific phenomena and scientific methods is facilitated when learning materials are explicitly organized, accessed and pre-sented at the level of granularity of appropriate sets of scientific concepts and their interrelationships. The DLE supports services for the creating, searching, and displaying: (1) knowledge bases (KBs) of strongly structured models of scientific concepts; (2) DL collections of information objects organized and accessible by the concepts of the KBs; and (3) collections of presentation materials, such as lectures and laboratory materials, that are organized as trajectories through the KB of concepts.the machine. Strand Maps as an Interface to NSDL Resources Strand maps take all of the K-12 learning goals on one particular topic (such as Weather and Climate) and put them together on one page to show how they build upon one another and relate to one other. These learning goals (based on the AAAS Benchmarks for Science Literacy) describe what learners should know, or be able to do, at key stages in their education. This project is developing and evaluating a Strand Map Service to provide an interactive and flexible interface to educational resources in the National STEM Digital Library (NSDL). Digital Library Collections would be able to employ this interface so that their users could search for content conceptually. The service enables educators and learners 1) to discover educational resources that support the learning goals, or benchmarks, articulated in the strand maps; 2) to browse the interconnected learning goals in the strand maps; and 3) to enhance their own content knowledge by using the service to explore important background information on the learning goals, such as prior research on student misconceptions. |
