Exploratorium exhibit floor
In the United States, about one college student in 25 is visiting from another country. Almost 672,000 international students were enrolled in American colleges and universities in 2008-09, an all-time record. “While I don’t actively recruit from the international community, I’m delighted when prospective volunteers find us through […]

Lodi, California is a small city (population 61,000) located in a wine-growing region at the northern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s about 70 miles, one mountain range, and several social universes east of San Francisco.  The local economy is in rough shape. Foreclosed homes dot the […]

Robotics exhibit and experiment, St. Louis Science Center

It can take a long time for a science center to build relationships with scientists and engineers, but one member of the museum community is convinced that it’s worth the effort.  “You may not see tangible results for a long time,” says Christine […]

Most volunteers for science museums are older adults, according to a 2008 survey by the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC).  And because science centers have three times as many volunteers as they do paid staff, they are places where older adults are just as important as children.  But […]

 
Volunteer Tom Clouse helps COSI guests discover the wonders of air pressure.
 
In Columbus, Ohio, over one million Girl Scouts have shared the same experience: they have all attended sleepover parties inside the Center of Science and Industry. COSI has been running the parties since 1972, and this year’s […]

 
BJ Siasoco:  “Surprise is the essence of science.”
Every year, hundreds of people gather in the atrium of a shopping mall in Ithaca, New York to watch children drop raw eggs on the floor. Last April, 187 contestants padded their eggs with balloons, feathers, marshmallows, sawdust, and sponges, hoping they might survive a 20-foot drop without […]

 Van de Graff Generator

More than 1.5 million people visited Boston’s Museum of Science last year.  The 179-year-old institution is a landmark of the city’s Back Bay, with a planetarium, an IMAX Dome Theater, a live animal center, as well as a staff of educators, scientists, and exhibit designers. It even […]

Volunteers Yue Chen and Jin Wang work with liquid nitrogen in the Museum’s lab
 
“ A lot of the work of managing volunteers is repetitive,” says Leslie Fann, volunteer coordinator at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  “There’s a lot of responding to e-mails and a lot of work with people […]

People often refer to the Smithsonian Institution as the “nation’s attic,” but the people who work at the Smithsonian see it quite differently.  To them, the Smithsonian is more like an enormous free school for people of all ages, and most of its teachers are volunteers.  More than seven million people a year visit the […]

Volunteers make informal science possible.  Virtually all not-for-profit science education organizations depend on unpaid help, from institutions as large as the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History to the smallest online advice-sharing websites.   But volunteers don’t just happen – they have to be recruited, trained, supervised, and rewarded.  This blog is […]

The links below describe a neat way for your students to do research on a particular element and display their results to your entire class. Each student constructs an icosahedron with a different kind of information about an element on each of the 20 faces. The icosahedra are then hung from the classroom ceiling in […]

For the month of October, we’re highlighting resources for Chemistry teaching. Look for continued resource materials and examples this month. Here’s a way to chart, sort and graph elements from an interactive periodic table: Through Periodic Table Live! of NSDL’s Chemical Education Digital Library (http://chemeddl.org) you can find information […]

Do your students ever ask, “Why are we learning this?” Or maybe they sometimes say, “We’re never going to use this stuff in the real world!” Providing examples of how scientific concepts are used in the world beyond school naturally helps youngsters be more interested and engaged, and retain information better. How to do this? […]

Seeing and hearing examples of scientists breaking out of the traditional mold of what it means to be a scientist can be a great way to not only inspire students to pursue careers in science, but can also help them see the scientific process in action and how that process applies to so many fields […]

“Research has long documented that people of all ages - elementary school children, college students, and adults - cannot explain the cause of day and night or seasons,” Jessica Fries-Gaither points out in an article in the online teacher professional development magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears.
Further in the article, Fries-Gaither points […]

We’re just a week away from the NSDL Annual Meeting, and the buzz is reaching a crescendo (or maybe it’s just the loud voice in my head reminding me of all the things left to get done!).
We’re looking at a great set of presentations, and do make sure to save some calories for the poster […]

Will your digital resources and services survive and thrive? This was the central question driving the Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability. We are pleased that Kate Wittenberg, formerly with the NSDL Core Integration group and now the Project Director of Client and Partnership Development for Ithaka, will walk us through sustainability options and obstacles facing […]

The new NSDL Community Site is up and running, complete with Annual Meeting Registration and information about the meeting. You will have to create a login for the site to register for the meeting, and the steps for registering can be found in the Whiteboard Report.
You can also go directly to the Annual Meeting pages […]

Great response from the community! Thanks to all of you who scurried to meet our tight deadlines and submitted your talks. We have 46 submissions and the top categories are Services and Technology and Collection Development. The Committee will be reviewing these and we’ll be back out to you as soon as humanly possible.
Topics range […]

Selected full text articles from the Journal of Materials Education (JME) are being promoted and made freely available on the NSF supported National Science Digital Library (NSDL), Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) to encourage broad dissemination and readership. These papers are part of a special JME issue which includes manuscripts from the Fall 2007 MRS […]

The Annual Meeting Planning Committee is soliciting proposals for presentations at the 2009 NSDL Annual Meeting, November 17-19 in Washington, D.C. Proposals are welcomed from both the NSDL community and from individuals and groups not directly affiliated with an NSDL-funded project. The Committee encourages all projects to share their experiences and successes, and to raise […]

The NSDL Annual Meeting will be held on November 17-19 at the Marriott at Metro Center in Washington DC. We’re working to get some basic information on the web site, but here are a few tidbits about what’s to come.
The overall structure of the meeting will be the same, with the poster reception on the […]

Here’s the quick update so far on the 2009 NSDL Annual Meeting.
The planning committee has begun meeting to talk about how we can streamline the meeting given our short timeline, yet meet the needs of the community as expressed through the 2008 meeting survey. The RC is working on a contract with a DC […]

The Speak Up 2008 National Data Findings about digital content will be presented by Julie Evans, CEO-Project Tomorrow, on Wednesday Sept 16 at 12:00pm Pacific.  During this one-hour webinar you’ll learn more about the findings and hear from panelists about how their school districts are helping teachers integrate digital content into their curriculum.
More than 29,000 teachers shared […]

From Project Tomorrow:
ImageProject Tomorrow® and T.H.E. Journal are joining forces to provide a series of six FREE — and timely — hot topic webinars based on the results from the nationwide Speak Up surveys. The Speak Up data provides:
* Essential data to determine how well your school or district measures up to others across the […]

Welcome! Project Tomorrow annually conducts Speak Up surveys (since 2003), collecting and analyzing data from 18,000 schools across the US, Canada, Mexico and Australia. (You can find many more reports at the Project Tomorrow site).
This Expert Voices blog is a question/answer and discussion forum for the NSDL community resulting from two recent presentations by Project […]

Don’t miss the Fall 2009  “All About Repositories” free web seminar series kick-off event on Sept 9 (TODAY). These highly successful webinars provide overviews of best practices, technology updates, and  key trend analyses for academic resources directors, IT managers, digital librarians, repository managers and developers, and curators. Join Mark Leggott, Valorie Hollister and Carol Minton […]

The hardware you will need to establish an NSDL EduPak educational resources repository will vary depending on overall requirements. For example, decisions regarding how many objects and in what types of formats your repository will house, and what services your repository will provide impact hardware choices.
A basic hardware scenario might look like this for a […]

You are an educational researcher within a specific STEM discipline who has developed 1,000 resources that are learning objects, which include lesson plans and curricula. To find out how your resources will be used in homes and classrooms you need to organize and make them available on the Web. The NSDL EduPak digital library services […]

Ithaca, NY, Boulder, CO  National educational organizations and institutions focused on establishing specialized digital collections, conducting educational research, or providing students, teachers and instructors with discipline-oriented pedagogical products and tools require basic technology to build educational digital repositories that support their work.  To help meet a national priority expressed by the National Science Board (NSB) […]

In optics experiments, you often need to create lines of light. You can do this with light boxes, but they’re expensive, and tend to have too many rays to be useful. Laser light boxes are great, but again, spendy.
One teacher recommends using laser levels. These are the things made to help you […]

If you’re a teacher — of physics, or any other physical science — and haven’t yet picked up a copy of Edward Redish’s Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite , I’m making a bid right now that you do so.
I finally read it — really read it — instead of just browsing through a chapter […]

I feel like I keep posting these, I should compile them.
Currki : Currki, an open source website for educational materials k-12 has over 80,000 members who are educators and teachers.
TeacherTube TeacherTube is a video sharing website based on YouTube. It is designed to allow those in the educational industry, particularly teachers, to share […]

 
Below I am reposting a rather long piece taken verbatim from the website of Steve Detweiler who just says that it’s an “amusing anecdote from a friend of mine.” So, I’m not sure of the veracity of the story, and some claim that it’s an urban legend. It may well be. But […]

A couple links that look very helpful.
100 excellent blogs for science teachers (which includes yours truly!)
Includes a bunch of teacher blogs (which seems like a great way to get some online mentorship if you’re all alone), and subject-area blogs (like physics or biology). A very useful list.
100 cheat sheets for K12 teachers
The sections on […]

Here are a few collections of videos of science teaching and learning — useful for learning how to teach.
Annenberg:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series90.html
http://www.learner.org/resources/series126.html
TIMSS
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/video.asp

Ok, it probably wouldn’t be very yummy, but here’s another hands-on activity you can use that’s rather Halloween-like. Called “Make a ‘mummy’”, this Exploratorium activity is a great way to demonstrate how mummification works, by drying out the tissue in a fish using baking soda. Egyptians used a specific type of salt to […]

With halloween fast approaching, it’s time to take advantage of a frivolous holiday to do some fun science stuff.
No post about Halloween would be complete without a reference to the Grossology site. Scroll down for “lab activities”: This gets high marks from one teacher who says, “It has the simpliest of the slimey […]

Got a unit on circular motion? You may want to use an activity with a centrifuge, to show how it separates substances of different densities. Even if you’ve got a commercial centrifuge, how might you instead do a hands-on activity to show the same thing?
Try mixing red colored sugar in cooking oil in […]

Have you ever had this unusual occurrence in your freezer? This one observant science teacher says:
We had a single stalagtite form from one cube in an ice cube tray. It rose about an inch, no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and tapering to a sharp point. How did that […]

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite ugly bug, from the folks at Ask-a-Biologist. Right now, the Snakefly has a resounding lead. Will it last? Vote and see!
Watch the video to learn more….

Join us for this free, online web seminar from the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar Series for the 2009-2010 school year!

Title: Knowing Nano: New Video, Web, and Print
Date: Nov 11, 2009
Time: 6:30p.m.-8:00p.m. Eastern Time
Presenter: Lisa Regalla, DragonflyTV
Registration is free!
Spark your students’ curiosity and hone their inquiry skills with free DragonflyTV Nano educational resources. Six half-hour episodes […]

The Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance is looking for 25-30 teachers and teacher educators (pre-service faculty, curriculum developers, professional development consultants, science specialists, etc.) to complete an evaluation questionnaire for feedback on the NSF-funded PRISMS web site at: http://prisms.mmsa.org/ . PRISMS stands for Phenomena and Representations for the Instruction of Science in Middle School and […]

Learn strategies on how to use interactive whiteboards in the classroom from Todd Williamson in this archived webinar from the NSDL Middle School Social Network

Here’s a short list of activities you can do to celebrate National Earth Science Week (Oct 11-17) with your students:
http://www.earthsciweek.org/forteachers/classroomactivities.html
Activities are listed by grade level and content standards. This list is provided by the American Geological Institute, AGI.
Want more? Try the NSDL Science Literacy Maps to find NSDL resources using science benchmarks around […]

Students, teachers, all walks of life are encouraged to contribute to the National Gallery of Writing to celebrate the National Day on Writing, October 20, 2009. Need some help in getting ideas? How about some suggested topics and activities from the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears Cyberzine on ways to integrate science […]

As many teachers have experienced, deciding to use more technology-related tools and materials in your teaching can be overwhelming. Where do I start? How can I find a way to use technology that is more rooted in what I’m trying to accomplish with my students? How do I let go of the […]

If you’re working on the daunting task of revising your curriculum to better meet standards or have a need to hone in on selecting teaching materials that better align to learning goals, you might want to attend a workshop on the AAAS Project 2061 Atlas of Science Literacy. These maps show science concepts in […]

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is an online professional development magazine–or rather cyberzine–that serves as a great resource with lots of ideas for teaching. You can find tips on teaching a unit on fossils (a student favorite). In the Science and Literacy Department of the April 2008 issue, author Jessica Fries-Gaither provides […]

Join us for this free, online web seminar from the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar Series for the 2009-2010 school year!
Title: Chemistry Comes Alive IV: Oxidation/ Reduction
Date: Oct 15, 2009
Time: 6:30p.m.-8:00p.m. Eastern Time
Presenters: John Moore, Lynn Diener, Shannon Stahl
Registration is free!
Oxidation/reduction is one of the most difficult concepts taught in an introductory chemistry classroom. Students often struggle […]

While waiting in a doctor’s office, I had an interesting conversation with a remedial math teacher.  He feels strongly that students must master the basics by 3rd grade.  Working with flash cards is not the most exciting thing to do. If you can disguise drill as a game it becomes more interesting.  I did some […]

Recently, I have been exploring the use of social software to support teaching.  One example of this is the prettygoodphysics wiki. The wiki is maintained by Paul Lulai.  In correspondence with me, Paul said:  “Please invite as many others as possible to use the site.  I’d like to make sure it is known that while I help […]

At the Monday meeting of the Physics and Physical Sciences Group in TappedIn, we had requests for web sites suitable for middle school students. Here are some of the sites we viewed.
The Physics Front.org K-12 resources http://www.compadre.org/precollege/static/topic.cfm?course=1
Science Games.org
http://www.scigames.org/
Science Teaching Tips
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ti/podcasts/index.php
Exploratorium Snacks
http://exploratorium.edu/snacks/
Physics and Everyday Thinking
http://petproject.sdsu.edu/
Sciencegeekgirl
http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/sciencegeekgirl/
Cool Stuff from Arbor Scientific
http://www.arborsci.com/
Pretty Good Physics Wiki
 http://prettygoodphysics.wikispaces.com/
Discover Science, Technology and the […]

Several televsion stations have developed science portals. The portals have information for both faculty and students. Here are some examples.
KNME developed a Science Central web portal that promotes all KNME Science Central events and outreach activities.
http://www.knme.org/sciencecentral/
WGBH Boston
http://www.wgbh.org/kids/parents/eds
 BBC Schools
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/
Public TV Canada
http://www.sd61.bc.ca/learnres/Edu/TV.html

Yesterday I had the pleasure of demonstrating some web resources, via TappedIn for several elementary school teachers. Some of them expressed interest in science materials for their class rooms which have both English and Spanish speaking students. Here are some sites of interest.
Kids Science News Network
http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/home.html
Science News for Kids
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/pages/about.asp
Paso Partners (K-3)
http://www.sedl.org/scimath/pasopartners/senses/
National Center for English Language […]

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of touring the Fermi National Lab. I then go thinking about all of the educational resources that reside on web sites at the national labs. Here I will reveal those locations.
Argonne National Lab
http://www.anl.gov/Careers/Education/rube/
Brookhaven National Lab
http://www.bnl.gov/education/
Fermi Lab
http://ed.fnal.gov/index.shtml
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
http://www.lbl.gov/Education/
Los Alamos National Lab
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/cpo/education_programs/programs_partnerships.shtml
Oak Ridge National Lab
http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/education.shtml
Pacific Northwest National Lab
http://science-ed.pnl.gov/

While preparing for a talk on how technology can support new and cross-over physics teachers, I came across the TappedIn system. The purpose of TappedIn is to make it easy for educators to share materials and participate in professional development sessions. I urge you to check it out. http://tappedin.org/tappedin/
Last evening, I spent an interesting hour […]

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of meeting with biology teachers who were on the Cornell campus for a Cornell Institute of Biology Teachers (CIBT) event. I share with you here that handout that I gave the attendees.
Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers
http://cibt.bio.cornell.edu/
Discovery Channel
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/category/scie1.html
 
Classroom Clipart
http://classroomclipart.com/Science.htm
 
About.com: Chemistry Science Clipart
http://chemistry.about.com/od/imagesclipartstructures/ig/Science-Clipart/
 
Coolclips
http://dir.coolclips.com/Science/Chemistry/
 
Clipart etc.
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/index.htm
Awesome Clipart for Educators
http://www.awesomeclipartforeducators.com/
Connotea is a free […]

Although I am the physics and astronomy librarian at Cornell, I do work with science teachers in all areas of science and at all grade levels. If one does a search in the K-12 portion of NSDL, one finds many web sites about the periodic table. It is possible to limit the search to a […]

2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy. Keep checking the page listed, as I am sure the resources section will continute to grow.
If you are looking for lesson plans to help celebrate the Year of Astronomy, NASA has a nice collection of materials broken down by grade level.
The Galileo Project also has some […]

Take an online survey about your needs around teaching about climate and earn a $5 gift certificate for your time!
This survey will help the CIRES Education and Outreach Group at the University of Colorado at Boulder design a set of NASA-funded professional development experiences for teachers about climate and climate change. GLOBE and the National […]

If you want to encourage your middle school students to” be the best they can be,” here are two competitions for you to consider.  Both are national and aimed at promoting high achievement through regular math meetings.  At least one person on staff will have to head the program, teach the high standard mathematics required […]

Real data and citizen science projects are wonderful ways to engage students, but they often are best conducted during the fall and spring. What’s a teacher to do in the colder months of winter?
 The new Snowtweets Project from the University of Waterloo has one answer. The Snowtweets Project provides a way for people interested in […]

How could we organize a math fair? And what kinds of projects would our students present? I’m not thinking here of projects that would be judged, as in a science fair, but rather investigations and activities that would engage middle school students and be presented for the whole school as well as parents. One idea comes from […]

Everywhere our students are hearing about the HINI influenza. Their interest offers an opportunity to co-teach with a science teacher in an investigation of what we know and don’t know about this pandemic. The New York Times has created an interdisciplinary lesson Pandemic Panic: Researching the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic that asks students to […]

How big are cells? Ask most middle school students that question, and they’ll tell you that cells are very small - even microscopic! But what if you asked them to compare the size of cells in a whale and a shrew?
That’s the engaging scenario laid out in “Whale and Shrew,” a formative assessment probe from […]

The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) project is starting an online book club. Our first selection is The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. In it, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown - what it is, in fact, that we are eating. Pollan looks at industrial […]

Do you have an innovative idea to enhance your school or district’s science education program? Consider applying for a Toyota TAPESTRY grant!
The Toyota TAPESTRY Grants for Science Teachers program, sponsored by Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., and administered by NSTA, is now accepting entries for the 2009–2010 competition. Now in its 20th year, the […]

Keeping up with the latest research in science is getting easier - wonderful science blogs and news services can inform and engage both you and your students. Depending on the blog or service, you can have the content delivered to your inbox or show up on your browser homepage. Look for the RSS symbol on […]

Do your middle school students not complete reading assignments or not comprehend them when they do? Is student motivation an issue you struggle with? Do you feel that your students need assistance comprehending the textbook?
We’ve got two new Explore in Depth resource guides that will help - Reading and Writing Mathematics and Reading Comprehension Strategies […]

I attended an evening class for search engine optimization strategies offered by Boulder Digital Arts and have a list of resources, tips, and tricks that may be of interest.
Keyword Research
Everyone describes things differently but you don’t want to guess what your customers are searching for. To start, ask a few people how they would […]

Carol MM wrote in the last paragraph in her post about Krishna Bharat - “He reiterated that new, frequently updated, and well-written content with lots of links to other perspectives would be found and ranked highly by Google News, but he did not offer specific methods.” I thought it was curious that he says lots […]

Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist at Google and creator of Google News
There are currently 41 editions of Google News in 18 languages. Founder Krishna Bharat began this shuttle service to news and networked information on the Web based on the idea that since Google had millions of global users anyway, why not create a newspaper that […]

In honor of Kim Lightle’s great presentation on her search engine optimization efforts on our last Pathways project teleconference, we’ve added a section listing some of the better SEO resources to the NSDL Technology Standing Committee home page.  If you know of other interesting SEO resources that might be good candidates for the list, please drop […]

We are adding a meta description tag to the HTML header of each page of the NSDL Middle School Portal not because the addition increases the ranking of our content but because several search engines use this tag to display the snippet of text below the clickable title link in the Search Engine Results Page […]

This document – Search Engine Ranking Factors V2 - represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google’s ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results). It also has a list of […]

This blog is being created to discuss search engine optimization ideas, but can and hopefully will evolve into any technical topic or discussion thats hot at the moment. Have at it …..

[Field of Dreams, 1989]

Our August 28 blog entry focused on developing concepts related to the methods in and nature of science. In that post, titled “Put On a Happy Face!,” the inspiration came from scientific investigation of the relationship between suggestive language and involuntary contractions of facial muscles. The goals of that post were to help teachers assist […]

Very soon we will meet our new students and their parents. Everyone is excited but a bit nervous and perhaps anxious. Intuitively, we know smiling will help put others at ease. Everyone has heard the old wives’ tale that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile; thus, smile more and decrease the energy […]

Bats, caves, danger and exotic locales. That should catch your students’ attention! The big story here is the co-evolution of viruses and their nonhuman animal hosts, who seem to have a harmless, symbiotic relationship with viruses that cause deadly outbreaks in humans. Though this story is about Marburg virus and a fruit bat, the concepts […]

Ask your students how much milk they’ve had in the past 24 hours. I predict the amounts will be dismally low.
The Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health, reports in its Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Calcium:

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2000 found that average calcium intakes were 1,081 and 793 mg/day for […]

Are you old enough to remember hearing those words spoken by President John F. Kennedy? I’m not, but I have a distinct memory of the night of July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon—the first humans to set foot on a celestial body other than planet Earth.
I was seven […]

Amusement park physics is a no-risk teaching and learning endeavor. Students engage in real-world physics applications requiring no extrinsic motivation other than the opportunity to go to an amusement park. Let’s begin with some not-so-great amusement park rides and the physics that explains them. After that, you will find several online resources you can use […]

Social networks such as Facebook allow people to stay connected or get connected with physically distant persons in ways not otherwise possible. Recent news from Iran exemplifies this concept in ways most of us probably had not imagined. Navid Mansourian works for Facebook and is an Iranian immigrant. He recently wrote a column posted on […]

How Does an iPod Affect a Polar Bear?

Photo courtesy of Amanda Graham (Yukon White Light) via Flickr.
When we talk about the problems of global climate change, we tend to focus on cars and coal-burning power plants as major contributors. Yet there are other significant players, including consumer electronics. The number of cell phones, MP3 players, […]

How many species were described for the first time in the literature in 2007? Five hundred? 1,000? 10,000? Would you believe 18, 516? That’s right, in a single calendar year! “The majority of the 18,516 species described (named) in 2007 were invertebrate animals (75.6 percent), vascular plants (11.1 percent) and vertebrates (6.7 percent),” reports ScienceDaily.com […]

It’s that bittersweet time of the school year. The good news is the end is near, and the sad news is the end is near! You and your students have worked hard both academically and socially and some strong bonds have developed. Take full advantage of the understanding, trust and respect you now have with […]

This year the National Science Digital Library is honored to embark on a collaboration with the The Society for Science and the Public (SSP), one of the nation’s oldest and most-respected educational organizations. SSP’s vision is to promote the understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in human advancement: to […]

Somewhere around the middle of my time as undergraduate, I discovered personal computers that did not require a minimum of three floppy disks just to write a short paper. The vastly superior capability of such machines was courtesy of the internal hard disk drive, which on an IBM 8080 held about 20MB. While hard disk […]

I am pleased to announce launch of Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming: A Selection of Key Articles, 1824-1995, with Interpretive Essays, the first edition of the National Science Digital Library’s “Classic Articles in Context” series. The concentration, which includes 21 pivotal studies spanning nearly two centuries, includes interpretive essays for each article written by […]

NSDL Imprint, an ExpertVoices blog, will present information on the National Science Digital Library’s collaboration with scholarly and academic publishers and provide a place for discussion on critical resources from the publishing community to flourish.

from Laura Slocum, JCE High School Associate Editor
Recently, I have spent many hours working with seven students as they develop their own demonstrations and hands-on activities focusing on elements—the theme of this year’s National Chemistry Week (NCW)—“Chemistry—It’s Elemental!” What a special privilege this has been for me. My love of chemistry and my desire to […]

By Dan Toomey, Edgewood Middle School, Madison, Wisconsin
I have used “A Kool Reaction from the Fine Print” JCE Classroom Activity with my 8th grade students as guided-inquiry method in order to introduce atoms. (This activity is the one that was done in the Chemistry Comes Alive! Part 4 NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar on October 15.) We […]

What can you and your students learn from videos showing reactions of the elements? A lot! The link below is to an article that describes what we learned from videos that show elements reacting with air, water, acids, and base and how what the video showed compared with textbook descriptions. Tied to this year’s National […]

Would your students like to use Facebook for science networking? Would you like them to? The link below goes to an article from the Journal of Chemical Education that describes the Elements on Facebook project which allows your students to support their favorite element.

This makes a great opportunity to engage students and the public in […]

Would you like to excite your students with an interactive periodic table that contains videos, graphing, data, and more? Here’s what it looks like.

Read about Periodic Table Live! and try it with your students! PTL! is a free resource available from the ChemEd DL at http://www.chemeddl.org/collections/ptl/index.html.
This post contains a PDF file of an article from […]

from Erica K. Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
The rush is over. No, not preparing a classroom for the onslaught of new students or tweaking curriculum. The conference rush. As I write these words, I am happy to have achieved my goal of surviving August, which included two meetings within the space of three weeks. (Cue […]

This links below describe a neat way for your students to do research on a particular element and display their results to your entire class. Each student constructs an icosahedron with a different kind of information about an element on each of the 20 faces. The icosahedra are then hung from the classroom ceiling in […]

Periodic Table Presentations and Inspirations
by Mary E. Saecker
Graphic Representations of the Periodic System
The 2009 ACS National Chemistry Week theme of “Chemistry—It’s Elemental” celebrates the elegant, orderly, and inspirational icon of chemistry, the periodic table. However, as John Moore points out in his August 2003 editorial, Turning the (Periodic) Tables (1), there is not one […]

from Erica K. Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
Ever experience the phenomenon that occurs once you’re interested in or working on a particular topic? Suddenly, all sorts of examples related to that topic pop up unexpectedly in your everyday life. The examples may have even been there all the time, but you didn’t really notice them. […]

This issue is all about the chemical elements—the building blocks from which come the more than 49 million inorganic and organic compounds registered by the Chemical Abstracts Service and the many benefits those substances bring to our society. I hope that you learn a lot more about the elements from this issue and the resources […]

The 2009 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware was awarded today to two groups for the courseware SIMSE submitted by Emily Navarro and colleagues, and CATME/Team-Maker submitted by Matthew Ohland and colleagues.

The award was presented at the Premier Award Ceremony at the Frontiers in Education Conference, held this year in in San […]

Today in History - October 18, 1962 - Watson, Crick, and Wilkins receive Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA as a double helix. They first proposed their model for the structure of DNA in 1953. As this model was composed of two right-handed, antiparallel, polynucleotide chains coiled around a common axis it is sometimes referred […]

Today in History - October 4, 1957 - Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the Earth’s first artificial satellite, into space at the peak of the Cold War.
View our Sputnik resources, as well as related resources in Aerospace Engineering. Students can learn about careers in Aerospace Engineering, learn about aircraft dynamics, or simulate gas turbines. Faculty can […]

Today in History - September 27, 2003 - The first European mission to the moon was launched aboard an Ariane-5 rocket carrying the SMART-1 exploration probe, along with two commercial satellites. It took 15 months to reach lunar orbit, covered over 60 million miles with only 13 gallons of fuel. After being captured by […]

Today in History - September 7, 1998 - Google is founded. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as students at  Stanford and collaborated on a search engine called BackRub. They decided that the BackRub name doesn’t quite have the buzz needed and came up with  Google - a play on the word “googol,” a […]

Blog posted by Dr. Adrian Agogino, computer engineer at NASA AMES and UC Santa Cruz.

Today in History - July 20, 1969 - Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy’s challenge to put a “man” on the moon before the end of the decade. With a tight development and execution schedule, any number […]

Today in History - July 4, 1997 - Launched on December 4, 1996, Pathfinder impacted the surface of Mars on July 4, 1997 at a velocity of  18 m/s (40 mph) and then bounced into the air 15 times at a maximum height of  15 meters (50 feet), before rolling and coming to rest  1 […]

The Engineering Pathway announces the first winners of our new Premier Curriculum Award for K-12 Engineering.
Congratulations to
Susan Powers and Jan DeWaters of Clarkson University, for their original middle school curricular unit entitled, Energy Systems and Solutions.
In this unit, students explore energy production and consumption issues from everyday life, learning about our nation’s energy […]

Today in History - May 22, 1906 - Wright brothers patent improvements to “flying machine”. From the patent: Our invention relates to that class of fly ing machines in which the weight is sustained by the reactions resulting when one or more aeroplanes are moved through the air edge-wise at a small angle […]

Today in History - May 13, 1958 - Velcro® trademark is registered for a fabric hook and loop fastener.
The way George de Mestral, a Swiss mountaineer, tells the story, he was hiking with his dog in 1948 and was frustrated to see all of these burrs covering them both when he returned home. He says […]

Learn about the latest discussions, trends, and current happenings within the NSDL community by following the NSDL Annual Meeting in Washington DC, November 16-19, on Twitter. Sessions include a panel focused on cyberlearning, updates on NSDL projects, as well as showcasing new NSDL Pathways such as SMILE (informal science education) and ENSEMBLE (computing […]

Last month, SimSE was awarded one of the 2009 Premier Awards for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. SimSE is a game-based educational software engineering simulation environment that allows students to practice “virtual” software engineering processes in a graphical, interactive and fun setting. The direct, graphical feedback enables students to learn the complex cause and […]

Spark your students’ curiosity and hone their inquiry skills with free DragonflyTV Nano educational resources. Sign up for this free NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar, Thursday, November 11th at 6:30pm Eastern Time to learn more about nanotechnology and how to incorporate related online materials into your teaching. Dragonfly TV features six half-hour episodes dedicated entirely to […]

The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Pathway will steward a broad collection of educational resources that facilitate students, teachers, and citizens becoming climate literate and informed about “the climate’s influence on you and society and your influence on climate.” The CLEAN Pathway will integrate the effective use of the resources across all […]

Applications for next year’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program are now available online. Spend a year in Washington D.C. working in a professional staff position for congress or within a federal agency. You can view the current list of Einstein Fellows on the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education website.

Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, George E. Smith - Nobel prize winners in Physics for 2009. This week’s announcement by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honors these scientists for their foundational work in areas that have revolutionized modern life: information technology, and digital photography. It’s a great opportunity to utilize NSDL’s ComPADRE Physics […]

Participate in free professional development straight from your desktop through NSDL’s web seminar series with the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). The first seminar for this school year begins on October 15th: Chemistry Comes Alive IV: Oxidation/Reduction. This seminar is for educators at high school and lower undergraduate levels. Register through […]

October will be a busy month with opportunities to participate in National Earth Science Week, October 11-17 and National Chemistry Week, October 18-24. Both weeks consist of national and local events, speakers, activities for the classroom, and additional materials for the educator. Earth Science Week is sponsored by the American Geological […]

The K-12 audience pages have a new look to them. Try out the audience tabs to find more specific information at the grade level you teach, watch for resource highlights with a new topic each month (this month it’s on careers and the scientific process), and learn simple ways to incorporate more digital materials […]

The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will be the site of the launch of the NSDL SMILE Pathway featuring resources from the nation’s leading science museums on Nov. 1, 2009 at a panel discussion to be presented during the Association for Science-Technology Centers Annual Meeting.

The lighthearted SMILE logo can be seen in action […]

The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), an indigenous peoples’ organization, has asked the world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference to listen to the Inuit voice and act now to protect the Arctic. 
The council expects to be in Copenhagen for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) with its call to action.  In a press […]

The Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Network has added a regional center in Alaska. With a team of ocean scientists and educators, COSEE Alaska will stage science fairs, teacher workshops, and hands-on sessions for scientists.
Involved in the center’s work are educators and scientists from the Anchorage School District and state agencies such as […]

In an exhibit titled “Climate Change in Our World” at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is displaying 5-feet tall photographs that show the effects of global warming. A concurrent exhibit for kids, parents and school groups, “How We Know About Our Changing Climate” highlights how scientists […]

Mount Kilimanjaro’s very name evokes the image of snow-covered peaks, perhaps because we’ve so often heard the title of Ernest Hemingway’s 1936 short story and the 1950s movie. The real association between the volcano peak and its glaciers may disappear in the near future. Researchers predict the remaining ice fields maybe gone within two decades […]

Attend the Teacher Workshop at International Polar Year Science Conference in Oslo, Norway! 
http://www.polararet.no/conference/esc/article/2009/1257950088.29
 The International Polar Year (IPY), from March 2007 to March 2009, was a large scientific program focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic.IPY involved thousands of scientists from more than 60 nations in a wide range of physical, biological and social research. The […]

If what’s been happening to the ecology of the North Sea had happened in a forest, we’d be shocked, according to researchers writing in the December issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Hidden from view, the ecology has undergone a radical shift in the last half century, with jellyfish and crabs replacing cod […]

The Inuit people living in Canada’s North are transitioning from a diet of fish and caribou to one of prepackaged foods and soft drinks, with a resulting “spike in blood pressure,” according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
The foundation finds that Arctic store-bought foods provide 95 per cent of dietary sodium intake […]

Real data and citizen science projects are wonderful ways to engage students, but they often are best conducted during the fall and spring. What’s a teacher to do in the colder months of winter?
 The new Snowtweets Project from the University of Waterloo has one answer. The Snowtweets Project provides a way for people interested in […]

From now until the end of November, a DC-8 aircraft will make 17 low-level flights over West Antarctica to measure the thinning of the ice sheet. A project of NASA and known as Operation ICE Bridge, the flights carry nearly two dozen scientists and their airborne lab.
At 157-feet long, the DC-8 is too big […]

Sun-Earth Day, the annual culmination of programs and events from NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection, will be celebrated in 2010 on March 20. The theme is Magnetic Storms.
In weeks leading up to the event, NASA provides resources for schools and the public to learn more about solar storms, including space activities and demonstrations. 
At the Sun-Earth Day web […]

NEWS
From Whiteboard to ‘Dashboard’
This current issue of NSDL Whiteboard Report, will be the final issue. Check out the new NSDL Community Network site and contribute your news announcements via the Community News feature.
Click here to view full article:http://content.nsdl.org/wbr/Issue.php?issue=149#17806
Related Link:NSDL Community Network site
New Look for K12 Audience Pages at NSDL.org
The K-12 audience pages have […]

NEWS
Beta Version of MAISON Accessible StrandMap Search Now Available
A beta version of MAISON has been released. MAISON’s goal is to improve participation to NSF’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL) by teachers, librarians, and learners who are blind. MAISON is enhancing the accessibility of NSDL, its internal and external resources and existing services (such as strand […]

NEWS
Towards Interoperable K12 Learning Standards
Teachers will gain greater precision in identifying appropriate materials for their students and schools can more systematically track student progression.
Click here to view full article: http://content.nsdl.org/wbr/Issue.php?issue=147#17348
Related Link: JES and Co.
Shodor in the News
Shodor has recently released a new Web-based interactive educational tool called “Disease Epidemic Model” and has […]

NEWS
NSTA-CBC Reviews of Outstanding Science Trade Books for K-12 Students
The NSDL Resource Center has made the 2009 list of “Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12″ available with links to NSTA-CBC reviews and alignments to relevant National Science Content Standards.Click here to view full article: http://content.nsdl.org/wbr/Issue.php?issue=146#17146
Related Link: http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/imprint/nsta-outstanding-trade-books-2009/
Shodor to Help Lead the Way For the […]

N E W S

NOW AVAILABLE: NSDL EduPak 1.0: An Open Source Digital Library Services Platform for Education
NSDL EduPak is an all-in-one, open source, education digital repository solution bundle that provides a general platform for building digital libraries united by a common data model and interoperable applications.Click here to view full article: http://content.nsdl.org/wbr/Issue.php?issue=current#id_00 
Related Link: http://ncore.nsdl.org/index.php?menu=services&submenu=services!EduPak
Submitting a grant to […]

N E W S
AAAS Project 2061 to Offer Content Alignment and Instructional Quality Training
With support from NSF’s NSDL program, the long-term science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) will train the staff of seven NSDL Pathways as well as those of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) on […]

N E W S
“We Will Restore Science to its Rightful Place… Transform Schools, Colleges and Universities”
On January 11, 2009 the National Science Board (NSB) issued “National Science Board STEM Education Recommendations for the President-Elect Obama Administration,” and sent them to Obama’s Transition Team. President Obama’s inaugural address reflected not only the concerns of the NSB, […]

N E W S
Chemistry Resources from ChemEdDL Now Available Through “Google Gadgets”
Add an interactive 3D molecule or a cool chemistry video to your iGoogle page! The ChemEdDL now has What’s This video, Molecules 360 and Journal of Chemical Education articles available through the iGoogle homepage setup. Include these on your home page for […]

N E W S
The Periodic Table Live! from the Chemical Education Digital Library
Chemical Education Digital Library (ChemEd DL).
Students and teachers especially are invited to interact with the
periodic table, chose an element of interest, and learn all sorts of
interesting information about that element–from details of its
discovery, to its industrial uses and other characteristics.
Click here to view […]

N E W S
Get Ready for Washington: NSDL Annual Meeting Updates
By Sarah Holsted The 2008 NSDL Annual Meeting is almost upon us. This update includes reflections on the planning process and an overview of the program.
Click here to view full article
Related Link: http://annualmeeting.nsdl.org/
Annual Meeting 2008 Blog
Tune into NSDL Road Reports for up-to-the-minute blog posts about […]