Ending two and a half days of networking, sharing research results, project outcomes and swapping good stories, almost 200 NSDL partners and projects said goodbye and headed home from Washington D.C. on October 2 to continue building NSDL’s capacity as a national platform for cyberlearning. Presentations will be downloadable from the Annual Meeting Full Schedule Overview as they become available over the next few weeks. A list of attendees, poster abstracts, and other materials may be found here.

Top left to right: NSDL Resource Center Director Kaye Howe addresses participants; 2008 Annual Meeting Chair Sarah Holsted reads Haiku while 2009 Annual Meeting Chair Susan Jesuroga listens; attendees discuss 2009 Annual Meeting priorities.

NSF NSDL Program Director Lee Zia has traditionally shared Haiku written especially to echo some of the meeting themes to mark the end of each year’s NSDL Annual Meeting. This year’s collection was penned by members of the NSDL community and delivered by Sarah Holsted, NSDL Annual Meeting 2008 Chair:

CHANGE
Stage Two Proposal
Induces insane review;
CSERD marches on.
–Bob Panoff

From the red embers
of Core Dis-Integration,
what Phoenix rises?
–James Blake

PROCESS
Verification
Validation of science
Accreditation.
–Bob Panoff

Deadlines pass quickly
Networked angel nags online
Holsted saves again
–Sherry Hsi

DATA
Three million page views
Month after month after month
Computational.
–Bob Panoff

Sifting though content
Endless searches return piles
Metadata please
–Sherry Hsi

Metrics waft like snow
Whipped about by unknown souls
While I shovel the path
–Bob Donahue

TRANSITION & FUTURE
Monkeys, monkeys run!
Through the jungle laptops come
Swinging in rhythm
–Sherry Hsi

Cheers! (A Haiku in Appreciation of Lee Zia)
Up late… idea:
Transform STEM world-online… To
Do: NSDL!
–Sarah Holsted

NSDL’s Annual Meeting is set to take place from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, 2008 in Washington, D.C. This year, the program focuses on the complementary efforts of mature NSDL projects in a format developed to highlight the collective work from NSDL projects. Achievments in professional development and outreach with K12 and higher education audiences; and, in web-based services that allow educators and learners to use, and re-use, the burgeoning collections in NSDL and NSDL Pathways will be presented. Look for news, notes and impressions in the NSDL Annual Meeting blog.

The program also highlights NSDL projects’ efforts to employ high-speed networks that enable the delivery and use of rich media content, identify the usage data that supports webmetric analysis of networks, and facilitate connections between personal and organizational networks to further the use of online content in support of STEM education. Two poster sessions and a Lightning Talk session will provide opportunities for new and returning projects to mingle, and a plenary session of the meeting completes the transition to a new leadership structure for NSDL with the advent of a Resource Center and a Technical Network Services Provider. Annual Meeting handouts including NSDL Pathways Highlights and NSDL Project Updates are available from the Annual Meeting website.

Teachers work to connect broad learning concepts, standards and educational resources in K12 classrooms to ensure that their students’ progress is both developmentally sound and measurable. The new version of the National Science Digital Library’s Science Literacy Map (SLM) tool is an easy-to-use service that finds and presents students  with the right resource at just the right moment. SLM provides visualizations for how learning concepts, standards, and educational resources are interrelated. In addition teachers can access the right classroom resources in time to teach science,  technology, engineering and mathematics concepts linked to associated education standards for students at different stages of learning. Now the Science Literacy Map tool also provides one-click access to associated background research on common student misconceptions.

 The NSDL Science Literacy Map Tool:

 • Zeros in on content aligned to to AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy–Atlas for Science Literacy;
• Provides just-in-time quality resources about a specific topic and;
• Presents quick, user-friendly views of of related benchmarks and teaching points.

Under the Swiss Alps this week beams of protons known as Hadrons circled the 27 kilometers of the most powerful particle accelerator (the CERN Large Hadron Collider) in the world for the first time. As those protons begin to collide scientists expect to learn more about dark matter and how mass exists. This NSDL resource features an animation from CERN that illustrates how protons move and collide in the LHC. To understand more about why physicists are so interested in the results of the collision of sub atomic particles at high speeds, however, you might want to listen to the CERN scientists explain it in their own unique way–the “Large Hadron Rap” is now playing on You Tube–current views 2,726,813.

What’s the down side? There is concern that there could be unforeseen consequences when particles begin colliding in October–like the generation of micro black holes, for example. Although the CERN Large Hadron Collider is the biggest so far, it is not the first. While exciting discoveries are eagerly anticipated from the LHC, no disruption is expected from what amounts to this very big physics experiment.

In last year’s Speak Up 2007 Report, Project Tomorrow’s annual survey of teachers, parents, and students focusing on technology in schools, teachers expressed a growing need for online professional development programs. The survey showed a 29% increase in teacher interest in online programs from the previous year. The National Science Teachers Association’s Learning Center offer teachers of all grade levels with training by experts in their fields. NSTA’s upcoming online course, Energy, Get the Facts So You Can Teach It, begins September 30th. This 5-week course offers asynchronous learning with live web sessions consisting of a virtual classroom, a weekly discussion posted on the course listserv, and additional course materials. For more from Project Tomorrow, sign up for their upcoming webinar, Learning in the 21st Century: A Trends Update on September 17th.

The NSDL Web Seminar Fall 2008 Series begins September 25th with another year of online professional development programs in partnership with the National Science Teachers Association. These 90-minute seminars allow educators to interact online with NSDL community experts and other educators across the nation. In conjunction with next year’s International Year of Astronomy, NSDL opens this year’s series with Celebrating Astronomy: A Star’s Story. Learn the latest in scientific study about the life cycle of a star by registering for this free seminar. NSDL will continue its 2008 Fall Series with a focus on the polar regions: Physical Science From the Poles (October 29th) and Energy and the Polar Environment (November 13th).