Exploratorium Sees Geographic Diversity in Use of NSDL Learning Resources Collection
The Exploratorium’s Learning Resources Collection, selected from interactive museum exhibits, demonstrations, hands-on science activities, museum magazine articles, Exploratorium web sites, the Children’s Education Outreach program, the Exploratorium Teacher Institute, and the Institute for Inquiry, was originally funded by an NSF NSDL Collections grant. Before the launch of the first collection in 2005 an online data collection tool was added to learn about how the collection would be used. Users could voluntarily enter a zipcode before using the collection.

Data show that:
–In just under 2 years, the collection was accessed 8,743 times.
–People who accessed the library included ALL 50 STATES including users from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
– Of the valid zipcode entries, the top U.S. states were from California (1450), New York (473), Texas (434), Florida (249), Ohio (217), and Massachusetts (200).
–The counties reported included both urban, suburban, and rural areas.

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art and human perception based in San Francisco. The Learning Resources Collection has helped to extend the reach of the museum as a nationwide resource. The Exploratorium Learning Resources team also found that some people thought the entry box was a search window, so are in the process of creating another online assessment tool to capture user profiles to understand more about what types of educators use the digital library. For more information contact Sherry Hsi at .

NSDL Mathematics Pathway Offers Easy Access to Mathematics Teaching Resources in Convergence Magazine
Convergence is an online magazine published by the Mathematical Association of America. The site provides online mathematics resources such as easily accessible articles, historical problems, and classroom suggestions that both teachers and students will find useful–no login required.

Convergence offers exciting classroom materials including:
–Expository articles dealing with the history of various topics in the mathematics curriculum, each accompanied by an online discussion group.
–Translations of original sources, with commentary showing the context of the works.
–Reviews of current and past books, articles, teaching aids, and websites on the history of mathematics.
–Classroom suggestions.
–Historical problems.
–What Happened Today in History?
–Quotation of the day.
–An up-to-date calendar of meetings dealing with the history of mathematics and its use in teaching.

A recent addition to Convergence is a collection of portraits of mathematicians. You can easily download the ones you want and display them for your classes.

Check out Convergence today!

NSDL MatDL Pathway Leads “Cyberdiscovery” Initiative With NSF MSERC Community
In September 2006, the NSDL MatDL Pathway held a workshop with several Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) at NSF. There are currently 29 centers located at academic institutions throughout the United States  supporting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary materials research and education of the highest quality while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering that are important to society.

The Workshop Report, “Support and Integration of Materials Research and Education: Beginning Steps toward Cyberdiscovery,” was authored by the Workshop organizers and MRSEC workshop participants. The report provides an analysis of key issues and needs discussed as well as recommended next steps and is available at http://matdl.org/2006_workshop.html.