Fedora Commons Awarded $4.9M for Start-up of Non-profit Organization to Develop Open Source Software for Collaborative Communities
http://www.fedora-commons.org
Ithaca, New York, August 13, 2007–Fedora Commons, today announced the award of a four year, $4.9M grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop the organizational and technical frameworks necessary to effect revolutionary change in how scientists, scholars, museums, libraries, and educators collaborate to produce, share, and preserve their digital intellectual creations. Fedora Commons is a new non-profit organization that will continue the mission of the Fedora Project, the successful open-source software collaboration between Cornell University and the University of Virginia. The Fedora Project evolved from the Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora) developed by researchers at Cornell Computing and Information Science.

The Fedora Commons web site is the new home of Fedora, the robust integrated repository-centered platform software that enables the storage, access and management of virtually any kind of digital content–including the more than 2.5 million objects in the NSDL data repository. The site offers information and services for communities of practice that include scholars, artists, educators, Web innovators, publishers, scientists, librarians, archivists, publishers, records managers, museum curators or anyone who presents, accesses, or preserves digital content, and software developers who work on the cutting edge of open source Web and enterprise content technologies. Features include a portfolio of examples of Fedora in use globally by diverse discipline communities from many cultures. Access to up-to-date documentation and information that includes the first in a series of three short media pieces entitled, Access and Management Stories From the Fedora Community, Part One: Digital Libraries and Collections are also available on the web site. Future features—a structured community wiki site and a Where in the World is Fedora interactive map utilizing community-developed Fedora repository features—are under construction. Contact Carol Minton Morris for more information at 607 255-2707 or clt6@cornell.edu.

Pathways Progress in 2006-07
http://msteacher.org/epubs/science/science11/science.aspx
NSDL’s Pathways partners have been working closely with Core Integration in the past year. These efforts are bearing diverse fruits and leveraging the power of the NSDL Network. New partnerships and collaborations are forming. Pathway workshops offer multiple models for professional development. Pathways have achieved significant technical gains. They are also exploring cross-collaboration and new ways to use the tools and services developed by Core Integration.

Eight of the nine Pathways have released new portals or have enhanced portal services in the past year. The ninth partner, ChemEd Dlib, which is finishing its first year with NSDL, has ambitious plans. It is developing a new portal that will include the Journal of Chemical Education Dlib collections, the American Chemical Society (ACS) collections, the ChemCollective project, and chemistry materials from both NSDL and non-NSDL projects.

Engineering Pathway has implemented Community Sign On (CSO), so that signing in to NSDL also resigters a visitor at their site. They have also integrated NSDL searches within their own search results. Teachers’ Domain, MatDL, and ComPADRE are nearing implementation of CSO, along with other NSDL projects like Instructional Architect and Content Clips. BEN and Math Gateway are beginning to explore CSO requirements and implementation.

Pathways have contributed their time and effort to the Metadata Working Group (MWG), which is developing a common thesaurus of subject search terms for NSDL. AMSER is developing controlled vocabularies on key concepts in applied math and science; ChemEd DLib is developing taxonomies for general chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, and video collections.

Pathway Workshops have been one of the most successful areas of collaboration in the last year. Supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation has allowed Pathways and Core Integration to present professional development workshops tailored to the needs and goals of each Pathway community. These include a September 2006 workshop for MatDL focused on the integration of research with education, a two-day teacher/faculty training workshop sponsored by the Math Gateway in October, a four-day leadership training institute for 21 “BEN Scholars” run by BioSciEdNet (BEN), a three-hour training workshop at the League of Innovation conference in New Orleans sponsored by AMSER, a two-day workshop for 22 educators in April sponsored by CSERD, Engineering Pathway’s workshop at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) 2007 Conference in June, a July workshop where nine teachers invited by ComPADRE are utilizing digital library tools to make physics modeling curriculum accessible, and the Summer Science Forum for public television representatives sponsored by Teachers’ Domain. –Eileen McIlvain, Core Integration

Engineering Pathway On Bridge Design
http://www.engineeringpathway.com
Engineers are looking for clues to explain the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis on August 1. Investigators are focusing on the bridge’s gusset plates, which reinforced its steel trusses. Since these plates are used in hundreds of bridges around the country, the lessons learned in Minneapolis could prevent similar incidents. Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on bridge failures, safety and design include a presentation on the Cooper River Bridge by Anthony Ingraffea of Cornell University. The Cooper River Bridge, the longest cable stay span in North America, opened in Charleston, South Carolina in 1992. See the presentation by searching for “Cooper River Bridge” at http://www.engineeringpathway.com.

Middle School Portal: Three Essential Cycles
http://msteacher.org
Three cycles essential to life are the subjects of new science publications on the NSDL Middle School Portal. Under the series title “What Goes Around Comes Around,” the publications provide resources for teaching units on the Carbon, Water, and Nitrogen cycles. Along with coverage of the naturally occurring cycles, the author, Mary LeFever, stresses the human impact on the cycles, from water management to pollution to climate change. “In this way,” she notes, “students apply knowledge, analyze issues, synthesize concepts, and evaluate proposed solutions.”

A former middle school science teacher, LeFever identifies dozens of quality lesson plans and classroom activities as well as rich sources of content information for the teacher. The three publications are aligned with the National Science Education Standards.

The series appears in the Explore in Depth section of the Middle School Portal. At the web site, teachers will also find one-page publications called Quick Takes, which identify three or four “just-in-time” resources for teaching a topic or for expanding content knowledge. Teachers are invited to register for e-mail announcements of new publications. – Kim Lightle, Middle School Portal
Nitrogen Cycle: http://msteacher.org/epubs/science/science12/science.aspx
Water Cycle:
http://msteacher.org/epubs/science/science13/science.aspx
Carbon Cycle:
http://msteacher.org/epubs/science/science11/science.aspx