On July 19, 2011, the National Research Council released the report: A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas  that will serve as the basis for new science education standards. The framework offers a new vision for K-12 education in science and engineering that addresses the “mile wide and an inch deep” criticism to the previous set of science standards in three ways. It builds on the notion that learning is a developmental progression from students’ curiosity about what they see around them; it focuses on a limited number of core ideas in science and engineering to allow more time for students to engage in scientific investigations and argumentation and to achieve depth of understanding of the core ideas; and it emphasizes that learning about science and engineering involves integration of the knowledge of scientific explanations (i.e., content knowledge) and the practices needed to engage in scientific inquiry and engineering design. The report recognizes the cornucopia of virtual information available today and the need to prepare students so that they can later acquire additional information on their own. Hence, a primary goal of education is to enable students to evaluate and select reliable sources of scientific information. The NSDL, a national digital library of high quality open resources in STEM education, is a premier source of such reliable scientific information.  NSDL resources address the three major dimensions of the framework and the core ideas within them. For example, resources in the Common Themes science literacy map address Developing and Using Models, one of the eight practices under the Scientific and Engineering Practices, which is one of the three dimensions of the framework.  A simple NSDL search on Patterns, one of the seven concepts under Crosscutting Concepts, the second dimension of the framework, produces over 7,200 resources in several areas of STEM.  Finally, our Collections section and NSDL Pathways portals are ideal sources to address all of the Disciplinary Core ideas in physical sciences; life sciences; earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology, and the applications of science—the last dimension of the framework.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to raise awareness on sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.  Forests are vital to the survival and well-being of people everywhere. They provide shelter for people, animal habitat and biodiversity. They are a source of food, medicine, and clean water, and have a vital role in maintaining a stable global climate and environment. This is a wonderful and current topic to start next year’s classes in a variety of subject matter and grade levels that also include developing 21^st century skills.  For example, if you teach young learners, DLESE has the Forest Features lesson plan in which students learn about different types of forests. For upper elementary students, you can use the Temperate Rain Forest audiovisual about forests in Alaska from DragonFly TV or the Rain Forest in Your Room resource from our SMILE partners that includes five hands-on activities with learning objectives and assessment questions. Middle schoolers could see satellite images from Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Montana in visible light and IR in the ES1707 Observe Forest Fires as Seen from Space, from our MSP2 partners to also learn about light. More advanced students in Earth science and math could conduct quantitative research using The World Bank databases Forest Area (% of Forest Land), available via our TeachingWithData partners. High school students could also use computer software to explore the Seeing the Forest for the Trees: What’s in Your Woods? which is a chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolbook that includes Maine forest biodiversity, statistical analysis using Microsoft Excel and comparative analysis using My World geographic information system (GIS). Also visit our iTunesU resources where you will find a wealth of really nice movies about forests.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has teamed up with the educational arm of NBC News, NBC Learn, and with the National Football League (NFL) to release the Science of NFL Football—an informative 10-part video series that explores the science behind American football. Made especially for students and teachers, these videos are aligned to lesson plans and national state education standards (available via NSDL.org). The videos use the appeal of football to drive an understanding of complicated scientific concepts, such as Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, kinematics, projectile motion, the football science of the Pythagorean theorem, torque, center of mass and the unique shape of a football. Science of NFL Football illustrates how football players throw a spiraled pass, block an opponent, and score a touchdown. Students and teachers will see how the principles of science enable players to perform actions such as throwing a spiraled pass, blocking an opponent and scoring a touchdown. Current players and retirees participated in the video series and describe how scientific principles apply to their respective positions. This video series, together with Science of the Olympic Winter Games, has earned NBCOlympics.com and NBCLearn.com a Sports Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Programming. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced the award on Monday, May the 2^nd, at the 32^nd Annual Sports Emmy® Awards in New York. Former NFL Saints running back and two-time Pro Bowl selection, Deuce McAllister participated in the Kinematics video shoot which analyzes the science of human motion through position, velocity and acceleration and will be in New Orleans on September 9 to premiere the video series on NBC’s TODAY show.

On May 13, 1908, a three-day Conference of Governors opened at the White House, called by President Theodore Roosevelt to consider the problems of conservation. It was attended by the governors of the states and territories, the members of the Supreme Court and the Cabinet, scientists, and various national leaders. They adopted a declaration supporting conservation. One result was The National Conservation Commission, which prepared the first inventory of the natural resources of the United States with chairmen for water, forests, lands, and minerals.  NSDL has a wealth of high quality digital resources to help teachers teach about conservation of natural resources in a way that also addresses students’ development of 21^st Century Skills. Backyard Conservation, from DLESE, suggests hands-on outdoor activities to apply agricultural conservation practices to house or schools backyards. The Middle School Portal offers The Drought Causes Conservation, a 10-day multidisciplinary project in which students use the web for visualizations and research, do journaling and graphs and formulate plans around water conservation. Also for middle school and older students, in the Lab 1: Plenty of Fish in the Sea? from the Teach the Earth collection, students use image processing software to create an animation of global marine biodiversity maps spanning four decades. For advanced high school and undergraduate students, Biodiversity and Conservation is a comprehensive introductory e-book to these topics, it includes illustrations, photos, charts, and hundreds of hyperlinks. Principles of Wildlife Conservation is a distance education for college credit course from the Oregon State University.  Among teacher professional development sources, the ICEE collection on NSDL in iTunesU makes available 12 lectures by global warming scientists and educators.

Visit the Earth Day 2011 site to tap in to a variety of activities to mark the observance of Earth Day this year. Find local events and campaigns to take part in via the Take Action section. This year’s Earth Day focuses on A Billion Acts of Green - personal, organizational, and corporate pledges to live and act sustainability. Read about the campaign and submit a pledge. From the simple to the complex, it’s the largest environmental service campaign in the world, featuring: 1) Athletes for Earth: Olympians championing environmental efforts; 2) Canopy Project: global reforestation; 3) Green Schools: greening schools within a generation; 4) Women and Green Economy (WAGE); 5) Creating Climate Wealth - entrepreneurs tackle climate change and green economy; 6) Arts for the Earth: celebrating environmental artists. You can also use the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator to measure your impact on the planet. Tie digital library resources to Earth Day activities by using NSDL resources from a variety of contributors: from the Applied Math and Science Education Repository (AMSER):  The Wilderness Society (TWS) website for Earth Day, with historical and biological information, sections for teachers and kids, bird migration, American wilderness, and suggestions for getting involved;  Geologic Time: the Story of a Changing Earth, from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is an interactive timeline of geological history. Explore the collections of exemplary resources on a variety of climate and earth science topics from the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network project, Teacher’s Domain, and the Middle School Portal.  Use the Earth Science Literacy Maps from the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE), to discover more resources. From NSDL’s Engineering Pathway, read up on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, from EP’s Today in History blog; browse through Images of Earth Day World-Wide; and just for fun, explore Earth Day Pictures: Quirky Ways to Mark the Day.

NSDL makes available a wealth of high quality resources to enrich a “teachable moment” about the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear emergency that Japan is suffering since last Friday, March 11, 2011. You can find high resolution images in the Earthquake rocks Japan resource, and maps explaining the propagation of tsunami waves in Tsunami hits Japan after massive quake from the Teach the Earth: SERC Portal for Geoscience Educators.  Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, from Internet Scout, is another valuable resource. For computer interactives to understand how an earthquake epicenter is located and how the Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined, take a look at Virtual Earthquake, an interactive web-based program provided by DLESE. They also offer the DLESE Earth Science Literacy Maps, a great tool to aid the teaching and learning of Earth system science, showing relationships between concepts, how concepts at a given level connect with and emerge from concepts at prior levels, and links to related National Science Education standards information.  In addition, the NSDL Science Literacy Map on plate tectonics allows users to browse a variety of resources including lesson plans, interactives and multimedia, for teaching and learning about these phenomena. Finaly, ALSOS, the Digital Library for Nuclear Issues offers a link to NOW: Nuclear Plant Security.

Looking for math resources related to the new Math Common Core State Standards released in June 2010? You came to the right place!  NSDL has assembled a collection of math resources from its providers and partners to create the NSDL Math Common Core collection. The collection is growing fast — new resources are being added and the collection is curated to assure both the quality of its content and the close relationship between resources and standards, via a three-tiered review process. The NSDL Math Common Core collection is organized by grade level and domains, with each resource further detailing the standards addressed. Content includes lesson plans, computer applets, presentations and explanations of procedures, and similar interactives that  give feedback on performance to learners and teachers. Check it out and let us know what you think!

CILC? What is it? Not silk (though it sounds the same), silt, or skulk. CILC is The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration—a non-profit providing ease-of-use access to great K-20 content in the form of engaging distance learning programs from exemplary providers. CILC services include teacher-rated videoconferencing events; professional development; collaboration; consultation; and other interactive services uniquely suited to in-classroom and other-than-classroom learning. Well and good, you say. But you don’t understand the full range of their unique services until you tinker a bit under the hood. Go to www.cilc.org and select the Content Provider Programs icon. Enter a keyword, like “water cycle,” perhaps. You’ll find 27 teacher-rated, grade-level-indicated, and national science standard-associated, (and if available, state standard-associated) videoconferencing programs that teachers can request for presentation. Ok, great. But then, how do I get it, and more importantly, do I have to pay for it? subscribe to it? and how would I do that? This is one of the best things about CILC.  Your school, district, or organization can set up a Content Dollar Bank that debits cost of programs against a restricted account your organization sets up with CILC, and they handle for you the management and payment of all costs to the program provider. You schedule the presentation with the provider at a suitable time, and have a great high quality, real-time presentation on topics of instruction that meet your curriculum needs. Browse Curriculum Packages; CILC’s professional development programs, or Research Highlights.  Consult CILC’s Videoconferencing Directories to find specific content, professional development providers, and videoconferencing sites. Every time a program is scheduled, an educator provides evaluative information on its use, and ratings of effectiveness. From these have evolved an annual acknowledgement: the Pinaccle Award, given to exemplary content providers, based on teacher evaluations. Explore CILC and see how you might use it in your educational setting!

Today’s students often think that computers are very recent technological advancements because computers as they know them did not exist 50 years ago.  You can challenge those ideas in a discussion about the nature and evolution of technology using a series of 12 slideshows, Lectures in the History of Computing, from our Engineering Pathway, that starts with the Chinese Abacus circa 3,000 BC.  Your students would be surprised to learn that the Z1, the first freely programmable computer, shown in the top of the picture, was developed in 1936.  This and other insights to deepen their knowledge of the history of computers can be found in The History of Computing, a resource provided by Math Forum, and in The Computer History Museum provided by the Internet Scout Project.  Explore our interactive Nature of Technology strand map and find a wealth of resources at the 6-8 grade level to address the benchmark: “Computers have become invaluable in science, mathematics, and technology.” For example, your students could watch a short clip interviewing Craig Venter who talks about Using Computers to Predict the Human Genome, provided by the BEN Pathway.  For students interested in further computer studies, you can suggest the AMSER Pathway course: Introduction to Computer Science using Java, that includes 87 chapters plus exercises, quizzes, flash cards, and reviews.  Or, they could choose to lean with Alice—a downloadable software teaching tool for introductory computing and for teaching problem solving and sequencing skills, that offers an innovative 3-D programming environment to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the Web.  This resource comes to NSDL from AMSER, Scout, and our own CS & Intro Tech and Math collections.  These last two collections also feature Scratch, a programming language designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st-century learning skills.  For all-encompassing resources, CSERD Pathway promotes the use of computers to do science—its aim is to help students learn about computational science and to help faculty and teachers incorporate it into the classroom.  The Ensemble Computing Pathway offers a variety of resources and tools supporting the computing sciences communities, including the Visual Knowledge Builder, an organizing workspace for teachers and students; Ensemble in Second Life; and Walden’s Paths, providing support for authoring, publication, and viewing of annotated paths over existing Web materials.  We hope you enjoy the wealth of resources that you can find via NSDL to teach (and learn!) about computer science.

Looking for ways to amaze your family and friends at Thanksgiving dinner? quiz them on their ‘turkey knowledge’? Thanks to MSP2’s Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science blog entry: Thanksgiving Science, you can find a variety of information and resources that can turn you into the authority in that rousing dinner table discussion, or serve as the basis for classroom activities, lessons, and student projects, from nutrition and digestion to pop-up turkey thermometers (who thought of that!?), to turkeys and genetics. You can also check out Thanksgiving Biology, from the Internet Scout Project.