The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) has updated and released a new version of the DLESE Earth Science Literacy Maps. Based on the work of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Project 2061's Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and built on the NSDL Strand Map Service, the Maps are a great tool for teaching and learning Earth system science. They also help teachers be prepared to overcome typical student stumbling blocks in understanding, via links to Student Misconceptions, for selected benchmarks. The Maps show relationships between concepts, how understanding at lower levels builds the foundation for understanding at higher levels, and also link to related National Science Education standards information—all focused on Earth science concepts alone.
News
Call attention to accomplishments, events, news items or "resources of interest" right now by contributing news and information to NSDL. Items submitted will go through a review by the NSDL Resource Center before being published to this website. 
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Jan 26, 2010News
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Jan 21, 2010News
NSDL's Technical Network Services has finalized two documents outlining technical development priorities for 2010: The Strand Maps Service Road Map and the EduPak Road Map. The Road Maps provide both background and summaries of planned changes and additions to the NSDL Strand Maps Service—the underlying architecture of the NSDL Science Literacy Maps—and the NSDL EduPak suite of tools and services, consisting of the NSDL Data Repository and API; collection management services; and custom search services—providing an enhanced platform for increased streamlined interactions with NSDL infrastructure.
Community input on both documents was sought and integrated into the final documents. They are also available from the NSDL Infrastructure Roadmaps Forum
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Dec 22, 2009News
Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA
Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization and the Fedora digital repository project announced the release of Fedora 3.3 (http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/jQ3S). This release marks a new milestone in the process of developing the Fedora open source software. For the first time, the Fedora community came together under the leadership of a Community Release Manager who facilitated the software development process and the integration of community contributions. The effort was led by Kai Strnad, Software Engineer with FIZ Karlsruhe (http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/) and member of the eSciDoc project team (https://www.escidoc.org/).
Download Fedora 3.3 here: http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/jQ3S.
Thornton Staples, Director of the Fedora Project from DuraSpace, observed, “The process of developing open-source software with a community-based process requires dedicated effort by many community participants, both developers and users. Though there is a perception that open-source software gets written by hobbyist programmers working on their own late at night, it is more commonly written by programmers working for institutions that are committed to the software and understand its shared benefits. FIZ-Karlsruhe has done us all a great service by making Strnad available to manage this release, getting us off to a running start in a community-led development process.”
Chris Wilper, Fedora Technical Lead and Developer from DuraSpace, said, "It's exciting to see so many contributors stepping forward to take a hand in Fedora's evolution. A wide variety of perspectives and a willingness to give back to the community are key to making the Fedora software better for everyone."
There are many new features in Fedora 3.3 including:
• Support for relationships among datastreams within digital objects, including API methods for manipulating relationships and indexing
• Integration of the Fedora Enhanced Security Layer (FESL), a new community-developed module to support a wider range of authentication methods
• Improvements to the Fedora REST API
• Support for retrieving content using a File URI scheme during ingest
• Support for Microsoft SQL Server
• Support for Mulgara to 2.1.4, proving a significant performance boost
• Upgrade of bundled Tomcat to version 6
• Support for HTTP Proxy server for getting external content
• Improvements and enhancements to the Fedora documentation
• Bug fixes, improving the overall stability of the repository
Many individuals and institutions support the development of the Fedora open source repository software. The Fedora Project would like to extend thanks to members of the worldwide community whose contributions made the release of Fedora 3.3 possible, especially Benjamin Armintor, Columbia University; Asger Askov Blekinge, State and University Library, Denmark; Steve Bayliss, Acuity Unlimited; Aaron Birkland, NSDL-Cornell University; Bill Branan, DuraSpace; Daniel Davis, Cornell University; Gert Pedersen, Technical University of Denmark; Edwin Shin, Media Shelf; Kai Strnad, Fedora 3.3 Community Release Manager, FIZ Karlsruhe; Chris Wilper, DuraSpace; and Andrew Woods, DuraSpace.
The Fedora Project is supported by the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization.
GET INVOLVED!
The Fedora development community welcomes new participants. Meetings of the Fedora Committers team are held weekly to discuss overall development strategy, prioritize new features, and plan new releases. All are welcome to participate or to just listen in. Archived audio, IRC logs, upcoming meeting agendas, and dial-in details can be found at:http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/display/FCREPO/Developer+Meetings.
ABOUT THE FEDORA PROJECT
Fedora is a robust, modular repository system for the management and dissemination of digital content. It is especially suited for digital libraries and archives, both for access and preservation. It is also used to provide specialized access to very large and complex digital collections of historic and cultural materials as well as scientific data. Fedora's flexibility enables it to integrate gracefully with many types of enterprise and web-based systems, offering scalability (e.g., millions of objects) and durability (e.g., all of the information is maintained in files with no software dependency, from which the complete repository can be rebuilt at any time). It also provides the ability to express rich sets of relationships among digital resources and to query the repository using the semantic web's SPARQL query language. Fedora has a worldwide installed user base that includes academic and cultural heritage organizations, universities, research institutions, university libraries, national libraries, and government agencies.
ABOUT DURASPACE
DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more. DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards. The organization’s open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database. DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content. The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information. The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.
The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content. Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, “open technologies for durable digital content.”
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Dec 07, 2009News
The American Physiological Society, a non-profit scientific organization, seeks a Project Coordinator for its Education Office to coordinate live & online professional skills training courses & its digital library, the APS Archive of Teaching Resources. Responsibilities include soliciting new materials for the digital library & recruiting reviewers, validating data, developing & updating material for the website, developing & implementing promotion plans to attract participants, developing an online application, coordinating selection for course participants & coordinating all aspects of the courses. Ideal applicant will have strong writing, verbal, interpersonal and data analysis skills, & will be proficient with MS Office. BS degree in biology or life science required, Master’s degree preferred. Please submit cover letter & resume with salary requirements to: FASEB/APS, Human Resources, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814; fax: 301-634-7354; e-mail: hr@faseb.org. EOE
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Dec 03, 2009News
... Alan Wolf and Charles Kaziliek (Dr. Biology), for consistent, persistent tweeting during the NSDL Annual Meeting. Robert Payo got the ball rolling (nsdl2009), and takes the NSDL staff 'chief tweeter' prize. Many thanks to all who contributed tweets - we tallied over 150 for two days. Check out the archive created on Twapperkeeper, by Wolf (thanks, Alan!). (And yes, the lost coat/wrong coat situation has been found and set aright.
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Nov 09, 2009News
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is pleased to announce the launch of a new online course where participants can develop skills and knowledge to understand why birds do what they do. "Courtship and Rivalry in Birds" launched on October 21, 2009, and will be offered again starting November 11, 2009 and January 6, 2010. This five-week course is offered completely online through a partnership with eCornell, and involves interactive tutorials, frequent online discussions with an expert instructor and other students, and guided presentations featuring videos from the Macaulay Library, an NSDL collection of animal behavior multimedia.
Courtship and Rivalry was authored by Colleen McLinn and Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab, after much collaborative effort with Cornell Lab and eCornell content and production experts. The course emphasizes developing observation skills and knowledge that can help you understand the bird behaviors you see: from the territorial behaviors of Red-winged Blackbirds in your backyard, to the elaborate courtship rituals of the birds-of-paradise in New Guinea.
You can watch a 2.5-minute video about the course at http://www.ecornell.com/birds. Cornell Lab members are eligible for a significant discount, and can sign up by phone at (866) 326-7635.
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Nov 02, 2009News
The Engineering Pathway has announced the 2009 winners of its Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. The honor was awarded October 22, 2009, 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 Antonio, Texas. The award-winning courseware was distributed on CD ROM at the FIE Conference and is also available online.This year’s panel of judges comprised a diverse cross-section of experts in engineering education and interactive media. Sponsors of the award program are John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Microsoft Research, Autodesk and TechSmith.
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 Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME)/Team-Maker is an integrated and well-tested system that helps manage teams in engineering courses. Team-Maker is a tool for forming teams using instructors’ criteria, which helps instructors save time and effort in creating balanced teams.
See the full article at NSDL Pathways News Expert Voices blog.
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Oct 12, 2009News
Dr. Robert M. Panoff, founder and Executive Director of the Shodor Educational Foundation, Inc. and the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD) Pathway of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) presented the Fourth Annual Valach Lecture on October 2, 2009, at the College of Science at Benedictine University. Benedictine's annual lecture provides opportunities for college faculty to gain new insights in trends in university-level science education. Panoff's lecture on Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum: The Power and the Peril, focused on how quantitative reasoning, computational thinking, and multiscale modeling form the intellectual base for science and mathematics education, and are essential workforce skills in the 21st century.
Six College of Science faculty development workshops were presented over two days, on computational biology, mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and physics—all highlighting resources and collections from the NSDL. Additionally, Panoff presented a highly interactive half-day workshop for 20 students pursuing teaching careers in the University's Alternative Teacher Education Program in Science and Mathematics, providing them both inspiration and practical value via new techniques, teaching materials, and applications for using computational models in middle and high school classrooms.
Dr. Ralph Meeker, Dean of the College of Science, noted “We’re really grateful to Dr. Panoff for the excellent presentations he made during his three-day visit to our campus. His keen insight and enthusiasm for enabling faculty to incorporate computational thinking into their teaching and research provided an inspirational boost to our continuing explorations of how to use modern computer-based tools to enhance the teaching of computer science, mathematics, and the physical and life sciences.”
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Oct 07, 2009News
Reminder: registration for the NSDL Annual Meeting is now open and available at http://nsdlnetwork.org/content/book/580/page/587/registration, where you'll find instructions to create an account on the NSDL community site and register.
Once you have an account, you can also submit a poster. Submission information can be found at http://nsdlnetwork.org/content/book/580/page/589/call-posters.
Meeting registration and posters close October 19.
If you haven't already made hotel reservations, find area hotels at http://nsdlnetwork.org/content/book/580/page/584/hotel-information. NSDL does not have a reserved room block at the conference hotel, but we have heard that attendees are able to find affordable rates at some of the hotels listed.
And finally, we'd also like to encourage new grantees to submit posters and Project Updates on the Annual Meeting website, describing your project and any prior work that led to your new grant. You never know when you'll find someone who is doing complementary work or might want to find ways to collaborate! -
Oct 02, 2009News
Check out the interesting articles on the NSDL Expert Voices blog: Managing Volunteers in Informal Science Learning.
" 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."
Learn from the successes (and failures) of museums, science centers, and other informal science education programs in developing and managing volunteer programs, and add your comments, experience, and observations to the blog. Current articles include the Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Life and Science, Durham, NC.
A project of the New York Hall of Science's Volunteers Try Science (VolTS) program, blog articles are contributed by Brad Edmondson, in collaboration with VolTS.