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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Oct 22, 2010News
Things will be hopping in DC this weekend! October 23 and 24, marks the grand finale of the USA Science & Engineering festival in Washington DC, with a free Expo on the National Mall, from 10:00 am - 5:30 pm, on both days. Check out what's going on if you are in DC! -
Oct 21, 2010News
All: This site (http://nsdlnetwork.org) will be unavailable for approximately 15-20 minutes between 5 pm and 5:30 pm ET, for some necessary maintenance. Bear with us - we'll be back up soon thereafter....
regards,
Eileen McIlvain
Editor
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Oct 14, 2010News
Plan ahead for the NSDL Annual Meeting at the Omni Shoreham Washington, D.C. -- November 1-3.
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Oct 05, 2010News
Be sure to check out howtosmile.org - NSDL's Science and Math Informal Learning Educators Pathway - their new web portal debuted recently at the annual Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) 2010 conference in Honolulu. Howtosmile.org features thousands of freely accessible online interactive activities that include lesson plans, field trips, how-to videos, and online games. You won't be sorry! Users can narrow search results by age range, subject area, resource type, material costs, learning time, and source institution. You can earn badges and points for participation in howtosmile.org, keep up with SMILE via the howtosmile.org blog, and sign up for the newsletter. And….win an iPAD! Find out more on the site. You can also stay connected with howtosmile.org on Facebook.
Howtosmile.org is a joint project of UC-Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), Exploratorium, the New York Hall of Science, Science Museum of Minnesota, Children’s Museum of Houston, and the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC). PIs: Darrell Porcello, Sherry Hsi (LHS).
Full press release
NSDL Expert Voices Pathways News blog post -
Sep 09, 2010News
Registration for the 2010 NSDL Annual Meeting in Washington DC is now open and can be found at: http://nsdlnetwork.org/annual_meeting/meeting_registration
An FYI for those of you who submitted proposals for presentations, we will be notifying you in the coming week. All were accepted, however, the committee will be asking a few of you to reduce your times due to the high number of submissions.
While you’re registering, you can also submit information for posters at: http://nsdlnetwork.org/annual_meeting/poster_registration
We especially encourage newly funded projects to submit posters to help the community find out about your upcoming work.
This year, the Ensemble Pathway is hosting a virtual NSDL posters exhibit in Second Life. Attached you will find the instructions for submitting your poster for viewing through Second Life.
Registration and poster submissions close October 1.
Remember to make your travel arrangements soon. The Resource Center will again be offering limited travel support to projects whose NSDL funding has expired, and you can request support on the registration page. The RC does not reserve a block of rooms for the meeting, so if you prefer to look around for good rates, we have listed some hotel options at: http://www.nsdlnetwork.org/content/book/580/page/584/hotel-information
General information about the meeting can be found from the meeting home page at: https://www.nsdlnetwork.org/annual_meeting
Also see the Community News posting from AAAS’ Project 2061 - they are interested in organizing a pre-NSDL Annual Meeting workshop/informational meeting on resource-to-standards alignment. Contact Francis Molina if interested.
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Sep 08, 2010News
Bob Donahue, longtime NSDL community member and valued colleague at WGBH (Teachers' Domain Pathway), has started a new Wordpress blog on metrics: Fun with Web Metrics. The NSDL community has benefited greatly from Bob's expertise in metrics collection and analysis, and his new blog will be a great resource for all NSDL projects. Titled Fun with Web Metrics, Bob describes the purpose of the new blog as facilitating "discussions on new thinking of web metrics - particularly involving web sites that are non-commercial or educational in nature. Many of the current 'conventional wisdoms' on web metrics have their roots in the commercial world, which doesn't always address the particular issues non-commercial sites have regarding assessment." Bob looks for discussion, exchange of ideas, and the development of shared tools, and a place to highlight success stories that can be beneficial across the community.
Bob plans twice-weekly posts to the site - one on Tuesdays that will be more philosophical in nature, and one on Fridays that will be more technically focused ("geeky"). Readers can subscribe to the blog for both email and RSS distribution. Check it out!
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Jul 30, 2010News
A new user survey report on the use of NSDL.org is available from NSDL's Technical Network Services. It summarizes the results of user survey implemented on nsdl.org for two weeks in April 2010.
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Jul 30, 2010News
The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Research (NCER) is soliciting proposals in 14 long-term research programs under its Education Research Grant Programs, including the Education Technology program. Applications are accepted twice a year, and program announcements, deadlines, and more information are available from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) website. Education Research Grant Programs include:
Mathematics and Science Education
Cognition and Student Learning
Teacher Quality - Reading and Writing
Teacher Quality - Mathematics and Science Education
Social and Behavioral Context for Academic Learning
Organization and Management of Schools and Districts
Education Policy, Finance, and Systems
Early Learning Programs and Policies
Analysis of Longitudinal Data to Support State and Local Education Reform
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Jul 29, 2010News
The DuraSpace organization unveiled the open source code for the new DuraCloud platform, a hosted service and open technology that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services, at the Fifth International Open Repositories Conference (OR10) in Madrid, Spain earlier this month. DuraCloud is an open source platform that is built upon commercial cloud infrastructure. The platform itself deploys into a cloud server environment and is integrated with multiple cloud storage providers, including Amazon AWS and Rackspace. DuraSpace is making the open source code available to enable the community to create new software and services that integrate with the core platform.
Developers who are looking into building applications in the cloud are encouraged to experiment with the DuraCloud code and provide feedback about what you see as development synergies and potential additional features. See the DuraCloud wiki for technical documentation and links to download the code:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/duracloud/DuraCloud
The DuraCloud open source platform enables cloud storage across multiple commercial and non-commercial providers and offers a cloud-based services framework focused on preservation support and data access for reuse and sharing. Features include replication, image transformation, bit integrity checking, image viewing, media streaming and general compute processing.
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Jul 25, 2010News
The American Association for School Librarians includes NSDL in its top 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning for 2010: "The "Top 25" Websites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover."
Thanks, AASL!