Project Updates

Updating an existing Project Update? be aware that if you edit/update an existing Project Update, you will overwrite your previous entry. Best practice would be to be copy/paste the prior text into a new Update, and then modify at will so that both your original Project Update and your latest revision are both preserved. If you have any problems with submission, contact Eileen McIlvain (eileen@ucar.edu; 303-497-8354).

Give your colleagues an overview and update on your project activities and development - keep the NSDL community informed of your latest achievements, portal releases, collaborations, and outreach.

Use this section to enter ongoing project updates (quarterly or every 6 months) for NSF-funded grants under the National STEM Distributed Learning (NSDL) program: Pathways I, Pathways II, Services, Targeted Reseach, or Small grants.

Updating an existing Project Update? be aware that if you edit/update an existing Project Update, you will overwrite your previous entry. Best practice would be to be copy/paste the prior text into a new Update, and then modify at will so that both your original Project Update and your latest revision are both preserved. If you have any problems with submission, contact Eileen McIlvain (eileen@ucar.edu 303-497-8354).

To see most recently submitted entries, reorder the list of viewable updates by selecting the "Updated" link at top far right. To see most recently submitted entries, reorder the list of viewable updates by selecting the "Updated" link at top far right of the table below.

Submit a new project update

Project Title Grant Number Target Audiences Partners Project Activities Attached Image Updated
TeachSpatial 1043777 Undergraduate and 9-12 instructors in STEM fields; educators with an interest in standards; scientists in the field of spatial cognition TeachSpatial is a new small-grant NSDL Pathways project to extend and enhance an existing web portal (http://teachspatial.org) by providing guided access to digital resources that support instruction in spatial thinking skills within STEM subject courses... 2010-10-30
Realizing the potential of digital libraries through the development of a self-regulated learning intervention aimed to foster conceptual understanding in science and history DUE-1043990 Shodor, Documenting the American South We are planning for the beginning of grant activities in the summer of 2011. 2010-10-27
ICPALMS: a Portal for Standards-Based Instruction DUE - 1044315 Math and science K-12 teachers Florida State University (FSU), Florida Department of Education, Duval County Public Schools, Seminole County Public Schools, Brevard Public Schools, Panhandle Area Educational Consortium (PAEC), Sciberus: software development, Broadband Knowledge LLC: project evaluation The ICPALMS pathway at the Florida State University is designed to provide a widget-based portal into content, services, professional development, research, and dissemination that will result in a scalable, sustainable infrastructure to support individual... 2010-10-24
Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) DUE-0840824 Middle-grades teachers and students, school administrators, staff developers, curriculum developers/coordinators, library and media specialists, technology coordinators, pre-service teachers and faculty, informal educators, researchers, STEM professionals MSP2 is a project of The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology, School of Teaching and Learning, National Middle School Association, and Education Development Center, Inc. The partners integrate resources, tools, and services across projects, and support multiple methods of resource discovery to meet the needs of this audience. The MSP2 Ning portal was launched in February 2009; and, as of July 31, 2010 has 1,024 registered members with over 49,000 visitors in the last year. The MSP2 social network is open (all content is viewable by anyone), but if users wish to participate in... 2010-10-20
Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) DUE-0840824 Middle-grades teachers and students, school administrators, staff developers, curriculum developers/coordinators, library and media specialists, technology coordinators, pre-service teachers and faculty, informal educators, researchers, STEM professionals. The following organizations have provided/are providing additional support for the MSP2 project: 1. Instructional Technology Services of Central Ohio (ITSCO) provided instruction for the Advisory Board members at its February, 2009 meeting. David Hayward, Project Manager for Multimedia, led a session providing an overview of the development of Web 2.0 technologies. 2. Curriki is supporting MSP2 by adding content from MSP2, NMSA, EDC, and other NSDL projects to the Curriki site. 3. South End Technology Center (SETC), a community technology center in Boston's South End, is our partner site in the youth web design team activities. SETC is a collaborative venture between the Tent City Corporation (TCC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Its fundamental purpose is to enable people to become producers of knowledge and sharers of ideas and information. SETC provides free or low-cost access and training in most aspects of computer-related technology. The staff, mostly volunteers, has extensive backgrounds in computer technology and their applications. 4. Learn Central/Elluminate has provided a free Elluminate in which to hold project webinars. The Ohio State University College of Education (OSU), the National Middle School Association (NMSA), and Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), are developing the NSDL’s Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project.  The goal of MSP2... 2010-10-20
Science Pipes (formerly "The Biodiversity Analysis Pipeline") 0734857 K-12 students; undergraduates; graduate students; teachers; citizen scientists; researchers; natural resource managers Cornell Lab of Ornithology Science Pipes  is an environment in which students, educators, and citizens can create an share analyses of biodiversity data. It is built to support inquiry-based learning, allowing results and visualizations to be dynamically updated and... 2010-10-19
Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Pathway DUE-093851 middle-school through undergraduate levels (grades 6-16) as well as to citizens through formal and informal education venues and communities TERC, CIRES at the University of Colorado, NOAA/UCAR, National Renewal Energy Laboratory, SERC at Carleton College The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Pathway will steward a broad collection of educational resources that facilitate students, teachers, and citizens becoming climate literate and informed about “the climate’s influence on you and... 2010-08-03
The Applied Math and Science Education Repository (AMSER) 0840764 Community and Technical College Educators, Staff and Students NSF ATE (Advanced Technological Education) Projects and Centers; AACC (American Association of Community Colleges); AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges); NISOD (National Institute for Staff & Organizational Development); MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) AMSER Project Highlights 2010:AMSER (http://amser.org) is a collaborative NSDL Pathways project designed to help meet the needs of community and technical colleges  and forge a link between these communities and NSDL. AMSER, which first received... 2010-08-03
Ensemble: Enriching Communities and Collections to Support Education in Computing 0840713 Computing educators at all levels, primarily that means undergraduate and high school level Villanova University (lead), Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, University of Iowa, University of California - Berkeley, Portland State University, University of Pittsburgh, Drexel University, Computer Science Teachers Association, CSAB Accomplishments over the past year include:Development of the concept and implementation of a distributed portal -- meeting our users where they are.  We have a presence in Second Life, Facebook, Flickr, Google Buzz, Twitter so far.Development and... 2010-08-03
ComPADRE 0532798 Physics teachers, faculty, and students from middle school through graduate school, as well as informal education. American Association of Physics Teachers, American Physical Society, Society of Physics Students, Physics Education Research Topical Group, Space Telescope Science Institute, SERC, AAAS, MERLOT, European Physics Education Network. Curriculum developers - Open Source Physics, Tom Henderson (Physics Classroom), Oregon State Paradigms Project, University of Colorado SEI, University of Colorado PhET, Oregon State Paradigms Project, University of Maine, etc. This update covers the time from 11/2009 to 7/2010.A significant amount of development time has gone into enhancing our collaboration and social networking tools. This has included updates to personal and shared collections, connections to social... 2010-08-02
BEN – Biological Sciences Pathway 0532797 Biological sciences faculty in higher education institutions (including professional schools) and biological sciences educators in middle and high schools American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)*, AAAS Science’s STKE (now Science Signaling)*, AAAS Science Online, American Institute for Biological Sciences (AIBS)*, American Physiological Society(APS)* American Phytopathological Society (APSNet), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)*, American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), American Society for Microbiology (ASM)*, American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG), Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE), Bio-Link (the NSF Advanced Technological Education Center for Biotechnology), Biotechnology Institute, BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium (BCC)*, Botanical Society of America (BSA), Dolan DNA Learning Center, Ecological Society of America (ESA)*, Entomology Digital Library (EntDL), Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience(FUN), Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS), National Association of Health Sciences Education Partners (NAHSEP), National Health Museum-Access Excellence*, Society for Developmental Biology (SDB), Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), Society of Toxicology (SOT)* and Video and Image Data Access (VIDA) for Science Inquiry During Teacher Preparation (*Denotes founding BEN Collaborators) I. ObjectivesThe BEN Pathway serves as a catalyst for professional societies or coalitions that seek to foster a change in biological sciences teaching in higher education institutions and middle and high schools, including changes in pedagogy and... 2010-08-02
Materials Digital Library Pathway DUE-0532831 Materials undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers A consortium initially involving NIST, Kent State University, MIT, University of Michigan, Purdue University, and Iowa State University. MatDL has begun pilot work with MRS and TMS, two important international materials professional societies, as well Sandia National Laboratories and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.   The Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) provides stewardship of significant content and services to support materials education, research, and interactions between the two   This report summarizes MatDL’s services and provides an... 2010-08-02
ChemEd Digital Library: An NSDL Pathway for Chemical Sciences Education 0632303 Middle school, high school, college-university chemistry teachers and students; parents; home schoolers; general public. Journal of Chemical Education; American Chemical Society; ChemCollective Project Report to NSDL Resource Center and Pathways PIs Chemical Education Digital Library, 2010 We describe here the major accomplishments of the ChemEd DL during its four years of existence. We emphasize accomplishments during the past year, which has seen... 2010-08-01
Engineering Pathway 0532808 Kindergarten through Higher Education ACM-Women, Advances in Engineering Education (AEE), Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC), Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES), Engineers and Business for Sustainability (EBS), National Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (NCWIT), Peer Reviewed Research Offering Validation of Effective and Innovative Teaching (PR2OVE-IT), Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing (SINAM) Engineering Pathway (EP), the engineering education wing of the NSDL, worked hard this year to develop, implement and market value-added educational digital library services and realize a sustainable income stream. An equal or greater amount of time and... 2010-07-29
Teachers' Domain Pathways Stage II DUE 0840737 K-12 teachers and students, post-secondary faculty and students, parents, informal educators WGBH; EDC Center for Children and Technology; WNET; WPSU; KQED; PTV Updated July 2010 Our work on the Teachers’ Domain Pathway over the past year continues to focus on several major activities: 1. Research and piloting of Web 2.0 enhancements to the Teachers' Domain platform: We began this process in collaboration with... 2010-07-28
MathPath DUE-0938014 Elementary teachers; mentors/coaches/elementary mathematics supervisors; College of Education faculty focused on pre-service mathematics education for prospective elementary teachers The Math Forum at Drexel University; International Society for Technology in Education; Advisors from: National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Maryland State Department of Education, McDaniel College, Penn State University, Elementary Mathematics Supervisor and Elementary Principal Baltimore County and Howard County, MD. MathPath began in January 2010 and the beginning months have been focused on building a strong foundation for the development of the NSDL elementary math pathway to meet the overarching goals of the project, 1) to make high-quality mathematics content... 2010-07-28
SMILE Pathway 0735007 SMILE (the Science and Mathematics Informal Learning Educators Pathway), is designed especially for those who teach a diversity of children in non-classroom settings including museums, science centers, aquariums, observatories and other after-school programs. SMILE Pathway is a joint project of UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), the Exploratorium, the New York Hall of Science, Science Museum of Minnesota, Children’s Museum of Houston, and the Association for Science-Technology Centers. Through a seed grant program to expand the initial founding partners, four additional partners have been added: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Center of Science and Industry (COSI Columbus), TERC, and Twin Cities Public Television. HOWTOSMILE.ORG UPDATE July 2010SMILE, which is in BETA (howtosmile.org), is preparing to be formally unveiled at the annual meeting of the Association of Science-Technology Centers in October of 2010. SMILE Collections & Cataloging SMILE currently... 2010-07-28
ComPADRE Pathway 0532798 The ComPADRE Pathway serves students, teachers, college faculty, and the general public with a need for physics and astronomy education resources. The pathway is divided into collections (currently 16) focused on the needs of a particular community of users, from middle- and high-school teachers, to faculty teaching advanced undergraduate laboratories, to independent learners. Each ComPADRE collection has one or more editors involved in its organization, content, and connection to the community served. These editors are the backbone of ComPADRE and crucial to the project's continuing growth. The ComPADRE project is itself a collaboration of three professional societies, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, and the Society of Physics Students, part of the American Institute of Physics. The participation of the societies is vital for connections to the ongoing efforts in physics education. Collaborations with other physics, astronomy, and science education projects are vital for our progress. Other ComPADRE collaborators include: the Open Source Physics project that edits a ComPADRE Collection for simulation-based curricular materials; SERC supporting the creation and hosting of the pedagogical context for educational resources found in ComPADRE; MERLOT using Federated Search for sharing resources and resource annotations; members of the European Physical Society, collaborating on annual reviews of educational multimedia; the Physics Teacher Resource Agents, a 25 year mentoring effort for high school and middle school teachers; the Paradigms project disseminating cutting-edge pedagogical resources in upper division physics; the Astrophysics Data System abstract service using ComPADRE's Federated Search service; and the PER Topical Group which is responsible for a community portal to bring research-validated educational resources into the library. The fourth year of this Pathway project has focused on expanding the services provided through ComPADRE, particularly in collaboration with others, and the development of better tools for placing teaching materials in context. Major project activities... 2009-11-17
Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) NSF provided funding for the initial development of DLESE, now operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on behalf of the education community. K12 teachers and students, undergraduate and graduate educators and students, curriculum developers, teacher trainers NCAR Library, NCAR Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, and Digital Learning Sciences at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) operate DLESE. Numerous community partners contribute resources and collections to DLESE. Celebrating 10 years of service to the community, DLESE provides access to high quality collections and services. Following substantial funding from NSF, DLESE established a sustainability model to continue these important services to the community of... 2009-11-13
Engineering Pathway 0532808 Kindergarten through Higher Education ACM-Women, Advances in Engineering Education (AEE), Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC), Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES), Engineers and Business for Sustainability (EBS), National Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (NCWIT), Peer Reviewed Research Offering Validation of Effective and Innovative Teaching (PR2OVE-IT), Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing (SINAM) Engineering Pathway (EP), the engineering education wing of the NSDL, focused this year on updating, expanding and creating services – News and Events, Search Appliance, Collections, Annotated Textbooks, Memberships and Sponsorships – to support our... 2009-11-12
ChemEd Digital Library: An NSDL Pathway for Chemical Sciences Education 0632303 Middle school, high school, college-university chemistry teachers and students; parents; home schoolers; general public. Journal of Chemical Education; American Chemical Society; ChemCollective Project This report summarizes all activities of the ChemEd DL during its three years as a Pathway in the NSDL. The main headings are the same as the headings in reports to the NSF. Major Research and Education Activities Technical Developments. We have... 2009-11-11
Quantitative Social Science Digital Library DUE - 0840642 Instructors in undergraduate social science courses Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research; Social Science Data Analysis Network; Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College; Association of American Geographers; American Economic Association Committee on Economics Education; American Political Science Association; American Sociological Association In October, we launched TeachingWithData.org, a website providing educational materials designed to improve quantitative literacy skills in social science courses.  The past year has been spent designing the website and the repository behind it,... 2009-11-10
The Biodiversity Analysis Pipeline 0734857 K-12 students; undergraduates; graduate students; teachers; citizen scientists; researchers; resource managers We have partnered with the Crossing Boundaries project (http://crossingboundariesproject.org/) which uses Science Pipes as one tool that  secondary teachers and students use to analyze biodiversity conservation issues in their local or regional... 2009-11-10
Pedagogic Services for Digital Libraries DUE-0532768 Digital Libraries, Curriculum Development Projects, Centers of Teaching and Learning CAUSE, ComPADRE, MERLOT, PKAL, ERESE, National Numeracy Network, and others. For a complete list of 17 partners see http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/service/partners.html The Pedagogic Service library of pedagogic methods and examples of their use in classrooms now contains 46 modules and 813 activites.  These can be viewed at http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/index.htmlPedagogic Portals have been or are being created... 2009-11-09
Mathematical Sciences Digital Library (MathDL) 0435198 MathDL targets undergraduate mathematics faculty and students, high school faculty and students, and life-long learners. The Mathematical Association of America, MathResources Inc.  The Mathematical Sciences Digital Library (MathDL) is the NSDL pathway project of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). MathDL has evolved greatly since its inception as a collection funded by an NSF grant in 2000 in the first round of NSDL... 2009-11-04
Computational Science Education Referene Desk (CSERD): Push, Pull, Permeate, Persist 0937910 CSERD aims to help students learn about computational science and to help faculty and teachers incorporate it into the classroom. CSERD has engaged key partners to leverage its computational science resources. Collaborations such as the SCXY Conference, TeraGrid, HPC University, Sigma Xi and Blue Waters allow CSERD to serve a wider community of educators and students. HPC University – TeraGrid and Shodor have partnered to provide a collection of accredited education and training resources on High Performance Computing. Pathways to Petascale – an ambitious, multi-scale effort to transform learning through computational thinking enabled by petascale technologies. Pathways to Supercomputing – CSERD’s three-year partnership with the SCxy committee and the National Compuational Science Institute (NCSI) will allow for the review, enhancement, and creation of objects in CSERD and NSDL occurring in summer workshops and the SCxy program from 2007-2009. Blue Waters – Shodor will have a national leadership role in teaching others to effectively harness the power of the world’s largest computer, which will be ready for use in 2011. Shodor and its partners in CSERD continue to transform learning through computational thinking.  CSERD continues to enhance its technology infrastructure and the user's experience, expand its partnerships, recruit reviewers and editors.  The... 2009-11-03
National Dissemination of PARI Digital Resources DUE-0937824 Middle school, high school, and university physics, chemistry and astronomy instructors and students. Currently underway are two initiatives to ensure the continued service of  Smiley (4.6m radio telescope) and the digitization of APDA photographic data.  PARI has also begun working on the digital connections to the NSDL TNS system. Both... 2009-10-23
DLConnect @ FSU 0946444 K-12 teachers, school library media specialists Collaborative project with Utah State University This past year was mostly invested in the mechanics of grant transfer, but the opportunity to do follow-up with PD participants and further analysis of issues that arose during time spent with participants showed that the quadrant model of the challenges... 2009-10-19
Content Clips: A Selection, Customization, and Presentation Service DUE-0938120 Elementary Teachers, Curriculum Developers, Teacher Trainers Content Clips is moving from a research project to a more integrated NSDL service.  Teachers and developers can use this service to find, organize, and share multimedia objects from distributed web sites within a dynamic, visual environment (http... 2009-10-19
Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Pathway DUE-0938051 middle-school through undergraduate levels (grades 6-16) as well as to citizens through formal and informal education venues and communities TERC, CIRES at the University of Colorado, NOAA/UCAR, National Renewal Energy Laboratory, SERC at Carleton College   The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Pathway will steward a broad collection of educational resources that facilitate students, teachers, and citizens becoming climate literate and informed about “the climate’s influence on... 2009-10-18