The Parents' Choice Awards program received many strong entries this season; WGBH Teachers' Domain, an NSDL Pathways Project, is among the small percentage selected to receive a Parents' Choice Award.

On March 9, 2005 The Kasier Family Foundation released a report detailing the findings of Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds, a study that examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 3rd through 12th graders. The report documents that children live more media-saturated lives than ever before, spending 6.5 hours a day engaged with TV, the Internet, digital games, radio, MP3 players and other media. Vicky Rideout, M.A., a Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who directed the study, said, "These kids are spending the equivalent of a full-time work week using media, plus overtime. Anything that takes up that much space in their lives certainly deserves our full attention."

Good media can be solid instruction, but does not take the place of caring adults who introduce and guide a path to learning. The selections of the Parents' Choice Awards Committees make an easier task of navigating the ever-growing children's media marketplace. Teachers' Domain's silver honors award puts it in a winners circle of media designed to entertain and help children develop universally ethical attitudes, rigorous standards, and skills coupled with quality production and respect for human values.

Click here to see the Spring 2005 Small Screen & Magazine award winners.
Related Link: http://www.teachersdomain.org/

May 1-5, 2005, Indianapolis, IN; Booth #215
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

April 6-9, 2005, Anaheim, CA; Booth # 645
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

April 11-16, 2005; Featuring AskNSDL as a recommended resource with special "Ask an Expert" events
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

Please share the following information about NSDL's outreach activities at National conferences with appropriate colleagues and user communities via your project's communications networks such as listservs, newsletters, and email lists. More information about NSDL Outreach is available at http://nsdl.org/community/outreach.php
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/community/outreach.php

Several NSDL projects were recent attendees to NSF's annual PI meeting for the ITEST program (Information Technology Experiences for Students & Teachers). The meeting was held in Washington D.C., February 8-10 2005, and was hosted by the Education Development Center, Inc., home of the NSF ITEST Learning Resource Center--a research and technical assistance center to all ITEST projects. NSDL participants included Sarita Nair, director of two NSDL projects (Gender & Science Digital Library and Career Resource Network), and co-PI of the ITEST Learning Resource Center. Kaye Howe, CI Executive Director, was an invited guest to the meeting and participated in a panel on the importance of IT and STEM learning. For more information about other projects that attended and the summit, visit http://www2.edc.org/itestlrc/summit/index.htm
Related Link: http://www2.edc.org/itestlrc/summit/index.htm

Holly Fait and Sherry Hsi from the The Exploratorium Digital Library project will be presenting a paper at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. The paper shares the work from building an NSDL collection drawn from informal science learning and teaching resources, and their experiences retrofitting existing digital science content to educator LOM.
Conference info: http://www.jcdl2005.org/
Project info: http://www.exploratorium.edu/nsdl/
Related Link: http://www.jcdl2005.org/

There's a wealth of information on the Internet describing scientific phenomena and representations that teachers could use for classroom instruction. But how well do these resources address content standards and how likely are they to help students learn? In a new collaboration with the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA), Project 2061 will apply its research-based criteria for analyzing curriculum materials to review Web-based resources and to organize them into an online collection that can be easily accessed by middle grades teachers.

Phenomena and Representations for the Instruction of Science in Middle Schools, or the NSDL PRISMS Project, will selectively review and describe phenomena and representations available on the Internet to determine whether they are (1) aligned with state and national content standards; (2) informed by cognitive research; and (3) likely to improve the quality of middle school science instruction. Read the story here - http://www.project2061.org/publications/2061Connections/2005/2005-01b.htm.
Related Link: http://www.project2061.org/publications/2061Connections/2005/2005-01b.htm

Post your project news to Whiteboard Report and NSDL.org at http://nsdl.org/community/?pager=add. Submissions are reviewed and posted at http://nsdl.org/community/ the next day. Whiteboard Report submissions will also appear in the next issue.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/community/?pager=add

The JCDL 2005 workshops are currently seeking papers and participants. Many have submission deadlines in mid-April. Read all the CFP's at http://www.jcdl2005.org/workshops.html.

- Developing a Digital Libraries Education Program
- International Scientific Data, Standards, & Digital Libraries
- Studying Digital Library Users in the Wild
- Next Generation Knowledge Organization Systems: Integration Challenges and Strategies: The 7th Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop
- Providing Learning Context in Educational Digital Libraries: Where Do We Go Next?

Important Dates
April 1, 2005: Deadline for submission of abstracts for the Doctoral Consortium
April 5, 2005: Revision deadline for accepted papers and abstracts
April 18, 2005: Advance registration opens online; Notification of acceptance for the Doctoral Consortium
May 9, 2005: Advance registration closes

JCDL 2005 Program
The JCDL 2005 program is now available at http://www.jcdl2005.org/program.html. The program committee reviewed over 270 submissions, and accepted 32 full papers, 27 short papers, 2 panels, 8 tutorials, 5 workshops and over 60 posters and demonstrations. In support of the conference theme, sessions have been organized into three tracks:
- Digital Libraries and Cyberinfrastructure
- Users and Interaction
- Tools and Techniques

The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2005; Digital Libraries: Cyberinfrastructure for Research and Education will be held June 7-11, 2005 in Denver, Colorado http://www.jcdl2005.org/. Contact: info@jcdl2005.org for more information.
Related Link: http://www.jcdl2005.org/workshops.html

April 6-9, 2005, Anaheim, CA; Booth # 645
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

The Educational Impact and Evaluation Standing Committee is working with the San Diego Supercomputer Center to develop an aggregated and integrated evaluation Pilot Study that will inform the design of an NSDL Evaluation Service. Evaluation of a focused Pilot Study is a prelude to developing an Aggregated Evaluation Service for NSDL.

Pilot methodology is described in the NSDL AM 2004 EIESC meeting minutes, http://eduimpact.comm.nsdl.org/events/?pager=236 (click on pdf or flash file to see presentation and discussion details).

Pilot Study outcomes will also serve to refine the Committee's long range goals that include:
-Developing NSDL Evaluation funding tracks using themes like evaluation by audience and evaluation by discipline.
-Making Data sets available: textbook dataset; labeled metadata for top level NSDL pages with metadata for selected DC elements including audience and possibly subject; and others.
-Defining user tasks to match 4 pre-defined levels: Elementary (1-5); Middle (6-8); High (9-12); and Undergraduate.
-Developing measures of performance/assessment (NSDL educational impact).
Related Link: http://eduimpact.comm.nsdl.org/events/?pager=236

In an effort to improve the usability of the NSDL the Technical committee is interested in hearing about what types of technical documentation you need, and getting your suggestions for improving the existing documentation. Please send comments to the Technology committee mailing list or add comments to the Wiki set up for this purpose.

About the NSDL Technology committee: The NSDL Technology Standing Committee is a forum for those involved in building the technical infrastructure of the NSDL. It sponsors initiatives, acts as a liaison with Core Integration and makes recommendations to the NSDL policy committee. Any NSDL community member may participate by joining the mailing list and by attending meetings. Please see the committee home page for more information.
Related Link: http://technology.comm.nsdl.org/

By Dr. Ellen Kabat Lensch and Christine Walker
Collaboration and passion are hallmarks of work that sustains The Advanced Technology Environmental Education Center (ATEEC) and its Environmental Resources Library (eERL) at http://www.eerl.org.

eERL (electronic Environmental Resources Library) grows out of the community college environment and a National Science Foundation ATE (Advanced Technology Education) center called ATEEC. The Advanced Technology Environmental Education Center (ATEEC) is located in Bettendorf, Iowa on the campus of Scott Community College (part of the Eastern Iowa Community College District [EICCD]). (See http://www.eicc.edu/ )

eERL's History
In 2002, EICCD-ATEEC received funding through the NSDL "Collections Track" program to initiate the creation of an interoperable digital library. That effort has laid the foundation for a comprehensive, high value, national digital library serving the environmental education needs of the nation's community colleges and of practitioners/technicians in the workplace. This emerging digital library, initially known as the Advanced Technology Environmental Education Library (ATEEL), was renamed electronic Environmental Resources Library (eERL). eERL (www.eerl.org), accessible on a pilot-basis since January 2004, had its official public site launch date on September 1, 2004. Read about eERL's Sustainabiliy strategies at http://nsdl.org/community/project_profile.php.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/community/project_profile.php

The Career Resources Network project, to be launched in May 2005, will be previewed this week at the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association in Dallas, TX. The collection being developed, entitled FunWorks, targets middle school youth and integrates STEM career resources into a design template that appeals to young people. The project is housed at Education Development Center, Inc., which is also home to the Gender & Science Digital Library (GSDL). FunWorks has been designed *for* and *by* youth ages 11-15 years. Approximately 300 students from diverse backgrounds have been closely involved in the conceptualization and design of the collection, including a youth co-design team who worked with project staff for 6 months. For more information about the project, visit http://www2.edc.org/GDI/CaREN.htm, or contact PI Sarita Nair . And for those of you at NSTA this week, please stop by the NSDL booth to meet with staff!
Related Link: http://www2.edc.org/GDI/CaREN.htm

http://wotan.liu.edu/dois/rss.html
Access DLib Magazine as well as Ariadne, Information Research, and Journal of Digital Information content for your web site at the URL above.
Related Link: http://wotan.liu.edu/dois/rss.html

http://www.netday.org/SVRC/Index.htm
NetDay announces the launch of its Student Voices Resource Center (SVRC). The SVRC is a comprehensive research and collaboration space that provides resources to engage and involve students in technology-related decision-making. The goal is to connect student voices with teachers, community members, government representatives, businesses, and others involved with technology in K-12 schools.
Related Link: http://www.netday.org/SVRC/Index.htm

http://dev.binaryjungle.com/uchri/newsletter/needle_news.html
Needle is the e-newsletter of the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technologies Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC). HASTAC is a consortium of humanists, artists, scientists and engineers from leading institutions dedicated to working together to develop innovative computing and information systems that support interdisciplinary research and teaching in the humanities, arts and social sciences that stretch the possibilities and applications of computational technologies.
Related Link: http://dev.binaryjungle.com/uchri/newsletter/needle_news.html

http://nedkahn.com/
The confluence of science and art has inspired artist Ned Kahn to experiment with artworks that enable viewers to observe and interact with natural processes such as atmospheric physics, geology, astronomy and fluid motion. Kahn's artworks frequently incorporate flowing water, fog, sand and light to create complex and continually changing systems. Many of these works can be seen as "observatories" in that they frame and enhance our perception of natural phenomena.
Related Link: http://nedkahn.com/