While we are all glued to the television this week to watch the exciting outcomes of Winter Olympics competition, it’s also a great opportunity to explore the science behind the sports and winter weather.  Collections from NSDL and from the National Science Foundation can help you do just that. The National Science Foundation and NBC Learn have collaborated to produce Science of the Olympic Winter Games, a 16-part video series that explores the science behind individual Olympic events, including downhill and aerial skiing, speed skating and figure skating, curling and hockey, and ski jumping, bobsledding and snowboarding. NSDL’s Science of Winter collection offers interactives, videos, and lesson plans on a variety of winter and winter sports phenomena:

• Ripples on icicles  (high school, lower undergrad, general)
• The Effect of Gravity on Motion (luge) - (K12, lower undergrad, general)
• The Physics Classroom: Energy Transformation for Downhill Skiing (K12, lower undergrad, general)

• A Winter’s Tale  (K-12)
• Winter Olympics Physiology & Psychology (K12, lower undergrad, general)
• The Science of Hockey (general)

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WGBH’s Teachers’ Domain - a goldmine of multimedia resources for K12 education - now has added value for middle school and high school educators and students, with its recently released Biotechnology Digital Media Collection. If you teach genetics, DNA, gene cloning, or other biotech topics, and are looking for ways to integrate high quality digital media in your lessons or studies, this is your go-to source.  These resources help to show the tools and techniques used to develop new biotechnology applications and products, incorporating aspects of chemistry, genetics, cell biology; while mapping to existing curriculum standards. With Flash interactives and videos demonstrating how techniques are performed and showing how biotechnology professionals use them, science careers can be sparked and students can gain critical understandings of complex processes. The Biotechnology collection covers: Applications, Careers, Concepts, Tools and Techniques, and a Lesson Plan on Using Biotechnology to Detect and Treat Disease. Update: You can learn more about the Biotech Collection by participating in the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar on Wednesday February 17:  Biotechnology: New Tools and Resources for the STEM Career Pipeline from WGBH Teachers’ Domain.

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)  has updated and released a new version of the DLESE Earth Science Literacy Maps. The Maps are a great tool to aid the teaching and learning of Earth system science. They show relationships between concepts, how concepts at a given level connect with and emerge from concepts at prior levels, and link to related National Science Education standards information - all focused on Earth science concepts alone.  (Both DLESE Earth Science Literacy Maps and NSDL Science Literacy Maps are based on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and utilize the NSDL Strand Map Service, an NSDL project).

In addition to the January 12, 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that has devastated Haiti and focused worldwide action on relief efforts, the US Geological Survey reported that a magnitude 5.6 earthquake also struck eastern Venezuala on Friday, January 15, 2010. Teachers can utilize the NSDL Science Literacy Map on plate tectonics to browse a variety of resources including interactives and multimedia, and other NSDL collections and resources, for teaching and learning about these phenomena:

• Essential Science for Teachers: Earth and Space Science - video from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics collection (K-12)
• Musical Plates - classroom activity that encourages use of real-time data (ages 11-18)
• Plate Tectonics: Moving Middle School Science - NSDL Middle School Portal’s Science Resource guide on plate tectonics
• Earthquakes often occur along the boundaries  -  AAAS’ Educational Benchmarks Collection on earthquakes and plate tectonics (high school)
• Teachable Moments site from the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) - with updates on recent seismic activity, with supporting downloadable presentations, animations, visualizations (middle and high school, informal)
• Earthquakes, lesson plan with associated video and flash interactives, from Teachers’ Domain (middle and high school)
• DLESE earthquake resources: lessons, activities, interactives (multiple ed levels) from the Digital Library for Earth System Education
• Earth Exploration Toolbook, from the Science Education Resource Center  at Carleton College, with multiple chapters for exploration of solid earth phenomena employing use of data; includes background information, learning goals, instructional strategies and more (high school and undergraduate)

Teaching science by discussing issues and current events is a great way to motivate your students to learn. Food-bourne illness, genetic engineering, environmental change—all of these provide a real-life context to help students understand science concepts. Where can I learn more about resources and strategies to do this effectively? Find out in our next web seminar in the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar Series, Thinking Like a Scientist: Teaching With Current Science Issues on Tuesday, January 12th at 6:00pm Eastern Time. This web seminar is free and available to anyone interested. We’ll look at resources from Actionbioscience that lay out easy-to-use resources, activities, as well as national science standards correlations to resources in the collection. Register Today!

In conjunction with the Copenhagen 2009 Climate Conference, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP)  has released a new composite index of climate change that combines data from four key areas of research to reveal an unequivocal rise since 1980 in atmospheric carbon dioxide, temperature, sea level, and sea ice. The index will be updated annually, providing an ongoing indicator of cumulative effects within these complex systems.  Combining data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory of the Natural Environment Research Council, the index is the work of multiple scientific research efforts in global climate change. A two-minute video about the index is also available from IGBP, and on YouTube. K12 Teachers can find resources and lessons focused on climate change at Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, the NSDL Middle School Portal, the Climate Literacy Network, and multimedia resources from Teachers Domain. Explore NSDL climate change resources for secondary and higher education, and NSDL’s Classic Articles in Context entry for an historical survey of climate change issues: Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming: A Selection of Key Articles. 

Join our next free web seminar in our NSDL/NSTA Series: Timely Teachings: Seasons and the Cycles of Night & Day, Thursday, December 10, 2009 starting 6:30pm Eastern. We’ll review scientific principles, examine common misconceptions and formative assessment strategies, and discuss how to approach these topics by integrating science and literacy. We’ll also share resources from Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, the NSDL Middle School Portal, and other high-quality content providers. Register today!

Is it really the tryptophan in your turkey that makes you sleepy or are there additional factors at play? Where do cranberries grow and how are the harvested? How do you prevent your Thanksgiving guests from getting salmonella? Take a look at this collection of resources from the NSDL Scout Report by the University of Wisconsin at Madison for answers to these questions and more in this Thanksgiving Biology primer.

Learn about the latest discussions, trends, and current happenings within the NSDL community by following the NSDL Annual Meeting in Washington DC, November 16-19, on Twitter. Sessions include a panel focused on cyberlearning, updates on NSDL projects, as well as showcasing new NSDL Pathways such as SMILE (informal science education) and ENSEMBLE (computing education).

Last month, SimSE was awarded one of the 2009 Premier Awards for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. 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 direct, graphical feedback enables students to learn the complex cause and effect relationships underlying software engineering processes. During the game, the student takes on the role of the project manager and directs engineers to perform typical process tasks. SimSE helps bridge the gap between the conceptual knowledge about software engineering that is presented in lecture but that often times is not fully explored or practiced in assignments or projects. CATME/Team-Maker, a peer evaluation instrument, was also recognized in this year’s Premier Awards.