Spark your students’ curiosity and hone their inquiry skills with free DragonflyTV Nano educational resources. Sign up for this free NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar, Thursday, November 11th at 6:30pm Eastern Time to learn more about nanotechnology and how to incorporate related online materials into your teaching. Dragonfly TV features six half-hour episodes dedicated entirely to nanoscale science and technology. These videos feature captivating scientist profiles, nanoscale zooms into common objects, and real kids doing inquiry-based investigations at science centers and universities nationwide.

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 society and your influence on climate.” The CLEAN Pathway will integrate the effective use of the resources across all educational levels – with a particular focus on the middle-school through undergraduate levels (grades 6-16) as well as to citizens through formal and informal education venues and communities. Learn more about the plans for this new NSDL Pathway.

Applications for next year’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program are now available online. Spend a year in Washington D.C. working in a professional staff position for congress or within a federal agency. You can view the current list of Einstein Fellows on the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education website.

Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, George E. Smith - Nobel prize winners in Physics for 2009. This week’s announcement by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honors these scientists for their foundational work in areas that have revolutionized modern life: information technology, and digital photography. It’s a great opportunity to utilize NSDL’s ComPADRE Physics & Astronomy digital library to locate resources from multiple collections in the areas of fiber optics, lasers, and photoelectric effect, including Physics Classroom (tutorials for students), Physical Sciences Resource Center (PSRC), Physics Source introductory physics course materials, Physics to Go (self exploration of physics topics) and many more.

Participate in free professional development straight from your desktop through NSDL’s web seminar series with the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). The first seminar for this school year begins on October 15th: Chemistry Comes Alive IV: Oxidation/Reduction. This seminar is for educators at high school and lower undergraduate levels. Register through the NSTA Learning Center for this seminar and others from NSTA, NASA, and more.

October will be a busy month with opportunities to participate in National Earth Science Week, October 11-17 and National Chemistry Week, October 18-24. Both weeks consist of national and local events, speakers, activities for the classroom, and additional materials for the educator. Earth Science Week is sponsored by the American Geological Institute. This year’s earth science theme will be “Understanding Climate”. Chemistry Week is sponsored by the American Chemical Society with the theme, “Chemistry—It’s Elemental!”

The K-12 audience pages have a new look to them. Try out the audience tabs to find more specific information at the grade level you teach, watch for resource highlights with a new topic each month (this month it’s on careers and the scientific process), and learn simple ways to incorporate more digital materials in your teaching. Be sure to give us your feedback so we can continue to make these pages more useful to you.

The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will be the site of the launch of the NSDL SMILE Pathway featuring resources from the nation’s leading science museums on Nov. 1, 2009 at a panel discussion to be presented during the Association for Science-Technology Centers Annual Meeting.

The lighthearted SMILE logo can be seen in action at http://www.howtosmile.org.

The National Science Foundation’s NSDL program has funded a consortium of museums to aggregate the best learning activities offered by museums into a single repository to support informal science and mathematics education called SMILE – the Science Mathematics Informal Educator’s Pathway (www.howtosmile.org). SMILE is supporting informal educators and different-sized museums with varying backgrounds, experience, and infrastructure to easily contribute and share digital assets. Given its cost-effective strategy, SMILE is leveraging free and open source tools into its architecture, including NSDL EduPak components, as well as developing widgets that enable museums to customize SMILE tools and services into their own local websites. SMILE is testing a new metadata scheme to reflect diverse audiences served by museums who value fun, engagement, quality activities, and intergenerational learning in non-classroom settings.

The SMILE and NSDL panel, Sherry Hsi, Darrell Porcello, Scott Randol, and Susan Van Gundy, will share different aspects of the SMILE process that also have practical implications including distributed metadata development, online community contributions, digital library architecture, visual search, user interface design, and formative evaluation results. Panelists will discuss SMILE’s implementation, unveil post-launch plans, and solicit input. A presentation about the current organizational structure of the National Science Digital Library, how NSDL Pathways are supported, and seed grant opportunities will also be explained.

Artist and geologist Susan Eriksson uses a full palette of materials and methods in her artwork: rock, metal, paint…and even principles of chemistry. In a video interview from US News & World Report, you can see some of Dr. Eriksson’s artistic interpretations of landscapes, textures, and the geologist’s view of earth in flat planes. Her perspectives serve as a springboard for creating captivating art that merges the worlds of art and science, and demonstrates how both of these worlds tap into the processes of creativity and discovery.

The ALA Office for Library Advocacy selected the National Science Digital Library as the “Digital Library of the Week” for Aug. 12 at http://www.Ilovelibraries.org Web site. “Ilovelibraries” is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest (66,000 members) library association in the world with members in academic, public, school, government and special libraries. This Web site is designed to keep America informed about what’s happening in today’s libraries, which are found in a variety of settings.

Ilovelibraries.org is brought to you by ALA staff from all corners of the association, who come together to volunteer their time and brilliance to ensure that the libraries we all have come to love are recognized.