This web seminar, the last of the NSDL series for the 2008-2009 school year, focused on the human physiological challenges of extended travel in outer space. Our presenter, Dr. Jim Pawelczyk, Associate Professor of Physiology & Kinesiology for the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University, has studied the human effects of space travel as both a researcher and an astronaut.

If humans traveled to Mars, what research would be necessary for this to be successful from a physiological perspective? Past missions from the International Space Station and Skylab have shown that astronauts experienced levels of osteopenia, or loss of bone mineral deposits that greatly effect the probability of bone fractures once they return home. Some of this loss can be irreplaceable, according to Pawelczyk.

Resources from this presentation include links to the American Physiological Society, a BEN partner of the NSDL Biology Pathway.

You can view the archive of this seminar, as well as others from the NSDL series on the NSTA Learning Center website.

A new collection within WGBH Teachers’ Domain profiles six sites in the ITEST program, an NSF-funded project to support students in pursuing STEM careers. In the video, Becoming Green Energy Experts , you’ll learn about how students from the Michigan State University/Lansing Boys and Girls Club are learning about home energy efficiency, energy supply and demand and other issues related to energy use and consumption. BuildIT, a program for girls interested in IT careers “capitalizes on girls’ inherent interest in design and communication technologies, engaging girls in hands-on, collaborative, real-world experiences as they progress through 3 stages – Apprentice, Journeygirl, and Specialist.”

Teachers Domain has recently been expanding their collection of rich media materials in science and other content areas. Teachers like the ability to show small segments of video or use images or other multimedia from programs such as NOVA, Zoom, Frontline, and other PBS programming.

Resources for tonight’s web seminar, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears: Antarctic and Arctic Birds features resources from Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears: An Online Maga… and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The seminar focused on strategies for incorporating inquiry learning and ways to integrate literacy and science in effective ways. The resource list has links of all the resources mentioned during the presentation.

The last seminar in the NSDL series will be on May 13th. Studying the Human Physiological Limits of Exploring Mars will feature Dr. James Pawelczyk, Associate Professor of Physiology and Kinesiology for the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University and an established NASA life scientist and former payload specialist astronaut. He will answer the question of whether or not human biology will limit our ability to travel through the solar system. This seminar is for educators of grades 7-10. Register today!

How about learning chemical symbols while helping to end world hunger? Need to brush up on your favorite classic painters? Improve your vocabulary? You can do all these things on Free Rice, a site run by the United Nations World Food Bank.

You select a topic area and the degree of difficulty you want to tackle for a series of multiple choice questions that appear on the screen. With each correct answer, you donate 10 grains of rice to the Food Bank, courtesy of the Food Bank’s sponsors. (Incorrect answers, however, do not subtract grains from your pile!) In 2008, nearly 44 billion grains of rice were donated thanks to Free Rice players around the world.

Beware: You and your students might learn something while having fun playing this rather addictive game!

Missed the webinar presentation on middle school math and science resources? You can watch the archive

In partnership with the National Middle School Association (NMSA), this presentation highlighted resources and strategies for finding quality resources and connecting to other middle school educators through the NSDL Middle School Portal for Math and Science.

The next webinar from NMSA will focus on online resources related to global warming:

April 28, 2009, 3:30pm EST

Global Warming and the Polar Regions

Jessica Fries-Gaither and Kim Lightle

How is climate change shifting earth’s energy balance? In this seminar, we’ll provide content knowledge as well as resources for the middle school science classroom

Registration is free

Greetings from New Orleans! We have several sessions at the NSTA Science Education Conference and will be posting the presentations on the blog. Come on over while you enjoy the Big Easy!

Friday, March 20

8:00 – 9:00 AM Informal Science Day Session: Content on the Go: Science

Education Podcasting – Susan Foster (NCAR); Howard Lurie

(WGBH); Robert Payo (NSDL); Sherry Hsi (Exploratorium)

(NO Marriott, Carondelet)

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM NSDL booth – NSTA Exhibit Hall - Booth 1532

New Orleans Convention Center.

10:00 AM – 12:00 (MSP)2 – NSDL Middle School Portal Math and Science Pathways

Focus Group – Kim Lightle

2:00 – 3:00 PM The Good, the Bad, and the Hydrophobic: Proteins and the Cell

- Lynn Diener, ChemEd DL; Robert Payo, NSDL Resource

Center (JW Marriott; Il de France II)

2:00 – 3:00 PM Informal Science Day Session: Web 2.0 for Science: Examples

of Participatory Tools for Science Learning; Kim Lightle, MSP2;

Chad Dorsey, Maine Math and Science Alliance

(JW Marriott; Carondelet)

3:30 – 4:30 PM ASTE: Science Literacy Maps, Search Strategies, and Teacher Reviewed Content- Robert Payo, NSDL

(JW Marriott; Il de France II)

4:00 – 6:00 PM Informal Science Shareathon

(JW Marriott; Il De France)

Saturday, March 21

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM NSDL booth – NSTA Exhibit Hall - Booth 1532

New Orleans Convention Center.

9:00 – 11:00 AM Polar Shareathon, Kim Lightle, Ohio State University

(NO Marriott, Carondelet)

10:00 – 12:00 PM Climate Literacy meeting – Susan Van Gundy, Robert Payo

(Sheraton NO, Salon 828)

5:00 – 6:00 PM Digital Libraries and 21st Century Skills – Robert Payo, NSDL

Resource Center

(JW Marriott; Il de France III)

5:00 – 6:00 PM Energy and the Polar Environment – Kim Lightle, Ohio State

University

Sunday, March 22

11 AM – 12:00 PM Using Technology to Support Elementary Readers – Kim Lightle,

Ohio State University; Lois MacLean, MacLean Media - Content

Clips project

Educational podcasts allow educators an easy way to keep current on research and materials to use in their teaching. The podcast series developed for Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears has teaching tips, interviews with scientists, and other ideas for bringing polar science into the classroom.

Check out this month’s podcast, The Lowdown on Climate Change. Researcher Dr. Andy Monaghan from the National Center for Atmospheric Research gives a brief overview on climate change and the recent effects of climate change in Antarctica.

Other episodes in this podcast series feature researchers and educational experts from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Exploratorium.

The recent ACT Report, The Forgotten Middle, states that “fewer than two in ten eighth graders are on target to be ready for college-level work by the time they graduate from high school.”

Such statements speak to the need for greater attention to middle school students and support for teachers of these grades. For our December NSDL Brown Bag, Mary Henton, Director of Integrated Media Initiatives for the National Middle School Association and Dr. Kim Lightle, Director of Digital Libraries at Ohio State University shared other data related to the needs of both students and teachers for the middle school years and how the work of the Middle School Portal will continue to address those needs as a social learning network for middle school level educators. Thirty-one people attended the live webinar on December 10, 2009. An archived version of the webinar will be available soon.

The NSDL Brown Bag Series is a free professional development webinar scheduled monthly. These 60-minute programs highlight trends and best practices in STEM education with programs at both K-12 and higher education levels.

The January webinar directed at college level educators, Supporting Connections Between Research and Learning,will feature Dr. Laura Bartolo, a professor at Kent State University and PI for the NSDL Materials Science Digital Library on January 29, 2009 at 1pm Eastern.

For more information, contact us through the NSDL contact form.

Use some of these great resources mentioned in the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar: Chemistry Comes Alive III: Water.

We’ve used a Diigo list, a social bookmarking site to list these resources. Diigo allows you to save bookmarks right off of your browser. You can then send them to your colleagues, make annotations and notes on the bookmarked sites and join groups that share links together.

The National Science Digital Libraryånd the National Middle School Association invite you to a free webinar from the National Science Digital Library Brown Bag Series:

Title: Middle School-What Do We Know?

Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008

Time: 1:00 PM EST

Duration: 1 hour

Host(s): NMSA and the NSDL Resource Center

Description:

National Middle School Association in collaboration with the National Science Digital Library invite you to this NSDL Brown Bag focusing on middle school math and science:

What do we know about current trends, activities and issues around middle school teaching in terms of the needs of students and teachers? Find out how these trends relate to your work and how (MSP)2, the NSDL Middle School Pathway is responding to these trends.

Join Mary Henton, Director of Integrated Media Initiatives for the National Middle School Association and Kim Lightle, Director of Digital Libraries at Ohio State University for this current view of the middle school classroom and the online resources available.

Click here to register for this meeting:

Questions? Contact Robert Payo, NSDL Outreach and Professional Development Manager, at rpayo@ucar.edu