[Whiteboard-subscribers] Whiteboard Report #124, 10/27/07

[Brad Edmondson]

NSDL WHITEBOARD REPORT #124

Whiteboard Report news is on the Web at http://NSDL.org and http:// 
expertvoices.nsdl.org/whiteboardtalkback.

Back issues are available at http://content.nsdl.org/wbr/Issue-- 
Archive.php.

October 30, 2007

NEWS

NSDL Gets Teachers’ Domain Treatment

http://www.teachersdomain.org/collections/wgbh/lsps07/all_resources.html
As part of its Pathways grant, Teachers' Domain has added 100 new  
resources to its Life and Physical Sciences collections after  
adapting them from collections in the NSDL.  Ten new lesson plans  
accompany the new resources. WGBH selected and developed these  
materials with the assistance of advisors from BSCS and the Harvard  
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They adapted the media assets  
from a wide range of original sources in the NSDL, including museums  
(Exploratorium, American Museum of Natural History), universities  
(Nebraska, Utah, Colorado, Rutgers), organizations (AAAS, ChemThink,  
Texas Parks and Wildlife), and public television sources (“Dragonfly  
TV,” “Curious George,” “Design Squad,” “NOVA scienceNow.”) Free  
registration is required to view the new resources at the link  
above.  More information is in an October 23 post to Expert Voices:   
http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/pathwaysnews .

Dave Fulker Honored By AMS

http://www.ametsoc.org
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has given its Cleveland  
Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to Atmospheric Sciences to David  
Fulker, the first Executive Director of NSDL. The Award is given to  
those who “have contributed to the progress of atmospheric sciences  
or to the application of atmospheric sciences to general, social,  
economic, or humanitarian welfare.”  Fulker is cited for “almost a  
half century of pioneering work in the development of statistical  
applications providing service within the atmospheric sciences,”  
Before he joined NSDL, Fulker spent 18 years directing the Unidata  
Program Center at the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research  
(UCAR). Among Fullker’s many accomplishments there was to help create  
channels that provide real-time weather data through the Internet.   
Fulker will receive the honor at the AMS’s 88th Annual Meeting in New  
Orleans in January 2008.

CNLP To Put State Standards On Thinkfinity

http://www.thinkfinity.org
http://www.cnlp.org
  Thinkfinity, a digital learning platform supported by the Verizon  
Foundation, has awarded a grant to the Center for Natural Language  
Processing (CNLP) at Syracuse University in order to assign state  
standards to their online content. Some of Thinkfinity’s online  
collections are already connected to national education standards,  
but teachers often have difficulty comparing federal standards to  
requirements in their own state. The CNLP plans to hire 20  
cataloguers to review and revise standards assignments that will be  
automatically generated by its software.  Their tools were developed  
with NSF–NSDL funding and are available to other NSDL projects. For  
more information, contact Anne Diekema at diekemar AT syr.edu.

New In Microbe Library

http://www.microbelibrary.org
The American Society for Microbiology’s digital learning site,  
Microbe Library, continues to grow.  Recent additions include a new  
issue of Focus on Microbiology Education (FOME) that emphasizes grade  
school (K-12) outreach, and a new article in the Journal of  
Microbiology and Biology Education (JMBE) on a student project to  
sequence, assemble, and annotate the Enterobacter cloacae P101 genome  
at the University of Florida. Two new curriculum activities and six  
new resources are also available for downloading from the Atlas- 
Protocol collection, which explains the history theory, and  
procedures of research protocols.  Finally, eight new visual  
resources have been published.

Engineering Pathway Honors Arcade

http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/premier
NSDL’s Engineering Pathway has awarded the 2007 Premier Award for  
Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware to Kirk Martini of the  
University of Virginia for Arcade, a computer program that simulates  
and animates physical structures. Arcade uses a physics engine to  
model structural behavior and performs computations in real time, so  
that models respond instantly to input from the keyboard and mouse  
with a game-like interface.  The Pathway also named two finalists for  
the award: Jeliot 3, an easy-to-use program animation system intended  
for teaching introductory programming and developed jointly by the  
University of Joensuu and the Weizmann Institute of Science; and  
JFLAP 6.1, a software tool for experimenting with finite automata,  
pushdown automata, Turing machines, grammars, parsing and L-systems.  
It was developed by Susan Rodger of Duke University and her  
students.   More information is in an Octobr 23 post to Expert  
Voices:   http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/pathwaysnews .

NSDL-NSTA Webinar News

http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/symposia_seminars/NSDL2/ 
webseminar4.aspx
http://www.nsta.org/academy
“Studying Genomes,” the fourth web seminar in a series offered by the  
NSDL and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), will be  
held on Tuesday, November 13 from 6:30-8:00 p.m. Eastern time. Dr.  
Robert DeSalle, author and curator in the Sackler Institute for  
Comparative Genomics, will speak on developments in genetic research  
and the new science of genomics. As researchers have mapped the  
genomes of hundreds of species (including the human genome), new  
insights have arisen that allow scientists to map the evolutionary  
relationships among organisms and use that knowledge to understand  
infectious diseases and genetic disorders.  The seminar is directed  
at teachers of grades 7-12, and free pre-registration is required  
through the link below.  Also, the successful web seminar “FunWorks:  
Inspiring Students to pursue Math and Science Careers” will be  
repeated through the New Science Teachers Academy, a new NSTA  
initiative that aims to support and encourage novice grade 7-12  
science educators.
http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/SeminarRegistration.aspx

BOOKMARKS

Robert Noyce Scholarships

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110481
The Robert Noyce Scholarship program encourages talented science,  
technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and professionals to  
become K-12 mathematics and science teachers in high-need school  
districts. The program provides undergraduate and graduate  
scholarships and stipends through 16 institutions of higher  
education. South Dakota State University’s program should create 24  
new teachers in the state over four years; New York University’s  
program matches students with mentors who work to keep them in the  
field.  A complete list of granting institutions is at the link above.

Cost of Copyright Confusion

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/news/medialit_report_release
In this report, the Center for Social Media shows that the  
fundamental goals of media literacy education—to cultivate critical  
thinking and expression about media and its social role—are  
compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions. As a result of  
poor guidance, counterproductive guidelines, and fear, teachers use  
less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous  
copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional  
approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms. There  
are many ways copyrighted material can be legally used without  
permission or payment, but educators have no consensus around what  
constitutes acceptable fair use practices.

Whiteboard Special Issue

http://nsdl.comm.nsdl.org
The NSDL’s Annual Meeting takes place next week (November 6-8) in  
Arlington, Virginia.  Over 175 are registered.  Later this week,  we  
will send a special issue of Whiteboard Report containing more  
information about the posters and sessions planned for the meeting.

INSPIRATION

Can Cockatoos Really Dance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/dancing-cockato.html
Snowball the Cockatoo stomps and shakes his feathers to a song by the  
Back Street Boys in a video on YouTube.  He has done it more than one  
million times since the clip went up last month.  But is Snowball  
responding to the music, or to its owner?  In the blog for the PBS  
show “Wired Science,” ornithologist John Pepper writes that cockatoos  
“are intensely social and interactive birds. They are especially  
interactive with a person they know well. But even as a stranger you  
can easily elicit this kind of behavior. If you walk into a pet store  
and interact with any parrot, make eye contact, and talk to it, and  
then start bobbing your head, chances are good that it will start  
bobbing its head along with you. Try it! I suspect that in most  
cases, while the video is being shot, but outside the picture, the  
bird's owner is dancing along with the bird and encouraging it.”

NSDL Whiteboard Report describes research, news, and notes from the  
National Science, Technology, Mathematics, and Education Digital  
Library (http://NSDL.org), which is funded by the National Science  
Foundation. Whiteboard is published bi-weekly and includes  
information from NSDL projects and programs nationwide. Please  
redistribute. To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://nsdl.org/ 
publications/?pager=signup.

Whiteboard Report is edited by Brad Edmondson (gbe2 at cornell.edu).  
Project leaders and participants from the NSDL community are  
encouraged to send the editor research news and notes of interest.  
Please limit these items to 200 words or less and provide web links  
to additional information.

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is the nation's online  
library of resources for science, technology, engineering, and  
mathematics education and research.
NSDL would like to thank the National Science Foundation for its  
generous support and advocacy of NSDL as the NSF digital library of  
science education. This material is based upon work supported by the  
National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0227648, 0424671, and  
0227888. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations  
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not  
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.




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