[Whiteboard-subscribers] Whiteboard Report #128, 1/9/08

[Brad Edmondson]

NSDL WHITEBOARD REPORT #128

January 9, 2008

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.

NEWS

New Home Page For Chemistry Pathway

http://chemeddl.org
Live on the web – it’s the Periodic Table!  The new home page of  
Chemistry Pathway includes a point-and-click guide to each element,  
along with several other features that make web resources on  
chemistry easier to use. “ChemEd DLib will create new communities  
centered around different educational levels,” says Pathway PI John  
Moore.  “It will provide resources in different sub-disciplines of  
chemistry and different pedagogical areas, such as problem-based  
learning.”  The new site makes digital resources on chemistry much  
easier to find, and it gives a prominent position to the award- 
winning “Chemistry Comes Alive!” videos, with their slow-motion  
presentations of fires, explosions, and other chemical reactions.

ARL to Educators:  Go Ahead, Mash Up

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/educationalfairusetoday.pdf
Three recent court decisions should reassure educators who wonder  
whether it is legal for them to re-use copyrighted material.  In a  
paper released last month by the Association of Research Libraries  
(ARL), Jonathan Band explains recent legal decisions that permit  
extensive copying and display of copyrighted material on commercial  
sites because the uses involve “repurposing” and  
“recontextualization.” In Perfect 10 V. Amazon.com, the Ninth Circuit  
of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a thumbnail-sized image of a  
copyrighted photograph is a “transformative use” and is therefore  
protected by the fair use privilege by the copyright act. Similar  
rulings were recently handed down in favor of an artist who re-used  
portions of a fashion photograph, and a publisher who reproduced  
copyrighted posters in a book. Band’s paper  “Educational Fair Use  
Today” is available for free download at the ARL’s website.

Sullivan Honored by Engineering Academy

http://www.nae.edu/nae/awardscom.nsf/weblinks/JMAN-7A4L7N?OpenDocument
Jacquelyn Sullivan, co-PI of Engineering Pathway, has been awarded  
the 2006 Bernard M. Gordon Prize by the National Academy of  
Engineering.  The $500,000 prize was awarded to Sullivan and co- 
founder Larry Carlson for their 15-year-old Integrated Teaching and  
Learning Program, which has become a national model for K-16  
engineering education. “The recognition will help our program  
springboard into the future,” says Sullivan.  “We will learn more  
about how youth form relationships with engineering at an early age,  
and how hands-on, authentic learning can connect young men and women  
(especially those under-represented in engineering) with the  
profession on a personal level.”

Landmark Victory for Open Access

http://www.arl.org/sparc
A three-year lobbying effort by the Open Access movement bore fruit  
the day after Christmas, when President Bush signed an appropriations  
bill containing a provision that requires the US National Institutes  
of Health (NIH) to provide open public access to all of the research  
it funds.  The victory is not complete, according to a January 7 post  
on the website of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources  
Coalition (SPARC).  New NIH research does not have to be published  
for a year, and the Association of American Publishers has vowed to  
fight.  But the new rule is the first Open Access mandate for a major  
public funding agency in the US, so it’s a landmark.

Teachers Domain Seeks Campus Input

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=H45G6RLV2NEtJOMg6OlCNw_3d_3d
WGBH-Boston asks post-secondary faculty and students to share their  
ideas on how the Teachers' Domain Rich-Media Pathways site can be  
made more useful to post-secondary audiences. The survey is the first  
phase of work on a supplementary grant to create a College Edition of  
Teachers' Domain. It is open until Friday, January 18, and it takes  
about 30 minutes to complete. The more input the survey receives, the  
more helpful the College Edition should be, so please visit and share  
your thoughts.

Spring 2008 NSDL/NSTA Web Seminars

http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/webseminars.aspx
Two scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography will  
present “Earth in Reverse: Magnetic Wiggles on the Ocean Floor,” the  
second web seminar in the spring 2008 series sponsored by the  
National Science Teachers Association and NSDL.  The January 29  
seminar on ocean geoscience will be followed by  “Flower Bulb  
Science” on February 7, “Under the Microscope; Using Images to  
Enhance Inquiry” on March 11, “Using Online Life Science Resources in  
Middle School Classrooms” on April 1, “Polar Geography” on May 27,  
and “Enlightening Experiences with Energy” on June 12.  The seminars  
are designed for science teachers in grades 7 through 12, and pre- 
registration is required.

BOOKMARKS

Call for Proposals: Fedora Users' Group

http://www.fedora-commons.org/about/news.php#call
Fedora Commons invites proposals for the next Fedora User Group  
Meeting, to be held in conjunction with the Open Repositories 2008  
conference, April 1-4 at the University of Southampton, UK.  
Developers, researchers and practitioners are invited to submit  
proposals for 20-minute presentations describing their experiences  
implementing and using Fedora, or developing software associated with  
Fedora. The deadline for online submissions of a title and an  
abstract of up to 400 words is February 4th, 2008.

Fedora 3.0 Available in Beta

http://www.fedora-commons.org
The 12th release of the popular Fedora software is now available for  
testing. The first beta version of Fedora 3.0 featuring a Content  
Model Architecture (CMA), an integrated structure for persisting and  
delivering the essential characteristics of digital objects in  
Fedora, is available at the Fedora Commons website. The Fedora CMA  
plays a central role in the Fedora architecture, in many ways forming  
the over-arching conceptual framework for future development of  
Fedora Repositories.

How Journals Will Move Online

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/Electronic_Transition.pdf
Small academic journals face a difficult transition, according to  
report posted on the web site of the Association of Research  
Libraries (ARL) last month. Publishers and libraries are struggling  
with the demands of maintaining journals in both print and online  
formats, and the greatest pressure is on the smallest journals.   
Richard Johnson and Judy Luther interviewed two dozen librarians and  
publishers to identify the trends driving journals to electronic-only  
publishing and the barriers that are slowing change.   Their report,  
“The E-only Tipping point for Journals,” is available for free  
download at the ARL’s website.

UMD’s New DL Features World’s Fairs

http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/worldsfairs/exhibits.jsp
The new digital repository of the University of Maryland Libraries is  
based on the Fedora platform and uses Lucene for indexing and Helix  
for streaming video. The repository features almost 2,500 digital  
objects across a wide variety of topics, with new objects added  
monthly and cross-collection discovery enabled through a common  
metadata scheme and controlled vocabulary.   One browse-worthy  
collection explores the archives of Jim Henson, creator of the  
Muppets; another (above) displays materials from 32 World’s Fairs and  
Exhibitions that have been held between 1851 and 1970.

INSPIRATION

Top Conversation-Starter of 2007

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com
“Did You Know?” originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation  
made by teacher Karl Fisch to a faculty meeting at Arapahoe High  
School in Centennial, Colorado. Fisch wanted to make his colleagues  
aware of the scope and speed of economic and knowledge transitions  
across the world, and he also wanted to stimulate conversations about  
how educators should respond.  “We need to reexamine formal education  
as it’s currently being experienced by our students,” he says. “We  
owe it to our children to do everything we can to improve.” The  
presentation was posted on the Web in February 2007. Eleven months  
later, a professionally updated version has been seen by at least 10  
million people on the web and at conferences, workshops, training  
institutes, and other venues.

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 research news and notes of interest. Please limit  
these items to 200 words 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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