Online Science Literacy Maps Add Value to Digital Resources
Looking for just the right video clip to help students understand what causes the seasons? Or an interactive simulation of the phases of the moon that can engage science center or museum visitors? Or do you
Online Science Literacy Maps Add Value to Digital Resources
Looking for just the right video clip to help students understand what causes the seasons? Or an interactive simulation of the phases of the moon that can engage science center or museum visitors? Or do you need high-quality classroom activities and assessment items that are well aligned to science standards? With more than 131,000 resources available at no cost, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) has much to offer science educators whether they work in formal or informal science learning settings.
Developed with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSDL provides access to multiple collections of online resources for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and research. The NSDL resources are developed and contributed by universities, museums, libraries, research labs, federal agencies, professional societies, and reputable commercial content providers. To support contributors and users, the NSDL website provides a variety of tools and services, including the NSDL Strand Map Service which generates the Science Literacy Maps, a unique online tool based on the conceptual strand maps published in AAAS Project 2061’s Atlas of Science Literacy.
Over the past year, AAAS Project 2061 has been engaged in a major outreach effort supported by a grant from NSF to help foster more effective use of the Science Literacy Maps and the digital resources available through the NSDL collections. The work has focused in particular on helping existing and new NSDL users take full advantage of the rich information embedded in the maps to connect science concepts, standards, and NSDL educational resources.
Using the NSDL Science Literacy Maps
Like the maps in the print Atlas, each of the NSDL Science Literacy Maps displays the knowledge students need at each grade level to make progress toward understanding a “big idea” such as gravity, the interdependence of life, or plate tectonics. The maps also shed light on the misconceptions that students often have about many science ideas. Derived from Project 2061’s Benchmarks for Science Literacy, which recommends specific science, mathematics, and technology learning goals for students in grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12, the Science Literacy Maps allow users to click on a concept displayed on a map to find NSDL resources that are relevant to that concept, along with information about related benchmarks and standards.
To help users get the most out of the Science Literacy Maps and the NSDL resources linked to them, AAAS Project 2061 has been offering training workshops and webinars for science educators. Face-to-face workshops have been held at a number of general interest meetings and disciplinary conferences of groups such as the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the Florida Association of Science Supervisors (FASS), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), the National Science Education Leadership Association (NSELA), and the UTeach program. The AAAS Project 2061 team has also conducted webinars, including one for current NSDL users and one for the Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS).
- Workshop participants at the UTeach Institute 2012 in Austin, TX
May 30, 2012
“We’ve been very pleased with the welcome we’ve received from all of these organizations,” says Francis Molina, an Associate Program Director at AAAS Project 2061 and principal investigator for this effort. “It’s quite clear that there is a real demand out there—not just for digital resources but also for some guidance on how to select and use them effectively within the context of students' growth of understanding.” Across all of the workshops and webinars, the project has trained close to 200 educators who have a varie