About This Project
- Providing ready access to modern scientific results in contexts that support a variety of instructional activities;
- Addressing high priority goals of the National Science Foundation, by leveraging existing investments in people, tools and ideas; specific focus areas include support of instructional activities in Earth system science, diversity in the geosciences, and using the new geo-cyberinfrastructure;
- Exploring multiple ways in which digital library technologies can be used to aggregate resources and the experience of the community to enhance teaching and learning in the Earth sciences; and
- Encouraging resource contributions from the community to expand the existing collections.
The primary goals of the DLESE Community Service Center are to:
- increase the current resource user and contributor base to include greater numbers of K-12, informal, and college educators and students;
- diversify the DLESE user and contributor base to include rich and robust representation of ethnic, cultural, and differently-abled groups;
- improve the ability of users and contributors to easily find, adapt, and effectively use high quality digital resources in their classrooms, laboratories, and communities; and
- demonstrate how DLESE can support community activity addressing issues in geoscience education.
This web content is available for use in the geoscience community, and also serves as models to help guide the development of additional on-line resources. We welcome your feedback, and please consider contributing additional materials to this website.
Resources for Educators
This collection illustrates a number of innovative approaches explored by the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) Community Center at Montana State University to support integration of research and education using digital library technologies. The goal was to develop seamless connections between scientific discoveries and effective instructional practices at the undergraduate level.
These modules draw from and contribute to other instructional programs supported by the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (e.g. the National Science Digital Library (NSDL); Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement-National Dissemination (CCLI-ND) program). All modules include thematic collections of on-line resources that support teaching and learning about the topic and suggested instructional activities.
For examples of using student research in introductory geoscience classrooms, visit Starting Point's Student Research in the Introductory Geosciences Classroom collection.
Collections and their Creators:
The following sites were designed and developed with support from the MSU Geoscience Education Web Development Team. The site in its entirety is hosted by the Science Education Resource Center, Cathy Manduca, Director and Sean Fox, Technical Director.
- All Things Cretaceous - Jen Aschoff
- Exploring the Yellowstone Ecosystem - Denny Capps
- Environmental Health Risk Assessment - Laurie Cantwell
- Teaching with Hurricane Katrina: the physiography, climate, storm and impact - Laurie Cantwell
- Advances in Paleontology - Ewan Wolff
- Impacts of Resource Development on Native American Lands - Erin Klauk
- Geoscience Education in the New Cyberinfrastructure -Kent Ratajeski
- Teaching Mineralogy with Crystal Structure Databases and Visualization Software - Kent Ratajeski
- The Montana-Yellowstone Geologic Field Guide Database - Kent Ratajeski
- The Montana Geoscience Data Project - Falene Petrik
- Microbial Observatories (MO) - George Rice