State Initiatives Regarding Electronic or Open-Source Textbooks (PDF; 560 KB)
A growing number of states are using legislation as a means of enabling the use of electronic or open-source textbooks. This ECS StateNote examines the differences between e-textbooks and open-source textbooks and takes a look at related action in several states.
See also: Exemplary State Online Resources for Students, Career Explorers and Adult Learners (PDF; 60 KB)
Source: Education Commission of the States
Energy Explained
From e-mail:
Energy Explained , a new web portal launched today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), celebrates Energy Awareness Month with the most comprehensive energy education resource available from the U.S. Government.
The site explains where gasoline comes from, what determines the price of electricity, how much renewable energy the United States uses, and hundreds of other energy topics.
“Energy touches us in many ways every day, from the electricity that lights our homes to the fuel we use in our cars,” said EIA Administrator Richard Newell. “Energy Explained uses plain language and clear graphics to help explain a sometimes complex, but vital subject.”
Energy Explained allows easy navigation between major energy topics:
- What Is Energy?
- Use of Energy
- Energy and the Environment
- Nonrenewable Energy Sources
- Renewable Energy Sources
- Secondary Energy Sources
Source: Energy Information Administration
Last Friday we posted an item saying to expect an announcement (soon) from Wolfram|Alpha announcing a new web site for students and teachers. We also said that plans were in the works for a webcast aimed at that audience.
Well, that was fast. Today, the news is officially out. Here are some of the details.
First, the permanent new web site for educators (K-12 and Higher Ed) and students is now live online at: homeworkday.wolframalpha.com
On Homeworkday.Wolfrmam teachers will be able to contribute and discuss ideas and share lesson plans, screencasts, and online video. There are also sections for Higher Ed students as well as K-12 students.
Currently, in the educators section, there’s a link to a page where questions can be s†ubmitted and videos uploaded for the Homework Day Webcast?
What webcast?
On Wednesday, October 21, 2009 (the start time is TBA), Wolfram|Alpha founder Steven Wolfram, will lead a multi-hour webcast for students, parents, and teachers. The event will not only feature Wolfram but also scholars, subject experts, and members of the Wolfram Alpha team.
According to the company:
The goal of Homework Day is to broadly share how students and educators are using Wolfram|Alpha in K-12 and college education and to demonstrate the advantages of using this free site not only to solve specific problems, but to inspire students to probe subject matter further and promote deeper understanding of fundamental concepts.
The Homework Day webcast on October 21st will feature:
+ step-by-step lessons that will give everyone the ability to use Wolfram|Alpha to tackle problems in a variety of subjects, including math, science, engineering, health and nutrition,
English, history, economics, and many more.+ Content and segments tailored to specific age groups
+ Ideas and examples for how to make subjects like math and science more engaging and relevant to students
+ Live interviews and demonstrations by educators who are already using Wolfram|Alpha in their classrooms
+ Conversations with guest participants who will further discuss the role of technology in education
Finally, there is a Homework Day Facebook page. The event will also make use of the W|A Twitter feed.
Cool stuff. Will do our best to keep you posted with updates about Home Work Day that come from Wolfram|Alpha.
(more…)
YouTube EDU, the Web site for video channels from universities, has recently added content from institutions in Europe and Israel.
Forty-five colleges and universities from those areas, including the University of Cambridge and distance-learning institutions like the Open University of Catalonia, now have channels on the site.
Source: Wired Campus
Over 12,000 images from various collections of rare books, manuscripts, papyri, photographs and sheet music are available for your viewing. Each collection has its own web site that is unrestricted in the interests of knowledge and learning.
You can learn more about each collection by beginning with this page.
Each “about” page also contains a direct link to that specific collection. 17 collections are listed.
Direct links to to the search interfaces for some of the collections are also available (via a drop down menu on the home page).
Source: SCETI (from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries)
These glossaries are from the Spanish Language Style Guide from WebContent.gov.
+ English-Spanish Glossary of Federal Agencies, Officials and Laws
+ Frequently Mistranslated English Terms
+ Names of US States and Territories (in English and Spanish)
+ Spanish Health Care Terms in the United States (in English and Spanish)
+ Spanish Information Technology Terms (in English and Spanish)
Resource of the Week: 50 Free Ivy-League Lectures on the Economy
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Another one of our serendipitous finds, this collection comes to you from Online Classes.org, which regularly features nice topical collections of lectures, tips, hacks, etc., via its blog.
The economy has taken central stage in world news for the past few years due to rapidly failing markets the world over. Even with so much attention focused on economic issues if you’re not familiar with the field, or simply want a more in-depth look at things, it can be hard to follow just what’s going on. These lectures, given by scholars from some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States and around the world can help give you that foundation of knowledge and help you better understand the financial crisis that’s been building over the past few years.
If you follow business and economic news, you will recognize the names of some professors here. The lectures, which also include panel discussions, are grouped by category:
+ General Economics — examples:
+ Understanding the Economic Crisis — examples:
+ Proposed Solutions to the Economic Crisis — examples:
+ Future of the Economy — examples:
+ International — examples:
+ Business Focused — examples:
Depending on the individual lecture, the links will take you either to the university websites or iTunes U. A few open up as direct links to media (e.g., QuickTime).
The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) has numerous varied and unique collections of Middle East images. This visual material includes photographic prints, negatives, albums, book illustrations, posters, architectural drawings, and cartoons. The majority of images were created between 1840 and 1970, although some earlier and later materials are also available.
The images portray a broad geographic area from Algiers in North Africa to Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan. The collections are particularly strong in coverage of Turkey, Israel, the West Bank (the Palestinian territories), Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Central Asia. Many images of Iran, Iraq, and North Africa, including Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, can be found along with some images of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states such as Kuwait and Bahrain.
[Snip]
The Middle East visual materials came to P&P through copyright deposit, gift, and purchase, and today total about 75,000 items. [Our Emphasis] As of 2009, most of these have images or descriptive information available in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) Researchers can view original materials, including pictures not yet digitized, in the P&P Reading Room. We recommend that patrons first search PPOC and consult a librarian before coming on site to do research.
Sections of the overview include:
+ Subject Overview
+ Search Tips (very useful)
+ Other Places to Look for Middle East Images
+ Bibliography
+ Online Resources
Access the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)
Over 1.2 digitized images (and growing) in this database. The database is not limited to only Middle East imagery. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time here. This is a resources to share with library/info center users. It’s also great for educators.
Source: Prints and Photographs Division (P&P), Library of Congress
We’ve learned that later this month Wolfram|Alpha will conduct a webcast aimed at both students and educators (K-12 and Higher Ed.) and calling it “Homework Day.” The program will be led by W|A founder, Steven Wolfram and will feature stories and demonstrations about how “Alpha” can be best used by both groups to do certain types of online work.
Prior to “Homework Day,” Wolfram|Alpha will “go live” with a new “specialty” web site designed for use by both students and educators.
More in the next few days.
The guide contains both print and Internet resources. You’ll find:
+ Early Works and Compilations
+ Works About Individual Inventors
Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology, and Business Division, Library of Congress
NOTE: The site described below is very impressive. It not only contains useful text and links but also images, sounds and video. However, the video is ONLY available in the United Kingdom. The audio of animal sounds and locations is available to everyone. For those of you outside the UK, don’t let the lack of video stop you from visiting and using this site.
Caught at night with infrared cameras, deep underwater with huge floodlights, and under microscopes which distinguish different sorts of microbe, the BBC’s Wildlife Finder is the product of years of planning – and dreaming. Technology and funding have finally made possible the corporation’s ambition to give its spectacular natural history photography and film a permanent global audience.
Starting with 370 animals, including four octopuses and a solitary starfish, the databank of clips and still pictures will be reinforced on a daily basis. BBC staff are combing through hundreds of wildlife programmes, from spectaculars such as Planet Earth to regional TV news items, to create an unprecedented collection. Early stars in terms of hits online include Darwin’s frog, a tiny resident of forests in Chile, which gives birth through the mouth of the male. The process is repeated in slow motion – another feature of the archive’s ability to spy on Earth’s wild creatures to an unprecedented extent.
[Snip]
Pages also contain content from Animal Diversity Web and Wikipedia, scientific classification, and related web sites. Here’s an example.
Much More in the Official Press Release
Source: The Guardian and BBC News Release
Hat Tip: Library StuffSee Also: Recently Released: BBC Earth Explorers
From the News Release:Natural history fans can enjoy the excitement of wildlife filming on location from their armchairs by following production teams working on future series…
Today the Anne Frank House is launching the official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube containing existing and new images about Anne Frank. These include excerpts from interviews with Otto Frank and witnesses like Miep Gies, as well as [our emphasis] previews of the virtual museum of the Anne Frank House, soon to be opened to the public. With the Anne Frank Channel on YouTube, people around the world will be able to explore the life and significance of Anne Frank through unique images.
The channel opens with the only existing film footage of Anne Frank, made during the wedding of her neighbor on 22 July 1941. In another film, Nelson Mandela talks about the strength he derived from Anne Frank’s diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island. The channel will also contain a series of new interviews with people who knew Anne Frank personally.
And there’s more. On YouTube, visitors can follow the development of the virtual museum, which will soon enable people to visit the Anne Frank House online. Visitors can watch the ‘making of’ the online secret annex in 3D. The virtual museum will be launched on 28 April 2010 as part of the 50-year anniversary celebrations of the Anne Frank House museum.
Access the Official Anne Frank YouTube Channel
Source: Anne Frank Museum
Hat Tip: Library Stuff
$6.6 Million in Striving Readers Grants Awarded to help Struggling Readers
Eight states will receive $6.6 million in Striving Readers grants to improve the literacy skills of struggling adolescent readers, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced today. The purpose of the Striving Readers program is to raise reading achievement in Title I-eligible middle and high schools where significant numbers of students are faced with the challenges of poverty and reading below grade level.
…
The programs funded by the Striving Readers grants include a range of research-based adolescent literacy projects serving diverse populations. Each program includes a rigorous evaluation conducted by independent researchers. The president’s 2010 budget request would nearly double the funding for activities supported by Striving Readers to $70.4 million. In addition, the president’s budget request includes $300 million for new Early Literacy Grants to school districts to test a variety of strategies designed to improve children’s reading comprehension in the elementary grades.Grantees may use the Striving Readers funds for activities such as interventions for middle and high school-aged students to improve basic reading skills, motivation, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension using research-based programs; for professional development aligned with scientifically based reading research; for valid and reliable reading assessments; and for the design and implementation of a rigorous evaluation.
Source: U.S. Department of Education
See Also: IMLS Awards National Leadership Grants to 51 Institutions: $17.9 Million Distributed (9/24/2009)
Pick and choose among several dozen feeds on this page, to create your own individual aggregated feed. We love this idea.
via Garrett Eastman, Librarian, Rowland Institute at Harvard.
Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
The National Museum of the American Indian — the 16th Smithsonian Institution museum — which opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2004, is the first U.S. national museum dedicated solely to Native Americans. And we think teachers, scholars, librarians and researchers everywhere will be interested in the excellent collection search tool available on the museum’s website.
Welcome to NMAI Collections Search, which includes a representative sample of NMAI’s object and historic photo collections. Each item is accompanied by basic, standardized information. To become familiar with the site, start with one of the Collection Highlight tours or search the website using this page or the tabs at the top.
Our goal is to include as many items as possible, but objects and photos will be added only when NMAI staff have reviewed the accuracy of accompanying information. Items identified as culturally sensitive or which are no longer part of NMAI’s collections will not appear on this website. Please contact NMAI about providing additional information or correcting any errors.
Records for many objects include their original catalog cards, which often date to the early 1900s. These cards may include tribal names and terminology considered unacceptable or offensive today but they have been included to illustrate the information that originally accompanied the objects.
Five different search options are available:
There are different functions available depending upon which search option you’re using, but under all of them are check boxes that allow you to restrict your search to any combination of the following: archaeological Items, ethnographic Items, modern and contemporary arts, photographic collections. Or you can just check “All of the above categories” if you want to cast the widest net possible. Search help is just a click away.
We enjoyed browsing the collection highlights area at the bottom right of the page, which included such categories of interest as beadwork and toys and games.
Bibliographers and catalogers will be interested in the thesaurus:
The following reference lists represent NMAI controlled terminologies in their respective hierarchies. Use these reference lists if you are in doubt about what terms are used or how they should be entered for searches. If you cannot quickly locate a term you may use your browser’s “Find” (”Ctrl” + “F”) option combination to see if a term is listed. When you click on a term in a Reference List, a search is automatically performed across all applicable collections categories.
Even if this is not a subject area of interest to you, the site as a whole is well worth browsing just because it’s so…elegantly done.
40 Books About Sexuality That You Have to Read
As the new school year heats up, so does the public debate about sex education. What do we teach teenagers about sex, and what do we leave them to figure out on their own? If we can agree that few teens learn about sexuality in an accurate, age-appropriate, and comprehensive way, then where does that leave adults who came through the same school systems they did? Many of us are still full of questions that we aren’t quite sure how to articulate. Few can claim that they’ve figured sex — and its social influence — out.
If you want to graduate to the next level of sexual health, pleasure, and social awareness, now’s your chance. Get yourself schooled with a crash course in sex ed for adults. From orgasms to organs, from contraceptives to court decisions, look to the reading list below for the can’t-miss books and articles about sex.
Source: AlterNet
From the Scope Section of the Document:
Science matters. Almost no one disagrees. Agreement on how science is taught, the curriculum designed, the method used, and the measure of literacy achieved is quite another matter. Almost everyone has an opinion or suggestion. This compilation provides references and resources that highlight methods, curricula, standards, and strategies that promote learning in the nation’s elementary, middle, and secondary schools. Many of the books and resources list activities and projects designed to engage and capture the imagination of the K-12 student. Some provide incentives and novel ideas for science teachers, methods of integrating standards into the classroom, or new ways of making connections between mathematics and science, looking at physics, or exploring the environment. Other materials seek to inspire and enthuse both teacher and student, to encourage further study and/or careers in the sciences, or to advance science literacy through the school into the community.
This present guide complements LC Science Tracer Bullet 90-5, The Crisis in Science Education, and TB 75-5, Science Education in America. The latter provides an historical overview. Not meant to be a comprehensive bibliography, this is designed–as the name of the series implies–to put the reader “on target.”
Materials in the Tracer Bullet Include:
+ Introductions to the Topic
+ Subject Headings
+ Basic Texts
+ Additional Titles
+ Specialized Titles
+ Related Titles
+ Handbooks
+ Government Publications
+ Technical Reports
+ Selected Technical Reports
+ Dissertations
+ Selected Dissertations
+ Abstracting and Indexing Services
+ Journals
+ Representative Journal Articles
+ Selected Materials
+ Additional Sources of Information
+ Selected Internet Resources
See Also: Access the Entire Online Collection of Science Tracer Bullets
Source: Science Reference Services, Science, Technology & Business Division, Library of Congress
We’ve mentioned several resources to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month on ResourceShelf. You can find the posts here and here.
Now, we’ve just learned that Gale/Cengage is offering at GaleSchools.com several free items to celebrate HHM.
The page of free resources is accessible here and includes:
+ Read biographies of significant Hispanic individuals
+ Take a Hispanic culture quiz
+ Follow a timeline of events that helped shape the Hispanic culture
+ Explore Hispanic holidays, musical genres and other topics with information culled from Gale resources
+ Visit other pertinent sites and find suggestions for further readings
Source: Gale/Cengate (via E-Mail)
Subscribe to the
ResourceShelf
Newsletter »
Also check out DocuTicker, a compendium of 'grey literature' (reports published by government agencies, think tanks, research institutes and other public interest groups) available for free on the web.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Education category.