The Digital Library for Earth System Education: A Community Resource

What Is a Digital Library? A managed environment of multimedia materials in digital form, designed for the benefit of its user population, structured to facilitate access to its contents, equipped with aids to navigate the global network with users and holdings totally distributed, but managed as a coherent whole --Mel Collier, International Symposium on Research, Development, and Practice in Digital Libraries

Numerous initiatives and funding have emerged seeking to change the nature of geoscience education

DLESE Mission “To improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth at all educational levels.” DLESE Strategic Plan

An Earth System Perspective Earth is a complex and dynamic entity: Synergistic physical system of interrelated phenomena Governed by complex processes involving the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere No process or phenomenon occurs in complete isolation from other elements of the system

The DLESE Vision Collections of peer- reviewed teaching and learning resources Interfaces and tools to allow exploration of Earth data sets Services to help users effectively create and use materials

DLESE Operating Principles Community governance and ownership Respond to community input/needs Build a federated, distributed effort Engage users as contributors individuals and formal collections efforts Measure impact on learning

Current Community Engagement Standing committees and organized interest groups User-centered design of library interface based on use cases Resource cataloging and suggestions Includes geoscientists and K-12 educators

Library holdings and components Metadata records for approx 1500 resources, 500 more in process. News and opportunities Cataloging and management tool Cross-cutting issues: diversity, linking research and education Library development documentation

Discovering Resources Using DLESE Discovery only for resources related to Earth system science Resources in DLESE are selected and cataloged by the ESS education community Resources are described in metadata records which enhance discovery and comprehension of the items. DLESE holds metadata records, not the actual web pages.

Metadata includes……… Grade level assignment Resource type (Curriculum, activity, image, data) Technical requirements Geospatial referencing Educational standards (science, geography)

Let’s take a tour………

Simple search

Power search

Full description

End result: Resource

Community Center Services News and Opportunities Post an announcement

lists

Job opportunities

The DLESE Difference: Ongoing development includes Combination of metadata and resource content searching Geospatial referencing and search Search by educational standards Data visualization tools Access to other collections like NASA and Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype

Value of DLESE Promotes broad access to quality geoscience educational resources Supports geoscience literacy goals and Earth system perspectives Integrates research and education through access to Earth systems data Serves as an integrator for community capacity building, leadership, and educational transformation

How can you contribute? Individuals can submit items to the library using a web-based cataloging tool Organized collections efforts DPC hosted instance of the tool Download code and maintain collection independently

Contribute a resource -> Catalog a resource

Guidelines for entering each field

Additional slides

Sample Resource in a Classroom Remote Sensing Using Satellites

How Has DLESE Been Used: Provided “classic” Earth graphics for the classroom Discussion forums to design curriculum and visualizations Increased resource comprehension by teachers Helped resource creators document and manage their own collections

Community Initiatives Proposal Engage the collective strength and creativity of DLESE community Independent Community Solicitation for other core services (collections, community center, data, evaluation) Strategy allows for multiple and flexible initiatives, depending on community interests

VGEE: Example of a 3D visualization environment & curriculum

A VGEE probe

Let’s Search Using Google

Let’s Search Using DLESE

Let’s Search Using Google

Let’s Search Using DLESE