An electronic newsletter for the science education
community
November/December
2005
Project 2061 Digital Library Work
Draws Accolades
An education review panel has given a digital video library
web site that was co-developed by Project 2061 an impressive 4.9
overall rating out of a possible 5. Termed HSDVL
for Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Video Library, the web site
is the result of a collaboration between Project 2061 and
the Science Media Group of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics. The high rating was awarded by
the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online
Teaching (MERLOT), which applauded the site for providing
visitors with access to “more than 1,000 videos that
can be identified by the AAAS Benchmarks for Science
Literacy, the Atlas of Science Literacy, National
Science Education Standards, and/or all state standards.” MERLOT
further noted that “the [site] user can be confident
that this material represents the current state of our knowledge
about teaching and learning based on education research.” The
HSDVL site has also drawn accolades in the International
Communications Film and Video Competition receiving
the silver plaque—the highest awarded for an educational Web
site—at INTERCOM 2005.
Beginning in September, 2002, Project 2061 and the Science
Media Group set out to mine the Center for Astrophysics’ extensive
video collection in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM) learning, specifically reviewing videos
showing teaching in action, materials documenting children's
ideas in science and math, interviews with internationally
prominent researchers in STEM learning, as well as computer
animations of STEM ideas. Project 2061 staff and consultants
evaluated the selected video footage to identify related
Project 2061 benchmarks and also analyzed them for how well
they supported effective teaching and learning using Project
2061’s instructional analysis criteria.
The joint effort by Project 2061 and the Science Media
Group to evaluate and organize videos that can increase
the understanding and teaching of STEM learning goals is
supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through
a two-year grant. In addition to searching by individual
benchmarks, videos in the
HSDVL Web site can be accessed through the National
Science Education Standards, state standards, and interactive
strand maps from Project 2061’s Atlas of Science
Literacy.
Project 2061 has also teamed up with the Maine Mathematics
and Science Alliance on a National Science Digital Library
(NSDL) grant to evaluate approximately one thousand Phenomena
and Representations for the Instruction of Science in Middle
Schools (PRISMS) with the goal of increasing the amount
of pedagogically useful science content available in the
NSDL and other digital collections through the application
of Project 2061's research-based evaluation criteria. Through
its collaborative work with digital libraries, Project 2061
is moving closer to one of its core goals: to identify resources
that can help all students learn the ideas and skills that
are essential to science literacy.
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