About NSDL
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The National Science Digital Library is a national network dedicated to advancing STEM teaching and learning for all learners and both formal and informal settings, and the locus of activity for the National Science Foundation's National STEM Distributed Learning program. NSDL receives the majority of its funding through the generous support of NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE), Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR).
NSDL advances STEM teaching and learning by providing:
- High quality, interactive resources that help our nation's educators bring cutting-edge, real-world science into their classrooms and stimulate excitement for science in today's digital learners
- Web-based applications that help teachers and learners to optimize their experiences with digital content
- Professional learning opportunities for college faculty, K12 teachers, and other science educators
- Software tools and services to help school districts, museums, educational non-profits and otehr digital learning enterprises to organize, manage, and disseminate digital educational content
- Research-based findings and best practices on teaching and learning with digital content
- Partnerships with STEM stakeholder groups, organizations, and coalitions that promote the dissemination of STEM educational technology use and digital content expertis
Organization
- The NSDL Resource Center (RC) provides partnership building, community support and communications services, outreach and professional development services, and needs and trends analysis supporting best practices development for projects. The NSDL RC is a program hosted at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), in Boulder, Colorado
- NSDL Technical Network Services (TNS) provides software tools and services to help the NSDL and broader education community to organize, manage, and disseminate digital educational content to advance STEM teaching and learning.The NSDL TNS is a partnership between the Digital Learning Science (DLS) program at UCAR, the University of Colorado, and Cornell University
NSDL Community Network
The NSDL community network includes several hundred STEM research and education organizations, providing openly available digital resource collections, services, partnering opportunities, distinct audiences, and connections with multiiple communities of faculty and teacher practice, and student users.
NSDL Pathways are stewards of content and services for specific communities of users. They are education-level or discipline-specific views of NSDL, built by trusted organizations to provide resources, tools, services, and professional development to meet a range of audience needs. NSDL’s Pathways projects alone represent dozens of universities, professional societies, educational foundations, several educational and research organizations, science centers, and two public television stations.
There are fifteen NSDL Pathways projects:
- AMSER - Applied Math and Science Education Repository (community and technical colleges): University of Wisconsin Internet Scout Projects; Merlot; NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects; American Association of Community Colleges; Morrill Solutions
- BEN Pathway - BiosciEdNet Biological Sciences Pathway: Amerian Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a collaborative of 26 other biological sciences professional societies.
- ChemEd DL - Chemistry Education Pathway: University of Wisconsin, Madison; a partnership of the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Chemical Education, the ChemCollective at Carnegie Mellon University
- ComPADRE Physics & Astronomy Pathway - University of Oklahoma; a partnershp of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, Society of Physics Students, American Astronomical Society, and the American Institute of Physics
- CLEAN - Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network Pathway - TERC; in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NOAA); the Science Education Resources Center (SERC) at Carleton College; CIRES at the University of Colorado; National Renewal Energy Laboratory. A newly funded Pathway for climate science literacy, middle school through undergraduate, and informal learners
- CSERD Pathway: Computational Science Education Reference Desk: Shodor
- Ensemble Computing Pathway: Villanova University, and a partnership of Virginia Tech, University of Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, Portland State University, Drexel University, Bentley College, and the Computer Science Teachers Association
- Engineering Pathway, University of California Berkeley; a partnership of UC-Berkeley, the University of Colorado; Colorado School of Mines, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE); Duke University; Oregon State University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; and Virginia Tech
- MathDL - Mathematics Pathway - Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and a partnership of 15 additional mathematical collaborators
- MathPath Pathway for elementary mathematics, newly funded (start January 2010) - Maryland Public Television (MPT)
- MatDL - Materials Digital Library Pathway - Kent State University; Purdue University; National Institute of Standards; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Iowa State University; University of Michigan
- MSP2 - Middle School Portal Math & Science Pathways: Ohio State University; National Middle School Association (NMSA); Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
- TeachingwithData Pathway for quantitative literacy in the social sciences - University of Michigan; a partnership between the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN)
- SMILE Pathway - Science and Math Informal Learning Eductors Pathway - University of California Berkeley; in partnership with the Exploratorium, New York Hall of Science,
- Teachers' Domain Pathway of multimedia resources for K12 and university levels - WGBH
NSDL also includes projects funded by the National Science Foundation to develop and evaluate innovative new applications and serivices and to conduct targeted research on teaching and learning with digital content. See the list current NSDL funded projects (NSF site).