Digital Library for Earth System Education

http://www.dlese.org/library/index.jsp

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is a distributed community effort involving educators, students, and scientists working together to improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth system at all levels. DLESE resources include electronic materials for both teachers and learners, such as lesson plans, maps, images, data sets, visualizations, assessment activities, curriculum, online courses, and much more. The National Science Foundation provided funding for the development of DLESE which is now operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Computational and Information Systems Laboratory and the NCAR Library on behalf of the education community.

DLESE exhibits the geosciences collection of the National Science Digital Library. It contains more than 13,000 items for teaching earth system education in a variety disciplines. Searching DLESE is easy. Users can browse by entering keywords about the topic in the search box. As a result, users can get descriptions of materials that match the topic; the metadata includes not only descriptions of materials, but Grade level, Resource Type and Subject. These descriptions can help users decide which resource best fits their needs. Users can then follow the link to the resource itself. In addition, after typing keywords, users can refine their search by selecting additional criteria for grade level, resource type, standards, or collections. At the same time, the online collection also provides options to clear selections. Furthermore, the digital collection allows users to browse the entire DLESE collection by subject area, resource type, or grade level and find out more about resources in reviewed and themed collections. “New resources” help users to examine the resources most recently added to the library.

“For educators” menu helps educators optimize the use of DLESE resources and services. This section includes three parts: “K-12 area”, “Teaching with data”, and “Evaluation & assessment”. Each of three parts provides rich external links to connect to the larger educational community. “News and Opportunities” menu provides a platform to share more information about news, Grant, Conference, Workshops etc.

Like many National STEM Digital Library collections, the audience of the website includes educators, students, scientists and individuals interested in Earth System.