As budgets get tighter and educational requirements grow broader, it's become more difficult to find science and math databases that won't devour the entire library budget. However, there's one digital database that provides standards-based instructional resources, K-12 lesson plans, digital downloads, streaming video, and 2.0 collaborative tools for math and science and, best of all, it's free.

Grade K-12+

Cost Free

The Big Picture The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is a collection of Web sites and other online resources, which have been vetted for use with students from elementary through college level. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the resource was launched as an internal concept paper for the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education in 1995. NSF released a 1996 report about ways to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and recommended establishing a national digital library. Since 2000, more than 200 projects have been funded to create collections, services, and tools for teachers and learners, and perform targeted research into digital libraries and their application to education.

As teachers and librarians gather student resources in these subject areas, NSDL plays an important part in the support of STEM education, serving as a resource repository, a provider of services and tools, a locus of digital library research, and as a scaffold for collaboration—building and expanding partnerships and collaborative opportunities.

NSDL offers workshops, seminars, and presentations to various audiences, addressing the use of digital resources and dynamic educational tools for the classroom. Through its network of partners and leadership in digital library use and development, NSDL provides opportunities for professional development for teachers, faculty, and library developers, as well as an advisory role for national education issues.

Through ongoing efforts, NSDL professional development programs also include podcasting, current information and materials related to workshops and presentations, and other resources supporting the needs of NSDL's audiences. Alternatively, outreach materials are made available for anyone interested in engaging teacher leaders, staff developers, administrators, and others who can help extend the work of NSDL to their staff, colleagues, and students. For more information about NSDL professional development, contact Susan Van Gundy, NSDL Director of Education and Strategic Partnerships or Robert Payo, NSDL Education and Outreach Specialist.

Look & Feel Upon first glance, the NSDL site doesn't appear to be a source that might be useful to K-12 educators. Aside from the navigation banner on the left-hand side of the page, which offers a link to K-12 resources, a site visitor might not fully explore the vast wealth of available content. But take a closer look, and you'll quickly discover that this is no ordinary science site.

A simple search box is available at the top of the Web page, while an "Advanced Search" link appears in the left-hand navigation banner. Users may also browse the collection, select specific resources by age group, or read "News and Information" relating to science and math, participate in NSDL by providing resources or becoming involved with the online community of learners, or access professional development opportunities.

By selecting the resources link, users will find the portal to three different areas of instruction: "K-12 Teachers," "Librarians," and "Higher Education." Kudos to NSDL for identifying one of the major components for academic success—the librarian. By providing this specific link within the resources module, media specialists can quickly locate specific topics, which can be used to correlate the classroom content to information literacy skills taught during the research process. Also available within this resource page are special links to science education blogs; an NSDL wiki; a widget to allow librarians to link the NSDL resources from the library's Web page for faster research; outreach materials to promote the site to teachers, parents, and students; and even the MARC record to upload to the school library catalog, allowing students and teachers to locate resources available within the digital library while searching the media center's online catalog.

There's the NSDL Pathways link, which provides specific resources on one particular topic or subject area within science and math. Take, for example, the "Middle School Portal: Math and Science Pathways." Both areas are covered as individual pathways, providing lesson plans, instructional content, games, and hundreds of vetted resources tied to the national standards. A Forensic Science wiki as well as a Reading Comprehension Strategies in Science wiki will also help educators gather ideas, collaborate with other science and math instructors, and share resources.

All of these tools are contained in just one area within the Librarian's Pathway link; there are 14 different pathways available for exploration and discovery.

How it Works In navigating this jammed-packed library, you should first view the online PDF of the presentation made for K-12 educators about NSDL and the purpose of digital libraries themselves. This presentation provides a brief overview of the included resources and explains why the NSDL can be better for student research than Google.

Then educators can visit the "Professional Development—Outreach Materials" page and the "K-12 Useful Projects" links to quickly get an overview of what is available. Resources for school librarians can assist in correlating digital resources with print resources for instruction. Other examples of projects and partnership links are also available from the "Outreach Materials" page.

To better understand how the science and math curriculum builds upon itself throughout the K-12 years, educators can explore the NSDL Science Literacy Maps to find resources that relate to specific instructional content. By opening this interactive map, teachers and librarians can find NSDL material relevant to the concepts being taught, as well as information about related American Association for the Advancement of Science Project 2061 Benchmarks and National Science Education Standards.

For teachers or librarians needing a little refresher on specific content, the NSDL "K-6 Science Refreshers" page contains interactive tutorials, diagrams, articles, and other materials to enhance content knowledge. By selecting the grade level range of interest and the area of science instruction being taught (such as earth science, astronomy, life science, or physical science) teachers can quickly access what they need for instruction, review, or exploration. Additional resources and teaching and learning tools are also available via "Science Refreshers."

In addition to the online print resources, NSDL also offers an iTunes U link, which provides additional resources in both audio and video format, also available for downloading free of charge to a computer or an iPod. Resources from the NSDL iTunes U collection can then be used within the classroom by a teacher (by connecting a video iPod to a television or a computer to an LCD projector).

Finally, users can explore all of the collections available; search for new content added each week; or simply search the "K-12 Educators" database for a lesson plan.

For example, within the "Advanced" area in the navigation panel on the left-hand side of the home page, I selected "K-12 Educators," then typed the term "planets" into the search box. I then selected the "Grades 3–5" box, and chose my format: interactive resources. The results were: 1,289 possible interactive resources for elementary students on the subject of planets.

When I select the first topic listed, "Planets Change Their Positions," I was directed to a list of interactive resources (41 specifically designed for students in grades 3–5). The top of the resource page includes the benchmark for this instructional objective. It reads: "Planets change their positions against the background of the stars" and includes a list of each site link for this benchmark. In addition to the benchmarks, NSDL also provides the national standards directly related to the instructional content (if available) to assist educators in lesson planning and librarians with curriculum mapping of digital content to information literacy skills.

For Students and Teachers Educators will be most impressed with the extensive content available within NSDL, along with the ability to search for resources directly related to the national standards for math and science. Students can use many of the resources for research assignments, as well as for exploration or entertainment—so teachers and librarians should consider using the NSDL widget on their library or classroom sites for easier access to those resources.

Unique aspects within NSDL include the wikis, the blogs, and an area called "Expert Voices," a science and math blog, which connects educators with individuals who are working to compile and update NSDL for students at every level of education. Through the "sciencegeekgirl" blog, users can learn more about classroom teaching, experiments, and new developments in science. Its author, Stephanie Chasteen, provides readers with her insights into science while working to develop the types of resources needed by K-12 educators and librarians.

Finally, users who are interested in getting the most from NSDL will be happy to know about the Brown Bag webinars, which are archived to help educators explore related concepts, ideas, and instructional methods within the classroom.

Report Card We all know that the best things in life are often not free. But thanks to funding by the National Science Foundation, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) provides a wealth of online resources for use in the K-12 classroom free of charge. For librarians and classroom teachers searching for exemplary lessons in science and math, NSDL offers exceptional resources for classroom instruction while also providing educators with lessons that directly correlate to national standards in science and math. There is little doubt that this digital resource for K-12 science outshines the rest by providing quality educational resources accessible to everyone. As a result, the National Science Digital Library earns nothing less than an A+.

CORRECTION: In our January 2010 Digital Resources column (pp. 64–66), the Web site and phone number for Awe Literacy Station were incorrect. The correct Web address is www.awe-net.com and the correct phone number is 888-293-0272.