Educators looking to put more pizzazz into high school math and science just got a whole lot smarter, thanks to a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Web site called Highlights for High School

The site, launched on November 28, features some of the brainiac university’s most coveted resources, conveniently adapted and categorized to meet secondary school needs.

The site offers more than 2,600 video and audio clips, animations, lecture notes, and assignments taken from MIT’s actual courses, matching the resources to Advanced Placement physics, biology, and calculus curricula. Also included are demonstrations, simulations, and animations, all geared to getting young students excited about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts. And the site's videos illustrate hands-on approaches to teaching these concepts.

"Strength in K–12 math and science will be increasingly important for America if the nation is to continue to lead the innovation economy," said MIT President Susan Hockfield at the site's recent launch.

Thomas Magnanti, former dean of MIT’s engineering school and chair of the committee that developed the site says, "As has been well documented, the U.S. needs to invest more in secondary education, particularly in STEM fields."

An estimated 5,000 high school students nationwide already visit MIT’s Open CourseWare site each month. OpenCourseWare offers free lecture notes, exams and other resources from 1,800 courses offered at the university. Some 31 million people, 60 percent of them outside the U.S., have accessed the site since its 2001 inception.

The new Web site organizes the OCW course materials—from syllabi and lecture notes to assignments and exams—into a format designed to be more accessible to high school teachers and students.