Alexandria, VA -- Today, a national center focused on the geosciences launches the world's most comprehensive and up-to-date online clearinghouse for Earth and space science information and educational resources, ranging from high school curricula and classroom activities to video collections, career resources, and national research reports.
The first such clearinghouse of its scope and type, the Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding's searchable web site http://www.geocntr.org provides the geoscience community, schools, and the general public with an extensive collection of resources and research from reliable science and education organizations.
"Teachers, media, families, and policy-makers should bookmark this site as the starting point for research about Earth and space science education," said Ann Benbow, director of the Center. "We have collected and organized resources that provide a variety of perspectives on important issues, and the site expands daily."
The Center's new site currently provides access to resources from nearly 700 organizations. These include universities, museums, federal and state agencies, media groups, AGI, and its member organizations and publishers. Approximately 2,000 annotated and searchable resource entries are available on the site, and this number includes many collections and galleries, each with hundreds of individual items such as photographs, videos, and presentations.
A sample of materials on the site: Earth science curricula; Earth science classroom activities; Teacher professional development programs; Science-topic presentations; Animation, video collections/still galleries; Virtual field trips; State science/Earth science organizations; Funding sources for teachers; Teaching award information; Earth science outreach programs.
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), the Center's parent organization, is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific professional associations representing more than 250,000 Earth scientists. The Center web site is being launched as part of Earth Science Week, the international celebration of the Earth sciences that is organized by AGI and reaches over 50 million people with geoscience resources and information each year.
AGI's Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding is a unique clearinghouse for Earth Science educational materials, information on "hot topics," geoscience career information, and geoscience educational research. The Center produces and releases national reports on the state of geoscience education, as well as examines implementation of new science education standards.