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With funding from NASA's Astrophysics Division, the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (CEA) at UC Berkeley is sponsoring an eight-month demonstration project for the Science Information Infrastructure. ``Science On-Line (SOL) --- Earth and Space Science for the Classroom'' began in September 1994 and joins the efforts of UC Berkeley's CEA, Lawrence Hall of Science, and UC Museum of Paleontology, with San Francisco's Exploratorium, and Chicago's Adler Planetarium for the purpose of coordinating on-line resources that respond to the needs of K--12 teachers, students, and the general public.
The coordinated resources include on-line science exhibits, virtual museums, cutting-edge NASA images, and NASA data from space and Earth, and focus on teacher-led lesson plan development tapping the unique and up-to-date resources of the Internet to catalyze innovative teaching techniques based on cooperative learning and hands-on activities. These coordinated resources will be formally released on the Internet through Mosaic and the World Wide Web by end of Spring, 1995. An important aspect of the SOL project is a formal evaluation component to be carried out in April/May 1995, when Exploratorium teachers will pilot-test the lesson plans with their own students in a classroom setting.
The SOL demonstration project is being evaluated by a graduate student from UCB's School of Education. Part of the outcome of this evaluation is a set of guidelines or a template that allows for replication of this teacher professional development activity by other partners in the Science Information Infrastructure program. This work has been supported by a NASA Astrophysics Division grant and NASA contract NAS5-29298.
