Water In Africa

The Peace Corps World Wise Schools set out to develop standards-based learning units on how water is used in daily life in Africa. It sent 250 water experience kits (including film and writing prompts) to PC Volunteers in 25 African countries. It used an application process to select seven teachers who would create the units. After teachers received training and resources in curriculum design, they used the 600 photos and hundreds of stories from PC Volunteers, as well as other resources, to develop 24 learning units. Those units, photos, and stories—as well as maps, diagrams, and technical drawings—can help teachers teach language arts, reading, art, and technology.

The Constitution Community

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) formed a partnership with nine teachers to produce 35 online lessons and activities that address Constitutional issues, correlate to national academic standards, and emphasize analysis of primary documents. Lessons are appropriate for students in the upper-elementary grades through college and address a range of issues and events in U.S. history—the American Revolution, the invention of the cotton gin, enforcement of the Alien and Sedition acts, the Civil War, child labor, World War II, Brown v. The Board of Education, the Cold War, and others.

Earth and Space Science Investigations

Goddard Space Flight Center Education Programs (NASA) worked with science teachers to create five investigations (lessons) and to review, pilot test, and finalize 74 investigations on climate, ocean currents, ozone, magnetism in space, solar activity, and more. It worked with teachers also to developed a 155-day course in earth and space science that is being piloted in 5 high schools in Anne Arundel (MD), with plans to expand the course district-wide.

Web de Anza

The National Park Service helped create a web-based study environment to promote historical inquiry into Juan Bautista de Anza and his two 18th-century overland expeditions through what is now northern Mexico, Arizona, and California. More than 10 lessons and units, including student produced multimedia projects, are being developed. A teacher center and a six-step process for historical inquiry were also created. Most lessons are being refined, and all will be online by January 2001.

H.I.P. Pocket Change

The U.S. Mint created a partnership of nine teachers, five numismatic organizations, and more than 20 U.S. Mint staff in designing an educational web site to stir kids' interest in coins, U.S. history, and the Mint. The partnership gathered feedback from teachers and students during the web site design process. The team created fictional characters for their web site, in an effort to help draw children in. For teachers, the web site offers 12 lessons in history, language arts, and math.

Bridging the Watershed

The National Park Service partnered with schools in the Washington, DC metropolitan area to offer high school students opportunities to study real-world science in the national parks. Valuable time was lost when students arrived at Potomac Area National Parks lacking the necessary skills for field visits, so online activities were created to help teachers help students develop those skills prior to visiting. The activities include plant identification, macroinvertebrate identification, and Go Fish, a game that simulates the journey of fish to their spawning ground, complete with perils along the way.

Updating the Lewis and Clark Journals

The Fort Clatsop National Memorial partnered with students and teachers in six states to document today?s views of selected Lewis and Clark journal entries using the methods and standards of 21st century scientists and scholars. The learning community included approximately 650 students and staff in 17 school districts who began serious work in the winter and spring of 2000. Among the topics examined by students: the Teton Incident (a meeting between Lewis and Clark and the Teton Sioux), mapping instruments of the expedition, Nez Perce Appaloosa horses, the Fort Clatsop area, and flora and fauna of the Bitterroot/Clearwater area. Each topic mentioned in the original Lewis and Clark journals was adopted by one school, and an Internet-based learning community contributed ideas and data from their region on that same selection.

Connecting Classrooms to NASA Aeronautics Experts

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) involved nine teachers in an eight-week learning activity (building a glider) and in developing three lesson plans using wind tunnel data. These lessons focus on lift and drag (airflow around the wing of an aircraft), the relationship between an airplane's pitch and lift (using graphs to depict the relationship), and comparison of a wing's angle of attack and the coefficient of lift.

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) collaborated with 11 teachers chosen from a ORNL summer institute to produce an online learning module for Grades 5-8 on three fundamental principles of energy transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. The Energy Transfer Module (ETM) is a self-contained computer aided instruction product. It uses illustrations and scientific data taken from the research conducted at Energy Division, Buildings Technology Center, where walls, roofs, attics, and building materials are tested with sophisticated, full-scale scientific equipment.

EarthKAM Project

NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC) allowed middle school students to send longitude, latitude, and other information via the web to a space shuttle computer, where it would activate a digital camera. Students would use the resulting photos for their investigations related to earth science and geography. Unfortunately, the space shuttle was not launched on schedule. It was pushed back from December 1998 to July 1998; this postponement undercut this team's effort. Participants included educators from 27 schools in three states, a high school in France, and nine NASA staff.