NSF Works Toward A Digital Science Library

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today has an article on the effort of 'More than 100 teams of educators nationwide are working with the National Science Foundation to develop what they hope will be the nation's most comprehensive digital library for the sciences.'" The article describes this library as intended to "support science education at all levels, from pre-kindergarten through postdoctoral research."

Comments

MIT anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you will have to get background checks to make sure you are completely american.
"Hey check this guy out. One of his great-grandparents come from France"
"Terrorist. Notifiy CIA"

GOOGLE can do this

[SniffleBear]

Ermmm... that digital library is basically a search engine for the sciences. And all it does is give you links to other sites. I can find the same information and more with GOOGLE. So what's the difference?

What a waste of funding, eh?

Re:GOOGLE can do this

[resiak]

The difference, my friend, is that Google does not rate the accuracy of the content it links to. Sure, they work out how frequently it is linked to, and they have those little rating buttons on the browser bar in IE, but ultimately, you have no idea how reliable the information you find with Google is.

Re:GOOGLE can do this

[steeleye_brad]

From what I've read in the article, it appears that this is more filtered, somehow. Do a search on Google and there is a good chance you will end up with several crap sites with no information. This digital library is (suposedly) pure information, no fluff.

It looks really promising to me. Hopefully this will be implemented well in schools.

Oh yeah, and in Soviet Russia, LIBRARIES DIGITALIZE YOU! (couldn't help myself)

Re:GOOGLE can do this

[inode_buddha]

The difference is also one of convenience, accuracy (as far as possible, given the media), and using your tax dollar as it was originally intended: "...to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts..." ... sort of like the original ARPAnet, I think. Not the massive hype engine we have today. Not like the Corporate conglonerate wet dream for Marketing. Not for spammers. Not for millions of unused personal web pages, still under construction. Mainly, the difference is one of intent and quality of content, howver subjective those may be.

On the subject

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an open project currently underway to create an open encyclopedia avalible for all that I and several hundred others are currently working on,It's called the wikipedia, It uses the wiki-docuemntation system to create a collabarated pool of knowledge!

Anyone can help, so if you got a bit of knowlege thats not in there, add it to the book. Its constant proofreading gives the articles a very high and consistent value.

You can find it here

There already is...

[Maria D]

..something of that sort for mathematics on The Math Forum It works moderately well. If you want an answer to a well-defined question, go there.

There is always a tension between linear, or nested, or hierarchical... still "linear-like" :-) nature of those databases and general non-linearity of the field. I do not quite know where this thought is going, but I hope someone will elaborate :-)

Won't there be problems...

[rusty0101]

... with states that mandate Creation education in public schools?

I personally think the idea is good, but when states can mandate that schools use science books that teach Creationism, then either the database will be required to conform (very bad), the schools will not be able to use the database (bad), or the students will have the fun of laughing at their state legislators who mandated that the schools teach bad science (best possible result).

Then again, I could be wrong. God may smite me with a bolt of lightning today and call me to task for my words. I don't expect it, but then I wouldn't would I?

-Rusty

This is quite cool,

[sstory]

Because it raises the possibility of having the Ultimate Textbook. It is currently arduous to find comprehensive, well-developed resources for science. That's why 97% of my undergrad physics education is being done with dead-tree technology, and 3% is being done with email, mathematica, physlink, etc. This is the second recent big step in the right direction, the first being MIT's recent program. Soon, teachers and students will have quicker access to the meat, without being forced to endure a deluge of thousands of indistinct links, etc.

The problem is teachers.

[bcrowell]

The problem with K-12 science education in the U.S. is that they can't hire enough teachers who know about math and science. Until they get around that bottleneck, nothing is going to improve. Right now, a very high percentage of math and science teachers are people who have no bachelor's degree in math or science. They're often PE teachers who got tired of throwing out balls.

Experience has shown over and over again that you can create wonderful science books, lab curricula, etc., but they won't work well in the classroom if the teachers are unqualified.

There are two things that need to change: (1) K-12 math and science teachers need to get paid more money, so that the career is competitive with the other job options available to a person with a math or science degree. (2) States need to get more serious about having high expectations for students. Right now, students tend to limp through lots of math courses without having the faintest idea of what they're doing. That makes it a pretty unattractive career if you're thinking od teaching high-school math: you get a bunch of students who aren't ready to do the stuff you're supposed to be teaching them.

Re:Is my dream...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

No, I'm afraid it's not your dream. Your dream included real research, without an attached social and political agenda.

This will be Bush science.