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Subject: [NIFL-WORKPLACE:3195] xpost EdINFO- Tool to Help Teachers Find Lesson Ideas on Web Announced (GEM)
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This message is crossposted from the Edinfo list.Winters, Kirk
[mailto:Kirk_Winters@ed.gov]
shared this information:
Tool to Help Teachers Find Lesson Ideas on Web Announced (GEM)
YESTERDAY, SECRETARY RILEY announced a web site & effort to
make it easier for teachers to find lesson ideas &
instructional materials. Below is the press release
announcing The Gateway to Educational Materials:
http://www.thegateway.org
If your organization has a collection of lesson ideas or
instructional materials, you're invited to participate:
http://geminfo.org/Participation/index.html
Teachers & parents: You are invited to visit The Gateway,
search for topics your children are studying, & tell us
what you think (using the *survey* at the bottom of
http://geminfo.org/).
=============================================================
"New Web Site Aims to Help Teachers Find Learning Resources,"
U.S. Department of Education, December 9, 1999
=============================================================
A new tool is now available to help teachers pinpoint -- from
thousands of learning resources on the Internet -- the one that is
right for their students, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W.
Riley announced today.
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) at
http://www.thegateway.org is designed for teachers to type a topic,
grade level, and other information into a search screen that then
retrieves -- from more than 140 web sites -- lessons, instructional
units, and other free educational materials on that topic, for that
grade level.
"The web," Riley said, "puts many thousands of learning resources
within reach of anyone with Internet access. It's no surprise that
one of the most popular uses of this new medium, among teachers, is
searching for resources that can help students learn. But finding
the right resource on a particular topic for your students can take
time. And time is in short supply for our teachers. That's one
reason GEM is so important."
GEM lets teachers, as well as parents and students, search
instructional materials of more than 140 federal, state,
university, non-profit, and commercial organizations. These
materials may also be browsed by subject area or key word.
Currently, more than 7,000 items are included in GEM with hundreds
of new resources being added and new consortium members joining
each month.
"GEM is more than a web site," said Linda Roberts, special advisor
to the secretary for technology. "It is a solution that was
developed by a consortium of organizations that got together and
said, 'Let's find a way to make it easier for teachers to find
lesson ideas across all our web sites with one simple search'."
Roberts noted that GEM is one of the Education Department's
responses to President Clinton's April 19, 1997, call for federal
agencies to improve and expand access to teaching and learning
resources on the Internet. The department and more than 40 other
federal organizations also responded by creating a web site that
makes teaching and learning resources from across the federal
government available in one place: the Federal Resources for
Educational Excellence (FREE) web site at http://www.ed.gov/free/.
While teaching and learning resources are the aim of both GEM and
FREE, FREE focuses only on those created with federal support. GEM
includes mostly materials not created with federal support. Also,
the search tools differ.
"FREE relies on an off-the-shelf tool that searches the full text
of each resource," explained Keith Stubbs of the National Library
of Education, who oversees the department's support for GEM. "GEM
works like the card catalog system in a library. GEM looks through
the card catalog, or what are technically called 'metadata
records,' for resources that match what the teacher requests. The
teacher can then read the card catalog descriptions of those
resources, or go directly to the resources, which reside on the
server of the organizations that created or own them. A GEM search
retrieves fewer resources than most search tools, and with more
precision. Also, in the future, teachers will be able to search
and find resources by state academic standards."
Both GEM and FREE respond to the president's technology goal of
improving content and online learning resources. The president's
technology goals also include Internet access for all students and
teachers, connections to the Internet for all schools and
classrooms, and training and support for all teachers, so that all
teachers can integrate technology into instruction.
The GEM Consortium is spearheaded by the ERIC Clearinghouse on
Information and Technology with support from the National Library
of Education in the U.S. Department of Education. The ERIC
Clearinghouse, located at Syracuse University's School of
Information Studies, also developed the software and architecture
for GEM.
NOTE: A list of organizations that are GEM Consortium Members may
be found at http://www.geminfo.org/Consortium/members.html
===========================================================
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===========================================================
Nancy Morgan, Jim Bradshaw, Erica Lepping,
Deb Christensen, Beth Sullivan, Ryan Laundry,
Stuart Sutton, R. David Lankes, Peter Kickbush,
& Kirk Winters
U.S. Department of Education
kirk_winters@ed.gov
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