Chemical Education Today
Report
Education, Emerging Information Technology, and the NSF by Donald J. Wink
The National Science Foundation was the original organizational leader for the Internet, and it is still engaged in funding research and infrastructure related to the use of networked information. As it is written in the strategic plan for the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, “These technologies promise to have at least as great an impact as did the invention of written language thousands of years ago.” (1) Organizing the Impact: Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence The NSF recognizes the need for a deliberate and wellgrounded approach to future technology. This is expressed within the Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) initiative. In an address to the National Academy of Sciences last fall, Neal Lane (who was then the NSF director and who is now the chief science advisor at the White House) said, “The access we have gained to widely distributed sources of information marks a major accomplishment for human civilization. It is nevertheless only the first step. Access to information is one thing. But intelligently absorbing, refining, and analyzing this information to glean useful knowledge is another altogether. This represents the driving force behind NSF’s efforts in Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence” (2). The KDI initiative has led the NSF to start a new funding program of the same name. It is housed in Education and Human Resources and has a Web page at http:// www.ehr.nsf.gov/kdi/ and a press release at http://www.nsf.gov/ od/lpa/news/publicat/nsf9860/start.htm. The next deadline is on February 1, 1999. The KDI funding program has three foci: Knowledge Networking, Learning and Intelligent Systems, and New Computational Challenges. Educational activities will fit in some cases. For example, one goal of the Knowledge Networking focus is “to improve the technical, social, educational, and economic performance of knowledge generation and use, collaborative computation, and remote interaction”. The Learning and Intelligent Systems focus covers ground from neurobiology to informal learning. NSF and the Digital Library Initiative As with the construction of the Internet, multiple Federal agencies are cooperating in building information infrastructure associated with cutting-edge communication and knowledge-sharing in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. A prominent example of this is the Digital Library Initiative, led by NSF in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA. This program, housed in the CISE at http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iis/dli_home.html,
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has already funded six major research and development programs. The NSF’s position vis-à-vis digital libraries has also spawned a second-phase program (DLI-2) aimed, in part, at work on content for the library. This is described in a general document at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf9863/ nsf9863.htm. There is a May 1999 deadline for new proposals to this program. Letters of interest are due Feb. 15. The DLI-2 program encompasses all areas of NSF activity. One of the most prominent is in education-related initiatives. How this connects to education has been described by the Director of the Division of Undergraduate Education, Norman Fortenberry; a useful set of Power Point slides is available at http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/DUE/programs/dli/ DLbriefing0398.ppt. What will go into a Digital Library for undergraduate education? That is a topic of active discussion within NSF and connected organizations. Even as the funding programs are started, the Foundation is publishing material on what the development might mean and how it can be done. Some of this is done through a the DLI-supported “D-lib Program” at http://www.dlib.org/. There you will find links to several documents on digital libraries for science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education, collected at http:// www.dlib.org/smete/public/smete-public.html. Literature Cited 1. National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Information Technology for a Changing World—The CISE Strategic Plan. http:// www.cise.nsf.gov/oad/cise_strategicpln.html (accessed September 1998). 2. Lane, N. Advancing the Public Interest through Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence. http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/forum/lane/ nl97kdi_nas.htm (presented on September 25, 1997), National Foundation Office of Legislative and Public Affairs (accessed September 1998).
Donald J. Wink is in the Department of Chemistry (m/c 111), University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60607; phone: 312/413-7383; fax: 312/996-0431; email:
[email protected]; WWW: http://www.uic.edu/~dwink.
Note: I have taken this column through its initial goals of introducing the NSF Web site, both for basic infomration about science and about NSF granting programs. I am interested in reader reactions and suggestion, which I ask you to send to my email address.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
