Chemical Education Today
Report
Information Available through the NSF Web Site by Donald J. Wink
Last month I discussed how the updated NSF Web site organizes information related to NSF funding programs. This included the pages of the programs themselves and pages related to searching for previous award recipients. The NSF Web page has also evolved in how it presents information about science and science education, which is the topic of this month’s column. At the start, a user might look at a general page describing What’s New, at http://www.nsf.gov/home/help/ whatsnew.htm. This is more a page about changes than about content, but it is a useful alert to those who regularly used the old pages.
On the top of the NSF Home page, and almost every other page throughout the NSF Web site, is a set of five major navigation listings. These all link to other pages discussed in Part 1 of the list below. In addition, each of the areas on the top of the page have a set of menus (and in some cases, sub menus) that appear when a cursor is placed on top of the link. These are activated if Java is enabled in one’s browser. If one knows exactly where one is headed within the NSF Web pages, this is a very efficient process. But if one is more interested in exploring the types of information available, the “major links” presented in Part 1 are probably more appropriate.
NSF Information about Science and Science Education 1. Major Navigation Links (found at the top of NSF Web pages)
2. Selected Information Links (presented on the NSF home page)
About NSF http://www.nsf.gov/home/about/
National Science Board http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/
This page has information about the Foundation itself, including legislative, historical, and administrative issues.
This page provides ready access to national science and science education policy documents.
Funding http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/funding.htm
Office of Legislative and Public Affairs http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/
This page has a set of links to funding issues, in areas of Opportunities, How to Obtain Funding, NSF Awards, and General Info and Policies.
This remarkably colorful page organizes information related to the agency and some of its outreach programs.
Publications http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/publications.htm This page is a simple way to navigate the NSF publishing universe, with links on new and popular publications and direct access to publication searching. News and Media http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/news.htm This page has links about subscribing to NSF announcement programs. It also provides access, by area, to the most recent press releases, media advisories, and tip sheets that NSF has issued. Search http://www.nsf.gov/home/search.htm This page has a general search system that can be controlled with two drop-down menus. It also has links to the award-searching system.
Science Statistics http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/stats.htm This page is the place to look for data on trends in science, engineering, and science education.
3. Information Pages on NSF-Supported Research Science Research http://www.nsf.gov/home/hghlghts/start.htm This page is updated about every month with a new set of news highlights on NSF-supported discoveries. Engineering Research http://www.eng.nsf.gov/engnews/ This is similar to the highlights page listed above, but is updated as needed, not every month. Behavioral Research http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/nuggets/start.htm
access date: December 2000
160
The periodically updated Science Nuggets feature includes information on findings supported by the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Chemical Education Today
Information Links The NSF Home page also has its own links, on the left side of the page, to major categories of information about NSF. Three important pages are listed in Part 2. These information links are only the surface of the NSF information resources most relevant to educators. Other pages may also be important. The NSF Home page has a set of drop-down boxes on the lower left that may be useful for this, although at present they link to pages with lists of only a few programs. It is probably more useful to go directly to a few information-rich pages. For educators there is http://www.nsf.gov/home/faculty/ start.htm, where narrative links to many different funding programs are provided. A second information page organizes links for K–12 and undergraduate students. This is located at http://www.nsf.gov/home/students/start.htm. Many of the links there are actually to external sites, presently or formerly
NSF-supported. One of the most recent of these is the Find Out Why page, constructed with commercial partners, at http://www.findoutwhy.org/. Finally, the NSF continues to produce a fair amount of “science news” information. This is now organized on a single page, http://www.nsf.gov/home/scinews/start.htm. There are links to three research news sites, listed in Part 3 of the list. For the NSF’s 50th anniversary, two special pages have been set up. One contains the Nifty Fifty, a page on the fifty most significant NSF-supported discoveries. This is located at http://www.nsfoutreach.org/htm/n50_z2/slct_shk.htm. It requires a plug-in to work. The other page gathers information prepared for the anniversary, at http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/ nsf50/start.htm. Donald J. Wink teaches in the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60607;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
161
