Re: Call for Discussion: AAPT NDSL proposal

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

> We are interested in knowing how the physics and astronomy
> education community views such an effort and what they think
> should be the emphasis of this first proposal.  We hope this
> proposal will form the framework for the Physics and
> Astronomy Digital Resources for Education (PADRE) effort that
> other educators can then connect to with their own proposal
> either this year, or in future years.  We see this as building a
> number of different communities and providing resources that
> can be accessed depending on the needs of the user (high school
> teacher, college teacher, elementary teacher, student, or the
> public).
>
> We expect that NSF funds will be available to support this effort
> for a number of years and we are trying to put something in
> place that the rest of the physics and astronomy education
> community can contribute to on an ongoing basis.  We see
> PADRE not only as a resource, but a place educators can submit
> digital educational materials for peer review, not unlike
> MERLOT is currently doing.  We plan on cooperating with
> MERLOT in this effort.

I'd like to kick off the discussion with a few NDSL-related ideas.  First
of all, I'd like to see part of the proposal budget include monies to
digitize all back issues of _The Physics Teacher_ and then license access from
AAPT for a yearly fee paid by the grant so that any physics teacher who so
chooses can freely access these publications if they register with the AAPT,
for the length of the licensing agreement.  Thsi would spare AAPT the costs
of digitizing these journals, and generate new revenues related to the
dissemination of these journals (in effect a paid subscription to back TPT
issues for all physics teachers paid for by NDSL).  The yearly licensing
fee should initially be set at a figure approximating the yearly current
profit from all paper subscriptions to _TPT_, so as not to risk cannibalizing
current revenues from that journal; license fees should be made to markedly
increase profits from AAPT journals.

Another wish list item is the possible offer of funding to the Physics
Education Research (PER) community for costs to cover publication of
an electronic journal of physics education and pay for free electronic
access to physics pedagogues using NDSL funds.  If the PER folk found it
acceptable to do so, this could represent a natural growth from the AJP
Supplement situation (the new journal could be disseminated via the AIPs
Online Journal Publishing system (OJPS) as it is now-- the paper version
could die and the electronic version could become more frequent).  However
the PER committee chooses to do it, by overtly including low-cost teacher
access they could possibly underwrite a journal with NSDL funds.

I guess numbers one and two above involving using NDSL funds to web-encode
and license AAPT assets for use nationwide by physics teachers.  I suspect
there are other AAPT resources (publications which are not profitable or
no longer in print) that coud also be digitized and licensed to the nation's
physics teachers via NDSL.

I'd like to see an extensive "Brand new physics teacher kit online" developed
(we already have some stuff at AAPT) and made available through licensure
to NDSL from the AAPT.  Recoup costs to date, and fund an expansion of these
materials such that any teacher who knew they were going to teach physics
next semester could go to a website and find a plethora (cool word) of
materials ready to go.

Finally, I would like to see NDSL funds used to identify and hire master
physics teachers PT nationwide to identify and review materials.  Citations
and references to these materials would be placed online in a grand annotated
database searchable by keywords which would replace the manually sorted
structure currently used on PSRC <http://www.psrc-online.org/>.  Some
kind of Amazon-like review system could be used by teachers who are active
users of curricula to comment on the resources identified.   Clearly technical
support people and technology/infrastructure funds would need to be found.

That's my pie-in-the-sky for NDSL; anyone else care to contribute their own
comments?  Hallucinations?  :^)

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list owner