The Baylor College of Medicine has done a great job of crafting excellent materials for students and teachers of biology over the past few years. This corner of its BioEd Online site focuses in on a range of lesson plans for classroom use. All of these lessons are aligned with national standards and are sorted by format, topic, and grade level. A good place to start is the STEM After School area....

Real science fairs can be great fun, but there's nothing wrong with a virtual science fair, and in the case of the Canada Virtual Science Fair, there's so much that's right. Started in 1999, the Virtual Science Fair is an annual online science and technology contest open to all Canadian students in grades K-12. While non-Canadians aren't eligible to participate, everyone can benefit from the...

From the Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education (CIESE), this website features Square of Life, "an Internet-based project in which students will investigate their local environment and share that information with other students from around the country and the world." The project is recommended for elementary school students, but allows participants of all ages. Square of Life is a...

The Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom is home of the Centre for Effective Learning in Science (CELS), and they have a colorful website to showcase the Centre. First, the Centre's goal is to "create a more relevant, accessible and achievable image for science within both the Higher Education and school communities". The Centre collaborates with academic teams, to devise and test...

Started in 2010, Change the Equation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, CEO-led initiative designed to mobile the business community to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in the United States. The group's stated goals include working to increase the impact of corporate philanthropy and working to "capture the imagination of young people." On the...

The Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD) is part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and it receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The aim of the CSERD is "to help students learn about computational science and to help faculty and teachers incorporate it into the classroom." First-time visitors can learn more in the "Getting Started" area and they...

The National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) is the National Science Foundation's (NSF) ongoingeffort to build a comprehensive science digital library." This resource by Carl Lagoze et al. describes the interoperability structure for this initial stage of NSDL's development. Issues of heterogenous metadata management in a central repository,...

The Dragonfly Web Site (last mentioned in the March 27, 1997 Scout Report) has since been updated and is definitely worth another look. This interactive site covers many scientific topics, including water, space, flight, and other life and environmental subjects. Users can use the clickable Dragonfly Pond illustration to explore a topic or scroll down to see each one listed. For example, the water...

Earthguide is an educational resource for students and teachers developed by the California Space Institute at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego. Features include in-depth stories, brief topics, and news -- all related to a variety of oceanic and atmospheric science subjects. The section of links and resources is quite valuable, with a large number of...

The Elementary Science Program (ESP) Homepage is sponsored by BOCES, whose mission is to provide quality, cost-effective educational services in partnership with school districts and the community in a manner that supports excellence and equity for all learners. The site offers a number of good educational materials including the ESP Units, which contain links to over thirty subjects areas...