Open Science

This website provides a wide variety of resources related to informal STEM Education that can be used in the classroom and outside the classroom. These resources include educational materials ranging from activities to learning frameworks, professional development opportunities, event planning resources, seasonal events and calendars, and resources to help individuals measure and express the impact of their work in this area. Their newsletter and blog share opportunities and work being done by others in the area of informal STEM education. Originally funding came solely from NSF but over the years their work has been funded by multiple government entities and non-profits.

This science news site is updated multiple times per day with content with articles, images and videos about the latest news about science, health, technology and the environment.

"MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around the world. It will also enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences."

Open Online Courses in a variety of categories ranging from business, to computer science, to cataract surgery.

"As Many Exceptions As Rules tells the stories of organisms that break biological rules or norms in order to survive and thrive. Through these stories, the core concepts of the science are reinforced.

Posted weekly, each story includes pertinent vocabulary with etymology, interesting questions to spark discussion, links to the reports from the latest research on the subject being discussed, and a list of online resources for more information and classroom activities."

"The site has been around since 2000, and is a particularly good place to find free books about math, science, and computers."

This Wikibook covers how and where to start searching, communication in chemistry, information about career paths, cheminformatics, and resources on the history of chemistry.

"E-Books Directory is a daily growing list of freely downloadable ebooks, documents and lecture notes found all over the internet. You can submit and promote your own ebooks, add comments on already posted books or just browse through the directory below and download anything you need. "

"...designed for university sophomores and juniors. Typically such a student will have taken calculus, but this is not a prerequisite. The book begins with systems of linear equations, then covers matrix algebra, before taking up finite-dimensional vector spaces in full generality. The final chapter covers matrix representations of linear transformations, through diagonalization, change of basis and Jordan canonical form. Along the way, determinants & eigenvalues get fair time."

"FreeScience.info provides more than 2000 free scientific books."

Written by Charles Bazerman

"...addresses a wide range of writing activites and genres, from summarizing and responding to sources to writing the research paper and writing about literature. This edition of the book has been adapted from the fifth edition, published in 1995 by Houghton Mifflin. Copyrighted materials—primarily examples within the text—have been removed from this edition."

Open access physics textbooks and links to related physics open source software.

"MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community."

Since June 2, 2011 "all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. That's more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by NAP--publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Reseasrch Council."

" * Free to Use
* Openly Licensed
* 31814 Resources
* From K-12 to College Courses"

"Its more than 17,000 learning objects or modules in its repository and over 1000 collections (textbooks, journal articles, etc.) are used by over 2 million people per month. Its content services the educational needs of learners of all ages, in nearly every discipline, from math and science to history and English to psychology and sociology. Connexions delivers content for free over the Internet for schools, educators, students, and parents to access 24/7/365."

"Free. Open Source. Peer-reviewed Textbooks."

"OpenStax College is a nonprofit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of your course. Through our partnerships with companies and foundations committed to reducing costs for students, OpenStax College is working to improve access to higher education for all. OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations."

"This catalog provides information about some of the top examples of open textbooks...

Our intent is to offer a place to start learning about and searching for open textbooks, and the titles on this list were carefully selected for their usability and number of existing adoptions. Please visit our resources page for links to more comprehensive lists maintained by other organizations."

A listing of open textbooks create and maintained by the Engineering Library Division of the American Society for Engineering Education.

"The Process of Research Writing is a web-based research writing textbook (or is that textweb?) suitable for teachers and students in research oriented composition and rhetoric classes. It's published/maintained by me, Steven D. Krause."

"We believe that everyone, everywhere should have access to a college education. This website will serve as a zero-cost alternative to those that lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and, if they are willing, a complement to mainstream education providers. We expect free, asynchronous, web-based learning opportunities to motivate people to pursue personal growth and career ambitions as well as lead to institutional change amongst education providers everywhere."

"Open books for an open world."

"Wikipedia, the world's largest and most popular encyclopedia is an indispensable source of chemistry information, containing among others also entries for over 15,000 chemicals including metabolites, drugs, agrochemicals or industrial chemicals. We provide here an easy access to this wealth of information by allowing substructure and similarity search tool for chemical structures referenced in Wikipedia.

This project is the result of a collaboration between Novartis, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Actelion."

This website focuses on STEAM programing for K-12. Although it is written for librarians this programing could be adapted by any group looking to provide STEAM activities.

"Instructables is a place that lets you explore, document, and share your creations...From cooking to 3d printing, to making just about anything fly, Instructables became the recipient of countless hours of tinkering, soldering, stitching, frying, and fun, making just about anything."

Science related programing, display, and demonstration ideas.

This website provides reviews of robotics kits and ideas on how to use them for events. (archived page)

Registration is required to access most content, but access is free. "By joining the online community, you can access standards-based resources and activities, participate in webinars on many topics, and learn about opportunities for STEM programs. You can communicate with others-librarians, museum educators, teachers, scientists, and engineers-who provide or support STEM learning in libraries and find out what they're doing and who's willing to help you. "

"Nuclear fusion. Virtual reality. Clean water for all. With the world facing 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering, your interest in math and science is set to pay off—big time. You’ll be the one using your problem-solving skills to find answers to impossible challenges. You’ll be the scientist leading an exploration of the Mariana Trench or the engineer building a next-generation robot. You’ll be the graduate finding a great job and earning a hefty salary."

*Please note this is still in Beta Testing and they are still doublechecking images and information.

"The BioDigital Human is comprised of over 1900 scientifically accurate 3D anatomy models. View spatial relationships in unprecedented clarity. Learn medical terms in a visual format."

"A 500-structure teaching database includes a wide variety of molecules (from adrenaline to zirconium complexes) and can be used to enhance learning across the chemistry curriculum. Access and browse this interactive teaching database of experimentally-determined crystal structures using WebCSD - the online portal to the Cambridge Structural Database."

"A range of teaching exercises exemplify how the interactive on-line database can be used to teach concepts such as aromaticity, VSEPR, and stereochemistry. Click here for teaching modules"

"An overview to X-ray Astronomy and X-ray sources: from black holes to galaxy clusters. "

"A brief review of the history of X-ray astronomy, what X-rays are, how they are produced in the cosmos, why X-ray telescopes must be in space, and why X-ray astronomy is such a "hot" field."

"Chemical Educational Xchange (ChemEd X) is the new name for the former web site of the Journal of Chemical Education.

In 2010, the Division of Chemical Education, Inc. partnered with ACS Publications to co-publish the Journal of Chemical Education. As part of this co-publication agreement, the Journal was transferred to the ACS Publications web site. Because not all JCE published content was subject to the co-publication agreement, however—and due to continued demand for it—we established ChemEd X.

A major emphasis of ChemEd X is to better serve our precollege and two-year college audiences for whom the journal may not be a central resource. We strive to deliver content that is more accessible to this audience while at the same time adhering to the scholarly principles of peer review and assessment of contributions.

ChemEd X is built upon a modern, interactive web platform. The process of migrating content from the former site to this new platform is ongoing. In the meantime, we are making every effort to ensure that you are redirected to new content and that the links to the legacy content are viable."

"The resources and search strategies on this guide will assist you in locating books, articles, and videos involving chemical demonstrations"

Educational materials for parents and teachers, from the American Chemical Society.

"Click2Science is an interactive, professional development site for trainers, coaches, site directors and frontline staff/volunteers working in out-of-school time programs serving children and youth." It also includes an Ask a Scientist service.

"The ComPADRE Digital Library is a network of free online resource collections supporting faculty, students, and teachers in Physics and Astronomy Education."

This site contains the full-text of 7,000+ of Darwin's correspondence with information on approximately 8,000 more. Available correspondence includes correspondence publish over 4 years ago, and some items that have not been published. Content is constantly being added.

"The largest collection of Darwin manuscripts and private papers ever published from 80 collections with 119,800 images, 34,941 new and 7,100 pages of previously published manuscript transcriptions."

"The Bodleian Libraries’ collections are extraordinary and significant—both from a scholarly point of view and as material that has an historic and aesthetic richness that holds value for non-academic users. Each year the Libraries serve more than 65,000 readers, over 40% of them from beyond the University, while its critically-acclaimed exhibitions attract almost 100,000 visitors annually. In an effort to make portions of our collections open to a wide variety of users from around the world for learning, teaching and research, the Bodleian Libraries have been digitizing library content for nearly twenty years. The result is over 120,000 freely available digital objects and at least another 1.5 million images awaiting release."

"Field Trip Earth focuses on field-based wildlife conservation research projects ongoing around the world. Some of the projects are "live," meaning that research activities, and one or more research scientists, are currently active in the field. These projects are featured prominently on the site. Projects that are not "live" are archived so that students can continue to access the relevant articles, photos, videos, and other materials. "

Provides information on what to watch for, tech connections, and where to stream the listed sci-fi movies.

About.com's How to Write a Lab report explains what to write in each section of a traditional lab report and is a good additional resource for students.

"Anything with “MJW” in the filename is a scan of a page from my notebook. Most of the “Color Your Own” diagrams I made by taking public domain images from the 1918 edition of Gray’s Anatomy (free online here), modifying them in GIMP (also free), and dropping the contrast. The idea is that one can use them as templates for drawing on ligaments, muscles, vessels, nerves, and so on."

Resource that examines the history and use of impact factors.

Interesting Ways is a growing collection of crowd sourced teaching ideas shared through GoogleDocs in a Slide Show format. Topics range from how to use various Google Tools in the Classroom to Devices, Audio / Visual, Gaming, Online Tools, Support subjects and other class work, and Devices.

"This primary goal of this website is to act as a repository for on-line resources that can be used for plant science education or outreach. If you have developed a resource that could be used for this purpose or you know a webpage that needs to be included here, please feel free to email us."

Learn.Genetics provides educational materials on life science and health topics for learners and interested individuals. Topics include cell biology, genetics, human health, evolution & ecology, and more.

Our companion Teach.Genetics site provides resources for educators, including guides for lessons and activities that support and extend the online materials, links to national science education standards, assessment suggestions, and videos of scientist lectures.

"MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.

* OCW is not an MIT education.
* OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
* OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
* Materials may not reflect entire content of the course."

"NSDL is the nation's online portal for education and research on learning in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics."

This resource contains Thermochemical data for over 7000 organic and small inorganic compounds, Reaction thermochemistry data for over 8000 reactions, computed 3-D structures, evaluated IR spectra, ion energetics data, and many other types of data. It can also be searched by Formula, Name, IUPAC identifier, CAS registry number, Reaction, Author, Structure, Ion energetics properties, Vibrational and electronic energies, and Molecular weight.

"Listing over 1 million free books on the Web."

"The Open Education Consortium (OEC) is a non-profit, global, members-based network of open education institutions and organizations. OEC represents its members and provides advocacy and leadership around advancement of open education globally. "

"OpenGrade is open-source software for teachers to keep track of grades. It runs on Linux, as well as some other operating systems. [FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS X]"

"The library of modules and activities is continually growing through the contributions of our partners. Currently it contains information over 30 different teaching methods and over 700 examples of their use. The activity collection is still dominated by the original collection developed for the geosciences but there are also examples from statistics, physics, biology and mathematics."

"This applet shows the locations of the planets, stars, moon, and sun in the sky from any location and for any date and time."

"Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free ebooks to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats."

"Over 100,000 free ebooks are available through our Partners, Affiliates and Resources."

"Every lesson plan on ReadWriteThink has been aligned not only to the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts but to individual state standards as well."

"Browse our wealth of support for teaching primary, secondary and higher education students."

Provides detailed information about seeds and related issues.

"Spotter is a program that lets students check their answers to math and science questions. It handles symbolic as well as numerical answers. The software is free and open source."

"Stanford Engineering Everywhere is an online portal offering ten courses from Stanford’s School of Engineering— including the three-course introductory sequence in Computer Science— free of charge.

SEE offers course content available to Stanford students including instructional videos, reading lists and materials and class assignments. And SEE allows you to communicate with fellow SEE students online."

"The purpose of the Center is to promote and disseminate mathematical knowledge at all levels to help increase the knowledge of the community as a whole."

Video-textbooks
Research-Level Lectures
The Worldwide Journal of Singularities (Refereed OA Journal)

"Custom Video Lectures and Reviews: With two weeks notice, we can produce custom videos on all of the topics for which we offer course materials as well as many other topics of interest."

"The need for an international repository of chemical information educational material was the driving force for developing XCITR (Explore Chemical Information Teaching Resources). XCITR is not only for librarians and instructors in chemical information, but also for chemistry professors, instructors in other disciplines related to chemistry, information specialists, students, high school teachers, and even technical writers." (site still usable, but no longer updated)

"The Zooniverse is home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. Our current projects are here but plenty more are on the way."

"This commitment to producing real research - so that you know that we're not wasting your time - is at the heart of everything we do."

"While the primary motivation for putting a project in the Zooniverse is to collect data on a well-defined research question, the very fact that hundreds of thousands of people world-wide view the projects generates an amazing potential for education. The projects within the Zooniverse provide an excellent resource for inquiry-based learning within the classroom or for home-school groups."