Technologies for the 21st Century ETHR

	Overview Applications, tools, and collaborative research on learning technologies Research grants Innovative training Grants for health professionals K-12 Curriculum Products Training for students, teachers, and faculty Information dissemination
Overview	ETHR R&D supports research to advance education and training technologies. The complex and technically challenging applications flowing from leading edge R&D in HECC and LSN make it increasingly important for today's students and professionals to update their education and training on an ongoing basis in order to exploit the latest technological advances. ETHR technologies improve the quality of today's science and engineering education and lead to more knowledgeable and productive citizens. Major ETHR research areas include: Curriculum development, fellowships, and scholarships for computational, computer, and information scientists and engineers The application of interdisciplinary research to learning technologies R&D in information-based learning tools, lifelong learning, and distance learning. Information technologies will have a profound impact on all forms and levels of education in the 21st century, ranging from the use of geographically dispersed learning centers to the extension of experiential learning (which is already transforming scientific and engineering research) through advanced visualization and simulation techniques. These new and enhanced information and computing technologies will enable students to obtain an education based on personal experience and simulation rather than abstract presentation.   Research in learning technologies has direct implications for achieving the national goal of a technologically literate citizenry. Such research is required to enable use of the Nation's information infrastructure to provide the resources for efficient and effective education and training. Indeed, the training of the next generation of citizens skilled in developing and using information technologies is critical to the ongoing effort of maintaining U.S. competitiveness in today's highly aggressive international market environment.
Applications, tools, and collaborative research on learning technologies	ETHR R&D supports engineering applications in the classroom. For example, NSF funds new course and curriculum development in high performance computing and communications and information processing. NSF also supports research opportunities in high performance computing and communications for undergraduates.   ETHR R&D is creating collaborative tools for R&D in learning, creativity, and productivity. DOE's National Collaboratory Research, for example, will develop technologies and tools to enable scientists and engineers to collaborate easily across geographic boundaries and to interact cooperatively in solving problems and conducting experiments. This research also addresses the basic technologies and services that underlie such National Challenge applications as energy demand management and remote environmental monitoring.   NSF supports the center for Collaborative Research on Learning Technologies, which is integrating technology with education at all levels. The center will draw upon the efforts and expertise of participants from industry, research, and education to formulate responses to challenges and opportunities in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education in order to reexamine the basic methods and practices of these fields, with a focus on the teaching potential of innovative learning technologies.
Research grants	ETHR supports graduate and postdoctoral CIC R&D with multiagency grants: NSF programs in education and training focus on increasing the number of individuals who possess the knowledge and skill to make high performance computing and information processing easier to use and to apply what they have learned to all science and engineering disciplines. The NSF Postdoctoral Research Associates program, for example, supports postdoctoral training in computational science and engineering and experimental computer science. NASA ETHR activities focus on educating the next generation of computer and computational scientists. NASA supports research institutes and centers of excellence engaged in computer science and computational science and funds university grants on CIC R&D topics at the individual principal investigator level. DOE's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program provides support for more than 50 doctoral students in computational science and engineering at select universities. Participating fellows spend at least one summer working on their dissertations at a DOE laboratory.
Innovative training	ETHR R&D supports innovative training such as NASA's annual summer school in High Performance Computational Physics and NSF's Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS) program, which provides training for students who work within a research infrastructure for rapidly prototyping and manufacturing custom VLSI chips.
Grants for health professionals	The U.S. needs both biomedical professionals cross-trained in informatics and individuals from computer and information sciences and engineering with doctoral or post doctoral training in applying these technologies to health care. Medical centers that want to modernize and network their institution-wide information services find it increasingly difficult to identify and recruit senior professionals with this kind of education and training. The NLM awards training grants for health professionals and is expanding its pre-doctoral and postdoctoral grants program to provide career training in medical informatics, both for research and applications and for fellowship training support. NIH will implement a pilot training program at select NCRR-supported High Performance Computing Resource centers to introduce biomedical scientists to high performance computing methods and tools.
K-12 Curriculum Products	ETHR R&D provides training and information services for grades K-12 students, teachers, and faculty in computing, networking, and computational science. The Department of Education's AskERIC (Educational Resources Information center) is an online information service available free of charge to teachers, parents, and students. The AskERIC R&D team is expanding the AskERIC Virtual Library to provide image, sound, and video resources; providing free Internet access to the ERIC bibliographic database using friendly, high performance retrieval software; creating a full-text electronic collection of the documents in the ERIC database; and experimenting with new Internet products to determine their value in education.   NIH education programs focus on engaging and training students, teachers, and faculty from middle school and high school through graduate school in computing, networking, and computational science, by leveraging the large DOE investment in these areas at universities and at its national laboratories. NASA is demonstrating education products from its K-14 Education Cooperative Agreement Notice.
Training for students, teachers, and faculty	Over the past two decades, technology has dramatically advanced the ability of scientists to use geographic visualizations to explore, learn, and communicate about the geosciences. These rich resources of data, images, and software tools can revolutionize Earth science education by enabling students to observe, explore, investigate, and visualize fundamental Earth science concepts. NSF's Visualizing Earth (VizEarth) Project aids these advances by promoting fundamental research in cognition and visualization, adapting existing technology and data sources for ease of use in schools, developing model curricula at the middle school level to support cognition and visualization research, and supporting implementation of national education standards in science, mathematics, and geography.
Information dissemination	CIC R&D will benefit U.S. citizens if they can access and make use of this information to improve their environment at work and at home. Recognizing this, GOALS 2000 legislation calls for increased emphasis on electronic networking and dissemination to support education reform, making this a critical part of ETHR R&D. In response to the GOALS 2000 legislation, the Department of Education's Information Network (INet) program, which manages the Internet and World Wide Web presence of the National Library of Education, will play a key role in the Department's efforts to make a high quality library of education information available online to assist the rapidly growing number of educators connecting to the Internet. The Department plans to provide increased access through the Internet to the Library's repository of information concerning Department programs, projects, publications, statistics, and network-based R&D materials for schools, educators, parents, and policy makers by developing a digital library.   NASA will develop and provide access to databases of remote sensing images and support software over the Internet. These databases can be used by both public and private institutions, promoting the dissemination of taxpayer-funded Federal information. The information contained within these databases can also be used by educational and library communities. The program goal is to provide broad public access to remote sensing data to isolated, under-served communities, in order to promote gains in education, quality of life, and economic growth.