Cyberinfrastructure and data services for Earth System Science Education A vision for the future

In an era of an unprecedented data volume from diverse sources, multidisciplinary analysis and synthesis, and active, learner-centered education emphasis, a revolution is underway in the role played by cyberinfrastructure and data services in the conduct of geoscience education.

We can make significant strides in advancing Earth science education by incorporating new teaching techniques, active learning strategies, information technology, and integrating real-world Earth and space science data into our curriculum. Environmental problems such as global change and water cycle transcend disciplinary as well as geographic boundaries, and their solution requires integrated earth system science approaches. It is imperative that we educate students by providing opportunities for genuine inquiry, hands on experience, and infuse the excitement of discovery into all courses by giving students experience in the process of science. A critical component of successful scientific inquiry includes learning how to collect, process, analyze, and integrate data. Innovations that promote this perspective on student learning should be integrated into Earth science education at all levels. Earth science education is uniquely suited to drawing connections between the dynamic earth system and important societal issues and making science relevant to students. Recent catastrophic events like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the October 2005 earth-quake in Northern Pakistan are three stark examples that drive home this point. These events also heavily underscore the importance of multidisciplinary integration and synthesis of data from the various Earth science disciplines. Cyberinfrastructure provided by organizations like Unidata allow students to access the very databases and tools that are used by the scientific and operational communities, and provides an important pathway toward the pursuit of the long sought goal of the National Science Foundation to integrate research and education. New tools and techniques provide new approaches to guide inquiry and new ways to educate the next generation of students. The richness of their exploration and experience depends, among other things, on the quality of the data available and the tools and technology they use. Needless to add, today's education enterprise depends on easy to use, robust, flexible and scalable cyberinfrastructure, especially on the ready availability of quality data and appropriate tools to manipulate and integrate those data. Fortunately, rapid advances in computing and communication technologies have revolutionized how data, tools and services are being incorporated into the teaching and scientific enterprise. The exponential growth in the use of the Internet in education, largely due to the advent of the World Wide Web, is by now well documented. On the other hand, how some of the other technological trends have shaped the use of cyberinfrastructure in education is less well understood. For example, the computing industry is converging on an approach called Web services that enables a standard and yet revolutionary way of building applications and methods to connect and exchange digital content over the Web. This new approach, based on XML – a widely accepted format for exchanging data and corresponding semantics over the Internet - enables applications, computer systems, and information processes to work together in a fundamentally different way. Meanwhile, colleges are increasingly integrating blogs, podcasts, and other online services into their courses. These new services and tools are providing novel opportunities to integrate technology, essentially transforming how education is conducted.

In this talk, I will present an overview of the scientific, technological, and educational landscape and discuss recent developments in cyberinfrastructure and a vision for future data services for the benefit of education.