The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education. (January 29, 2010)

In this week's issue of Science, Editor in Chief, Bruce Alberts, announced the first of the twelve 2009 winners of a competition for Web sites that best promote science education. In Professor Alberts' words: "Each month this year, Science will publish an essay by the creators of a winning Web site that describes their online resource. This month's featured site focuses on teaching and learning genetics, and it originates from the University of Utah. The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) recognizes outstanding freely available online materials that enrich science education."

Two Web sites that were not given a Guernsey because their developers have "connections" with Science were, however, deemed worthy of note. An entry from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)  (www.hhmi.org/biointeractive) and a site, created at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about which Science had recently published an Education Forum that describes how to use its physics simulations (http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php).

In setting up SPORE Science intends to make the point that "an outstanding science educator is as demanding and valuable to society as being an exceptional research scientist. And, as it does for research, highlighting education excellence sets a standard for others to aim at, while simultaneously emphasizing the enormous value of the endeavor". In addition, by limiting recognition to "12 Web sites a year, Science aims to make it easier to find valuable materials, both for one's intellectual growth and for teaching".

A final point is the hope that the initiative will broaden the outlook of science teachers as to the means available to them to interest and educate the students put in their charge.

For January the nod has gone to a site focusing on teaching and learning genetics originating from the University of Utah. In fact there are two home pages developed by Louisa A. Stark and Kevin Pompei at the Genetic Science Learning Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.

In their essay "Making Genetics Easy to Understand"  (DOI: 10.1126/science.1183029) Stark and Pompei write: "To address [the] need for genomic literacy, we have developed two related Web sites. Learn.Genetics (http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/) provides educational materials that currently cover 15 topic areas ranging from DNA to epigenetics. Classroom activities designed to support and extend these materials, as well as other resources for educators, are available on Teach.Genetics (http://teach.genetics.utah.edu/).