Ecoed.net: ESA's digital library to advance teaching in ecology

The high connectivity of the Internet allows teachers to seek, locate, and distribute teaching resources at an unprecedented scale. Commercial search engines have quickly become a tool of first resort for teachers who seek digital resources. Even with powerful search engines, locating useful resources among search results can be challenging and time-consuming because a large quantity of information is available and it varies greatly in quality, accuracy, and usefulness. Ecoed.net, ESA’s digital teaching library, is intended to decrease the time and effort spent searching for ecology education resources by providing a collection of high-quality, accurate, and useful resources in one location. EcoEd.net contains a variety of resources for ecology courses, such as photographs, tables and figures, articles on teaching, and laboratory exercises. Resources cataloged within Ecoed.net are peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy and pedagogical value. Ecoed.net is intended to advance ecology education by building a community of ecology educators who will develop and contribute innovative teaching resources to the library. EcoEd.net is part of the biology pathway (BEN; http://www.biosciednet.org) of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL; http://www.nsdl.org), both of which are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).