The Science Learning Network

The Science Learning Network is a great project created by Unisys and National Science Foundation, located at: http://www.sln.org/. Basically, SLN is an online community of educators, students, schools, science museums and other institutions demonstrating a new model for inquiry science education. This is a very professionally designed web page, with many wonderful resources, and is perfect for a science fan.

The web page is divided up into several sections - Museums, News and Links, Resources, and a "Connect With Schools and Educators" section.

The Museums section contains links to all the participating museums in the program. Exploratorium's ExploraNet,The Franklin Institute, Heureka, The Finnish Science Center, Miami Museum of Science, Museum of Science, Boston, Science Museum, London, newMetropolis Science & Technology Center, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Science Museum, Japan Science Foundation, Science Museum of Minnesota, Singapore Science Cente, and Exploradome are all part of the program.

In the "Connect With Schools and Educators" area, there are links to all the current schools in the program. These schools are: Avocado Elementary Homestead, Florida; Buckman Elementary, Portland, Oregon; The Hosmer School, Watertown, Massachusetts; Levering School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Museum Magnet School, St. Paul, Minnesota; and Ross School District, Ross, California.

It is in this "Connect With Schools and Educators" section were two of the main features of the SLN reside - an online discussion group and message board. The online chat feature can be used to communicate with other people from around the globe interested in science, in real-time. The discussion board, is a Internet analogy of the billboard, where people can post messages for everyone to read. This area can be used to find out anything, from how to build model rockets, to meeting new friends.

In the news and links section, there is a five different periodicals, each written by an individual museum. These periodicals include: "Exploratorium's Ten Cool Sites", ten great links to science, art, and education sites every month; "inQuiry Almanack", with new ideas for classroom fun each month; "Educational Hotlists", for categorized lists for quick location of educational resources on the web; "BioPoint", an investigation into life science from both the teacher and student points of view in a classroom lab; and "Science Whatzit?", for answering many questions about science.

In the Resources section, there is a list of articles and exhibits developed by each museum, each with their own web pages and graphics. There is a Millenium Bug link, with very extensive up-to-date information regarding the Millenium Bug, including: what the problem is, why it isn't easy to fix, how it came about, what equipment is affected, what services may be affected, who is going to fix the problem, how to prepare for it,

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