A national partnership involving research and teaching institutions, a minority serving institution, community-based organizations, and high performance computing centers at the state and national level is providing stewardship for high-quality, effective computational science educational materials. Primary activities of this NSDL Pathways project include evaluating, modifying, collecting, tagging, and (where rights can be obtained) archiving the best of the growing body of computational model based materials that are available on the Web. The project is also providing: 1) mechanisms for NSDL users, content creators, and collection maintainers to add to and annotate the collection; 2) an outlet for peer reviewed publication for content creators; 3) training and technical assistance to collection maintainers; and 4) an infrastructure for educators to bind disparate learning objects into functional units tied to state and national standards. The initial audiences for the Computational Science Education Reference Desk are undergraduate faculty and their students, both future scientists and engineers and future teachers. The project also expects to have a direct impact on in-service teachers and their students in intermediate and secondary schools, as well as life-long learners.
