The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is a distributed community effort involving educators, students, and scientists working together to improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth system at all levels. Since its inception in 2000, DLESE has hosted annual meetings each summer to bring together community members to discuss issues related to defining, building, and expanding the library. These meetings serve as a key mechanism for outreach to educators and for input by the geoscience education community into the development of library services. The 2005 Annual Meeting, to be held 8-12 July 2005, at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, will provide DLESE the opportunity to both demonstrate advances in the library's development and develop and strengthen ties between current and new collaborators. The meeting will establish a platform where both developers and library users will have opportunities to discuss a variety of issues in library development. The developers will be able to demonstrate their new library functions, the users will be able to provide important feed back to the developers, and both developers and users will learn from their peers about potential uses, and make suggestions for critical improvements needed to make the library a stronger and more attractive learning/teaching environment for students/teachers from all levels of educational activities. The meeting will incorporate efforts to address issues such as diversity/underrepresented populations, academic recognition, pedagogical assessment and evaluation, and the development of mechanisms to provide guidance and support in designing new instructional materials that support teaching/learning about the Earth system. The Annual Meeting provides an opportunity for leaders representing these diverse interests in Earth system education to meet as a community and to work together to shape DLESE as a resource that serves our needs. Meeting participants will be drawn from diverse communities, including teachers from K-12 schools, college and university faculty, and researchers in both Earth and information sciences, representing the full spectrum of the actual and intended DLESE audience. The meeting will be limited to a maximum of 200 participants for both logistical and practical concerns.
