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).