New Web Site Aims to Help Teachers Find Learning Resources

www.thegateway.org

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A new tool is now available to help teachers pinpoint -- from thousands of learning resources on the Internet -- the one that is right for their students, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley announced today.

The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) at www.thegateway.org is designed for teachers to type a topic, grade level, and other information into a search screen that then retrieves -- from more than 140 web sites -- lessons, instructional units, and other free educational materials on that topic, for that grade level.

"The web," Riley said, "puts many thousands of learning resources within reach of anyone with Internet access. It's no surprise that one of the most popular uses of this new medium, among teachers, is searching for resources that can help students learn. But finding the right resource on a particular topic for your students can take time. And time is in short supply for our teachers. That's one reason GEM is so important."

GEM lets teachers, as well as parents and students, search instructional materials of more than 140 federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial organizations. These materials may also be browsed by subject area or key word. Currently, more than 7,000 items are included in GEM with hundreds of new resources being added and new consortium members joining each month.

"GEM is more than a web site," said Linda Roberts, special advisor to the secretary for technology. "It is a solution that was developed by a consortium of organizations that got together and said, 'Let's find a way to make it easier for teachers to find lesson ideas across all our web sites with one simple search'."

Roberts noted that GEM is one of the Education Department's responses to President Clinton's April 19, 1997, call for federal agencies to improve and expand access to teaching and learning resources on the Internet. The department and more than 40 other federal organizations also responded by creating a web site that makes teaching and learning resources from across the federal government available in one place: the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) web site at www.ed.gov/free/. While teaching and learning resources are the aim of both GEM and FREE, FREE focuses only on those created with federal support. GEM includes mostly materials not created with federal support. Also, the search tools differ.

"FREE relies on an off-the-shelf tool that searches the full text of each resource," explained Keith Stubbs of the National Library of Education, who oversees the department's support for GEM. "GEM works like the card catalog system in a library. GEM looks through the card catalog, or what are technically called `metadata records,' for resources that match what the teacher requests. The teacher can then read the card catalog descriptions of those resources, or go directly to the resources, which reside on the server of the organizations that created or own them. A GEM search retrieves fewer resources than most search tools, and with more precision. Also, in the future, teachers will be able to search and find resources by state academic standards."

Both GEM and FREE respond to the president's technology goal of improving content and online learning resources. The president's technology goals also include Internet access for all students and teachers, connections to the Internet for all schools and classrooms, and training and support for all teachers, so that all teachers can integrate technology into instruction.

The GEM Consortium is spearheaded by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology with support from the National Library of Education in the U.S. Department of Education. The ERIC Clearinghouse, located at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, also developed the software and architecture for GEM.

A list of organizations that are GEM Consortium Members may be found at www.geminfo.org/Consortium/members.html

December 9, 1999