Building the Earth System Science Community

The authors consider the benefits that ensued as a result of the creation of the old scientific societies such as the Royal Society. These institutions only cater for the postgraduate community. The authors therefore consider the position of both undergraduate and school science and they outline their efforts to create a high school curriculum for Earth System Science (ESS). ESS is a holistic approach to the study of the Earth that stresses investigations of the interactions among the Earth´s components in order to explain Earth dynamics, Earth evolution and global change. The challenge to ESS is to develop the capability to understand those changes that will occur in the next decade to century, both naturally and in response to human activity. ESS, by design, intensifies the significance of scientific community-building. In May of 1993, ECOlogic was awarded a contract by NASA Space Data and Computing Division through the High Performance Computing and Communications program. Under that two-year contract, the authors worked closely with NASA scientists and staff to develop ECOlogica, a multimedia Earth System Science curriculum using NASA computational resources delivered over the Internet using the World Wide Web (WWW). In support of this effort, NASA Science Internet installed a DS 1 high-speed connection to the Internet at their host institution, Gonzaga College High School. ECOlogica set down the foundation for an Earth System Science curriculum. The instructional and curricular design approaches and methods of getting advice and support from researchers and data providers were tested and refined in pilot classes