The award-winning Exploring the Environment® web site created by the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future at Wheeling Jesuit University is featured this month on a leading education web site.

Education World (www.education-world.com), which since 1996 has served as an online portal for educators, highlighted Exploring the Environment as one of its top web sites reviewed for April 2006.

The review (www.education-world.com/awards/2006/r0406-17.shtml) called the Exploring the Environment web site user friendly and added, “This is an excellent way for teachers to involve their students in problem-based learning on topical issues.”

Exploring the Environment (www.cotf.edu/ete) develops students’ awareness of our planet. The site’s 25 online modules and activities put students in problem-based learning scenarios based on actual situations. The award-winning modules, which are free, cover topics such as weather, population growth, biodiversity, land use patterns, volcanoes, water pollution and global warming. Students use remote sensing and other techniques to formulate problem statements, collect and analyze data, prepare and present their findings and recommend solutions.

Exploring the Environment is interdisciplinary; besides Earth science it can complement other courses, such as economics, social studies and history. The award-winning program’s goal is to help students make better choices for the future by understanding the impact today’s decisions have on their planet. In addition, the K-4 modules target a population often overlooked.

Last year the Exploring the Environment web site received more than 12 million hits from 600,000 unique users from 121 countries and all 50 states.

Over the years Exploring the Environment has been recognized numerous times. Earlier this year it received an Excellent Site award from TopMarks Education (http://www.topmarks.co.uk/), a British web site created by two primary school teachers in 1998 to help pupils, teachers and parents use the Internet effectively for learning.

Wheeling Jesuit University is a leader in academics, athletics, and for making a high-quality private education accessible. With more than 30 undergraduate and six graduate programs to choose from, WJU offers students an education for life, leadership and service, providing the foundation to succeed in a career or in graduate school. Many of the Catholic university’s programs have 100 percent placement rates in graduate programs across the country. Since 1995 U.S. News & World Report has ranked Wheeling Jesuit University among the top institutions in its “Best Master’s Universities in the South” category.

The NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future is the space agency’s principal research and development center for educational technologies. It opened on the Wheeling Jesuit University campus in 1990 and is housed in the Erma Ora Byrd Center for Educational Technologies (www.cet.edu), a 48,000-square foot facility that features such amenities as large meeting rooms wired for distance learning, computer lab facilities—including the newest facility, a room featuring wireless computers where training in handheld computers also takes place—complete video production facilities, satellite uplink and downlink resources, dedicated ATM and ISDN videoconferencing, broadband and web streaming facilities, IP videoconferencing and multimedia development for the web and CD-ROM and DVD production capabilities in addition to the latest in educational software.

The Center for Educational Technologies also houses the Challenger Learning Center®, which provides students, teachers and adult learners with simulations that emphasize teamwork, problem solving, decision making and communication skills. The Challenger Learning Center in Wheeling is one of 51 centers worldwide established by the Challenger Center for Space Science in memory of the space shuttle Challenger. More than 25,000 students fly missions each year either at the Wheeling facility or through distance learning. The Challenger Learning Center has been honored nine years for having served the most children of all the centers.