Free science for schools Web site provides lessons for students at no cost

Gail Wheatley was not pleased with the level of Internet-based educational aids available to the nation’s cash-strapped schools.

The project manager at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) museum in Columbus, Ohio, says she then had a grand idea: Establish a nonprofit Web site where teachers and students could go for multimedia science lessons at no cost.

"I see schools struggle to meet the most basic needs, but there’s not much out there [on the Internet] for science that’s for free," Wheatley says. "This is a very wealthy country, but our students are falling behind the rest of the world in science and technology."

While the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act has put computers in many classrooms, Wheatley says they often go underutilized. School districts, especially rural ones, often cannot afford the expensive instructional software and educational-service subscriptions needed for specialized science and tech learning.

But Wheatley did not have the expertise to make her brainstorm a reality. Enter Eric Bort, a multimedia programmer, Web-site designer and animator from Louisville, Ky.

One day in late 1999, the two bumped into each other at COSI and began talking. Wheatley, the forty-something executive with both the vision and a grant-writing touch, found a convert in the twenty-something computing wizard. By January 2000, they had non-profit status. A year later, Wheatley landed their first grant and http://www.edheads.org debuted.

Today, the site is kept afloat by individual donors and groups like SBC Communications Inc. and the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. Edheads.org also has forged partnerships with a number of Ohio school districts, and it logs more than 250,000 visitors a month.

By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune

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