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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

To access any of the free tools you just need to create a free account to the NSTA Learning Center by providing your name, email address, and a password of your choosing. Scroll below to see an overview of each tool.

My Professional Development Plan & Portfolio (PDP) allows you to create a personalized plan that outlines your professional development experiences over a period of time, describing how you will support increased student learning through your increased teacher knowledge and skills. It allows you to voluntarily upload portfolio materials, such as samples of student work or augmented lesson plans, and generate written reflections that demonstrate and support your growth over time as you complete your professional development plan (PDP).


Multimedia Overview

View a short animation describing the various features of this tool.


My Library is designed to help you organize all your Learning Center resources. You can keep track of what you’ve selected; and stay on top of subscriptions. My Library will auto-populate (that is, fill itself in automatically) once you start selecting your resources. Best of all, no matter which computer you are working at, you will always have your resources. Resources may be sorted and further subdivided into smaller personalized libraries that may then be shared with other educators if you desire to do so.


Within My Library you may

  • Link to the digital resources you select, such as individual NSTA journal articles, SciGuides, Science Objects, or book chapters.
  • Identify resources that are subscription-based, such as NSTA SciPacks and SciGuides.
  • Notify you of subscriptions that are about to expire.
  • Create collections of resources by topics you desire and add personalized notes to each resource.
  • Forward and share your library resources and collections—including your personalized annotated notes for each resource—with colleagues.

My Calendar: This tool assists you in managing professional development resources and events that are time sensitive (conferences, submission deadlines) and may have a fixed duration or lifespan for which they are accessible (subscription renewals expiration dates). The My Calendar tool is automatically populated as you select certain professional development opportunities, and also allows you to enter dates for your own events. Reminders will be made available if desired and will automatically display upcoming professional development goal completion dates from your Professional Development Plan. This tool helps you track your PD opportunities in a ‘monthly’ visual layout format.


My Notepad is designed to let you create personalized notes for any product or resource within your own section of My Library.

My Notepad will:

  • Allow your annotations to appear next to each resource you choose to mark. For example, you can make a note about a teaching tip you want to try the next time you use a certain resource, or you can remind yourself to use the resource in conjunction with another item found within your library.
  • Allow you to sort and collect your notes in an organized way as they build over time.

The Professional Development Indexer helps you diagnose your needs in specific content areas and provides suggestions of NSTA e-PD resources and opportunities you may want to consider as you plan your professional development growth over time. The Indexer does not assign a grade or present a score to the questions you answer, but saves a list of recommended resources for later review.


My Transcript is designed to let you access your records of participation indefinitely as part of your individual profile. You may print your transcripts directly from this website and present them to an administrator who requires documentation that you participated in an NSTA conference, or completion of an NSTA learning experience such as an Online Short Course, SciPack, or series of Web Seminars.


Transcript Availability
Boston National Conference Now
Detroit Area Conference Now
Denver Area Conference Now
Birmingham Area Conference Now
St Louis National Conference Now