Just upstairs from an exhibit on African culture at the American Museum of Natural History, Robert V. Steiner sits in front of his laptop computer and clicks on an "interactive animation" that illustrates the concept of frames of reference. On the screen, a glowing basketball bounces up and down against a black background. After watching the direction the ball is moving, the user is asked to determine whether the basketball player is standing still or walking east or west. The same questions are asked about the viewer. The task, part of the museum's virtual Seminars on Science for teachers, is meant to help educators better understand Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. The graduate-level online courses, covering subjects from ocean systems to spiders, feature essays and videos of scientists affiliated with the museum. The courses are also helping Bank Street College of Education meet one principle of Teachers for a New Era, a five-year, $60.5 million initiative of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Involving Bank Street and 10 other institutions across the country, the project has challenged those involved with making over their teacher-training programs in three ways: by becoming engaged with the arts and sciences, by treating teaching as a clinical-practice profession, and, perhaps most important for policymakers, by producing evidence of the effects their graduates have on student performance. Calling Teachers for a New Era a "make-or-break project," Arthur E. Levine, the president of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, says the endeavor has the potential to prove that teacher education makes a difference in student achievement.