Overview

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Overview

• Background on website
• How it started, objectives
• Web traffic and global reach
• Tools developed
• New capabilities
• Bi-lingual content
• Content development system
• Image database
• New interface facilitating collaboration with
  Scientist Developers
• Plans for the future

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Some History

• Initiated in 1995, with funding from the NASA
  Public Uses of Remote Sensing Data Bases
  program and OSS
• Initial Concept - To provide a learning
  environment within which the user can access a
  wide range of Earth and Space science content and
  related art and cultural information in an
  intuitive fashion in support of their learning
  goals
• Continued for the past 10 years through the
  present with funding from numerous sponsors,
  including OSS, ESE, JPL Mars program, Galileo,
  Ulysses, ISTP, AIM, NSF, CISM, CSEM, SPARC, and
  Ameritech.
• Current sponsors include OSS AISRP and E/PO,
  NCAR, NSF, CISM, CSEM, and AIM.

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Windows to the Universe Website www.windows.ucar.e
du

• Over 6.7 million visitors in 2004 (5.8 million
  unique ips, 46 million annual page views)
• 3 levels of content
• 65 K-12 students
• 46 once per week or more
• gt3000 visits to Teacher Resources per day during
  work week
• Spanish translation in progress, 4500 pages
  translated to date, 8000 users per day
• New tools for remote collaborative development
  with scientists

National Science Foundation

• Spans the Earth and space sciences, with arts and
  humanities connections
• Integrated classroom activities, interactives,
  and models for users
• 70 Web Awards to date
• 7000 web pages/visuals on site
• 800 teachers trained annually

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According to www.alexa.com

• In terms of frequency of use, Windows to the
  Universe is
• The most popular astronomy education website on
  the web
• 3rd most popular in astronomy and space for Kids
  and Teens (after nasa.gov and local times web
  site)

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Major Website Sections7000 pages total

• Sun
• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Mars
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Uranus
• Neptune
• Pluto
• Comets
• Asteroids
• The Solar System
• Astronomy and the Universe

• Space Weather
• Space Missions
• Myths
• Art, Books, and Film
• History People
• Geology
• Life
• Fundamental Physics
• Images and Multimedia
• Teacher Resources
• Journals
• Games
• Guided Tours
• Headline Universe

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910,000 sessions in March 2005 788K unique
ips 10.4M page views 30.6M hits 11
pgs/session
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January March 2005
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Some tools developed over the years

• Comment management system
• Tracks user comments, questions, survey responses
  as well as our responses to them, with
  opportunity for internal messaging (4000/yr)
• Automated tools for modifications to the site
• Automated scripts for website tracking
• Interface for automatic survey development,
  games, news headlines management, user journals
• Log analysis software

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El Sol
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La Tierra
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Content page Spanish
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Content page English
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Content Development Management System

• To facilitate work of distributed team, we
  undertook development of web-based content
  development interface, including
• Page templates
• Image database
• Management system facilitating review,
  publication, translation, project tracking

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Image data-base facilitates access to 7000
images across the website, as well as associated
metadata (captions, credits, etc)
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Facilitating Education and Outreach for
Scientific Community

• We are now piloting using our web-development
  interface to work with remote scientists
  collaborating with the project
• Allows E/PO contributions of scientists (ie,
  folks like you) to reach a large audience at
  relatively little effort
• These developers, who could be scientists
  anywhere in the world (with access to web
  browser), can provide content at a level
  convenient to them and upload images/animations
• W2U scientist/developers and translation staff
  then work with these resources to create
  multi-level versions of them and translate them
  into English and Spanish

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Dr. Randy Russell
Dr. Lisa Gardiner
Collaboration Opportunity
Dr. Travis Metcalfe HAO Post-Doc
Content Developers
Development Template
Adds or updates content and images focus on
Astronomy
Jennifer Bergman
Iterate with Travis to levelize content and
link across site
A new page on the website!
Marina Lagrave
Dr. Julia Genyuk
Spanish Translation
Software Support
Dr. Eduardo Araujo
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Future Plans

• Committed to offering bi-lingual content across
  the website
• We would like to offer opportunity for scientists
  to participate as co-developers on the website,
  based on experience in pilot (bilingual)
• Offer training sessions on software tools at
  appropriate venues (professional meetings, etc)
• W2U staff work with scientists to translate the
  content to upper elementary, middle and high
  school levels, as well as into Spanish, and to
  integrate new content into website matrix
• Also, happy to link to your web-based resources
  appropriate for public, student and teacher
  audience if you are interested in sharing
  information with the public