DRAFT Learning Technologies Web Page

Mission of Learning Technologies Group
Support the mission of EOT by promoting use and development of  technologies that enhance learning environments.

Processes in the Learning Technologies Group

Comments on Learning Technologies Group and Activities

Catalog of Activities of Learning Technologies Group

1) Core Learning Technologies
 1.1)Collaboration
     (Habanero) NCSA  (Java shared Objects)
     (ANL/UIC High End "Access Grid")
     B:TangoInteractive

 1.2)Multimedia
     K: (?Michigan) as quoted in SDSC training
     A:Wisconsin(Moses) MultiMedia
     C: LecCorder NPAC (packaged multimedia recording using commercial hardware)
 

1.3) Visualization
    M: CosmicWeb Java Viewers from Curtis
    (VisAD from Hibberd) Wisconsin
    (UIC/ANL/NCSA Visualization including Immersadesks)

1.4) Assistive Devices for Universal Access
    N: NeatTools NPAC (Support of muscularly handicapped)

1.5) Structure of Distributed Learning Objects and Distributed Scientific Objects
    D: WebWisdomNT NPAC (Database backend)
    E: DATORR NCSA/NPAC/World (standards for computing portals (PSE's) and Distributed Scientific Objects)
    F: Trace Center work on W3C document object model etc.

2) Evaluation of Best Practice in LT and creation of Repositories
    G: Raul Zaritsky's Contribution on NCSA Education Division Activities
    H: Ohio Supercomputer Center: Development of WebED Tools Site for University K-12 Educators

3) Instruction on how to use Learning Tools and Technologies
    G: Raul Zaritsky's Contribution as above
    J: Steven Gordon on OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center) Summer Institute for high school teachers.
    (TangoInteractive Training) NPAC

4) Use of Learning Technologies in practice (testbeds)
    (Biology Workbench)
    (NCSA Training)
    K: HPC Distance Training at NPACI by Amitava Majumdar
    L:NCSA and Collaborators RiverWeb Project from David Curtis
    M: CosmicWeb Portal to Cosmology from David Curtis

1) Core Learning Technologists ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1.1) Collaboration ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Habanero) NCSA (Java shared Objects)
(ANL/UIC High End "Access Grid")
Go Back to Top: B: TangoInteractive NPAC
TangoInteractive Syracuse University -----------------------------------

1. Project Description
Web based Collaboration System supporting integration of asynchronous
and synchronous learning

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Part of Team C Alliance technologies and capable of making many
PACI applications collaborative

3. Potential audience or user base
Any Students or Teachers

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Current Use of TangoInteractive includes K-12 and Graduate Education
Research links to Habanero. Can be used to build collaborative
learning environments around ChemViz, Biology workbench and ...?

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Exciting technical opportunities to apply to Universal Access

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Hard to make "bullet-proof" for release to general public

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
At "beta" stage and reasonably mature. Needs better packaging for general release

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Presented at SC98 and some other conferences

1.2) Multimedia +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(ANL/UIC High End "Access Grid")
(?Michigan) as quoted in SDSC training listed in section 4)
Go Back to Top: A: Wisconsin (Moses)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory Moses on Wisconsin Multimedia Technology for Distance Education

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)

Web-basd digital video viewer and authoring tool that produces two simultaneous
video streams, a powerpoint frame, a table of contents (allowing random access)
and an external links frame for the purpose of delivering video on demand for
educational and other purposes.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
The tool will allow productions of simulation results in the form of video and
a "talking head" to explain the work in an educational setting. It will allow
lectures to be produced for viewing via the web.

3. Potential audience or user base
All PACI ET and AT projects and all EOT projects, as well as any person wanting
a low cost way to produce digital video productions quickly and easily.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Currently producing a Condor tutorial using this tool. The video tool was
supported by NPACI and the Condor work was supported by NCSA.

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Yet to be addressed, but we will.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Network speed is the major barrier to dissemination of this technology, but
this is improving.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Viewer is in alpha phase. It is being used for production of two demo's by
knowledgible users. Authoring tool is in development with expected alpha
release in Spring.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
This will be presented at numerous meetings (SC 99) and conferences, once past
beta release and with some high quality content. Expect to start next summer.
The software will be available via download from the web, once it is released.

Go Back to Top: C: LecCorder NPAC (packaged multimedia recording using commercial hardware)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NPAC LecCorder Lecture Recording System

1. Project Description
Package Commercial digital video OptiBase hardware with Web delivery
as "audio/video" over foils

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Could be one way of enhancing PACI education and training

3. Potential audience or user base
Teachers and Learners at all levels

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
This is product of DoD Modernization Program but could be broadly used

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Addressed by linking to TangoInteractive and work by

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Production for base system. Several straightforward extensions
such as support of cursor movement and link to TangoInteractive

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Not research -- systems integration project

1.3) Visualization ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CosmicWeb Java Viewers from Curtis listed in section 4)
(VisAD from Hibberd) Wisconsin
(UIC/ANL/NCSA Visualization including Immersadesks)

1.4) Assistive Devices for Universal Access +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Go Back to Top: N: NeatTools NPAC (Support of muscularly handicapped)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NPAC NeatTools and TNG Assistive Interfaces -----------------------------

1. Project Description
Cheap sensors and sophisticated linkage software aimed at those with severe
muscular deficiencies. Initially tested on bright paraplegic high school student who
could only move cheek muscles and used to access web-based education. Software
has visual interface to allow customization of interface for individual users

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Relevant for making PACI material universally accessible to a small but
important disabled community

3. Potential audience or user base
Users with muscular deficiencies

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Working with Trace Center

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Core UA technology

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Not clear that we can or should support deployment

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Funding from NSF(expected) and NEC Foundation to extend Syracuse experiments to
four other metropolitan centers

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Many well received conference presentations. Some papers. See http:///www.pulsar.org

1.5) Structure of Distributed Learning Objects and Distributed Scientific Objects ++++++++
Go Back to Top: D: WebWisdomNT NPAC (Database backend)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NPAC's WebWisdomNT Oracle Database Support for Educational Objedcts

1. Project Description
WebWisdomNT is Oracle database designed to store components of distributed
educational objects. It has a Java manager and links to Web and TangoInteractive
through XML templates. Strong support for PowerPoint (decomposed into single
foils using COM), HTML pages and their integration into general dynamic "play-lists".
Allows multimedia ("audio/video" over foils) to be stored in database.
Relevant for organizations needing to support large amount of courseware.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Clearly relevant for some PACI activities and partners

3. Potential audience or user base
Most relevant to "institutions" such as NCSA or Universities responsible
for large training/education sets. It will of course deliver to broad user base.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
This is product of DoD Modernization Program but could be broadly used

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Helpful technology for UA as decomposes objects into components which
can be renedered optimally for each user

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Complex sophisticated technology. Needs more use and evaluation

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Operational in NPAC. Delayed by changes in TangoInteractive and
need for performance enhancements. Should be in beta release May 1

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Builds on experience reported in papers

Go Back to Top: E: DATORR NCSA/NPAC/World (standards for computing portals (PSE's)
and Distributed Scientific Objects)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
National DATORR and NCSA Alliance Post Web Standards Activity --------------------

1. Project Description
Emerging Activities to set standards for web and backend interfaces to resources
in terms of XML and related distributed object technologies.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Critical PACI activity which will integrate ET AT and EOT

3. Potential audience or user base
Anybody building "Portals" "Workbenches" and "Problem Solving Environments"

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Emerging synergies between education and problem solving environments (PSE) are
an important target of opportunity. A good PSE is likely to have substantial
educational content and value. The Biology Workbench is one example of this

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Important base technology for UA as defines structure of objects

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Too early to say

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Still in planning phase but has high level attention

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Well connected to nationally respected groups

Go Back to Top: F: Trace Center work on W3C document object model etc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Gilman from Wisconsin Trace Center on Universal Access -- Standard Format

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)
Universal Design for Disability Access. Leverage the learnings of
Universal Design in developing Advanced Computational Infrastructure.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
PACI strives to be the computing platform of the future. Satisfying the
needs of people with disabilities up front through universal design is a
cost-effective way to make technology more effective as used by the general
public. One of the major challenges as PACI technology approaches the
field is to broaden the user base it has been exposed to. Most of these
technologies start out with an infinitessimal human community of users
and hence the diversity of user abilities and learning styles has not been addressed.

3. Potential audience or user base
Developers of advanced client-server and agent-net applications.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Current linkage: W3C web specifications development through W3C Web
Accessibility Initiative.

Potential linkage: NPACI Interaction Environments thrusts through
development of disability-adaptive morphs of interaction environments.

Potential linkage: any collaborative-environment infrastructure for
flexibility in inserting assistive modules particularly middleware in
task-support nets.

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Mostly the objective is that Advanced Computational Infrastructure should
not deny usability (and therefore access) to people with disabilities.
There are related sub-goals dealing with scalability of interaction
environments to mass market and mobile devices that are synergistic with
gaining universal access to educational resources on the Web for people
with economic and geographical barriers as well.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Mostly it it a question of follow-through. Visualization techniques are
not pressed beyond visual presentation because the value of digging deeper
and genericizing the techniques is not fully appreciated. In a community
like PACI where there is so much information in play that even 3D
visualization only takes a small bite out of the situation, it is easier to
find people with the vision to relate view extraction problems at all levels.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
UD/DA in general is an ongoing project in EOT-PACI funded in part by both
partnerships.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
The primary dissemination avenue for UD/DA progress is via standard
interfaces in the information technology industry, from the Windows bible
to HTML and HTTP, to emerging standards such as IMS.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Gilman from Wisconsin Trace Center on Universal Access -- His natural description

This response answers the question: "Trace the relationship of specific
project goals for your project with the goals of PACI, EOT-PACI, and what
you consider to be the goals of the LT focus area in EOT-PACI."

PACI goals:

Integrate high end of data storage and computing capability through a
flexible infrastructure to make it more available to more people.

EOT-PACI goals:

Educate people to take advantage of the capability that is here and extend
the capability in the future.

Extend the application of this class of computational resources to new
communities including education / learners. Guard against inadvertent
exclusion of anyone.

UD/DA goals:

Evaluate disability access to advanced computational infrastructure early;
discriminate what is readily achievable in terms of usability from
different user interface capability profiles from what is intrinsically
different. Consolidate the readily achieveable so that it is still present
in the capability as transferred to widespread practice.

UD/DA strategies:

Embed disability access in the PACI quality process. Find the right middle
phases at which to do adapted-interface evaluations so that it is neither
too early nor too late.

Learning Technogies strategy: expose collaborative technologies in learning
scenarios so as to help the technologies get real.

UD/DA strategy: Coordinate with educational applications and learning
technology developments. There are shared objectives such as:

- Server resources should be adequately structured and documented to
support diverse client-side interaction environments.

- Client-side methods should be modular and flexible.

PACI applications deal with many-dimensional worlds; these high-dimensional
problem spaces are a good seedbed for highly flexible methods of sharing
information and distributing workload among cooperating tasks. This
flexibility has benefit in both learning and disability-access contexts of
use.

Exposure of scientific knowledge and computational science tools in
educational settings will force them to become better explained and hence
a) cognitively ready to reach a larger audience and b) more robust,
retaining effectiveness when some of the assumed interface channels are
missing or under-performing. Teaching the latest science is part of
learning it so well it becomes a fit springboard for new science. Learning
technologies will help EOT accelerate this process for the application
domains served by PACI.

Likewise, improving our ability to concretize task prerequsites will enable
more learning to be done more asynchronously, and learning assessments to
be done in a media-independent frame of reference, allowing for equal
access to recognition of learning for those with non-traditional
opportunities to learn as well as those with sensory and communication
disabilities. This is better for educational productivity and better for
social justice.

Face time is scarce. The general economic scenario described in "Virtual
Teams" by Lipnack and Stamps applies to teaching and learning as much as it
applies to any other economically productive human endeavor. The ability
to spread teaching/learning communities in space and time will enhance
educational productivity. All of the technology being developed by PACI
that allows data resources to be better understood and accessed, allows
live sessions to be collaborative across distance and or be auto-synopsized
to be shared across time, are candidate capabilities to be applied to this
need.

2) Evaluation of Best Practice in LT and creation of Repositories ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Go Back to Top: G: Raul Zaritsky's Contribution on NCSA EDucation Division Activities
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raul Zaritsky NCSA on Some NCSA Education Group Activities

For our purposes Education Technology should be defined as an enabling
technology for learning. Thus the Biology workbench, at present, is a
scientist's tool not an Educational Technology. However Tango, Habanero,
SimCalc, KIE, CISLE, are all examples of learning technologies.

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)
To create a repository, and help develop specifications for learning
technologies capable of improving the delivery of distance education systems.
This includes synchronous and asych situations to provide instruction on Alliance
tools being developed and transformed for the learner. Specifically: our
computational modeling, and simpler modeling tools, our bioinformatics tools
and essential programming languages such as JAVA.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
This solves an essential dissemination and instruction question for the PACI,
and would provide the research basis for developing across partner courseware
and experience, both with distance and in class learning technologies.

3. Potential audience or user base
On the UIUC campus, Lisa and I are teaching a Modeling and Visualization Class
in the College of Education. Alai na is teaching a class to the MBA school.
Geoff is teaching a JAVA class, and this summer, the bioinformatics group,
BioWorkbench, will be teaching a series of workshops.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Biology workbench teams with schools and othe PACI partners
In-service and pre-service teachers
Other PACI partners, such as Shodor & MVHS instructing in student-based
curriculum to other PACI partners who will be providing similar services.

5. Diversity and universal access issues
An essential research focus would be to define the problems and solutions to
the diversity and universal access issues in this limited focused projects.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
All of the current distance education, collaboration and concept mapping
technologies have significant holes in their capabilities. Finding the overlaps
and focusing resources on developing solutions could effectively take us beyond
the trigger point of effectiveness. The fact that we have not reached this
trigger point, in sum, is a quick way of defining our barriers.
Further, cognitive and sociological barriers to learning will be even more
difficult to over-come than these technical barriers. However, we can't
approach solid research on these fronts until we have working technologies.
In medicine it would be like doing antibiotic studies in surgeries where there
was still a major sepsis problem.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
The courses are ongoing and planned throughout the next year.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Only projects with sufficient scholarly research commitments should be
considered for PACI support.

Go Back to Top: H: OSC WebED
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ohio Supercomputer Center: Development of WebED Tools Site for University K-12 Educators

1. Project Description
Over the past year OSC has developed a website (http://www.osc.edu/webed) which
provides links to web-based tools, courses, and related materials for higher
education. This site will be expanded in the coming year to provide more
extensive reviews of the tools and to have an area that more specifically
focuses on K-12 educators.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Provides widespread access to current information on available tools to a
educators interested in applying techology to the calssroom.

3. Potential audience or user base
Both undergraduate and K-12 educators

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Will be gathering information from existing EOT partners. Also will coordinate
efforts with the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse on Science and Math Education

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Tools will provide information to a wide variety of groups

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
K-12 portion of the site is under constructions. Higher education portion of
the site is being updated regularly.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
We will be using the web to distribute materials.

3) Instruction on how to use Learning Tools and Technologies ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Raul Zaritsky's Contribution -- see section 2) above
(TangoInteractive Training) NPAC
Go Back to Top: J: OSC Summer Computational Science Institute
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Gordon on OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center) Summer Institute for high school teachers.

1. Project Description
OSC will be launching its first summer institute for high school
teachers to train them to integrate compuational science in problem-solving
projects in their classrooms. They will be trained to use modeling and simulation in
the teaching of science and mathematics. The tools and resources developed by
the RiverWeb project (which OSC is also involved with supporting) will be
used as some one of the example projects.
We will be working with teachers to instruct them how to use web-based
technology tools and modeling tools to build project-based science and math
projects for K-12. We will do a face-to-face workshop but will be
developing some tools that would allow us to eventually hold part of the
workshop on-line.
Example materials from Riverweb would include the MapIt program that allows
web-based mapping visualization of environmental data, some web-based
graphing tools to look for the relationships within datasets on watersheds,
and a mentoring tool that will allow outside mentors to help the
teachers/students with their projects.
There are summarized at: http://alliance.osc.edu/riverweb/

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
These efforts are directly related to the EOT-PACI mission "to ensure
that all citizens may make productive use of emerging computing
technologies to advance their ability to understand and solve problems in
education, science, business, government, and society" as we better equip
today's and tomorrow's secondary school teachers. The effort focuses
directly on the training of teachers to use these technologies.

3. Potential audience or user base
The initial focus of the OSC CSI (Computational Science Institute) will
be high school teachers. The training materials and resources will also be useful
to teachers of grades 6-12 as well as undergraduate higher education.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
Partnering with ASPIRE at University of Alabama in Huntsville to
develop CS Institute and to create an online version of many of the
workshop materials so more people can utilize them. Other RiverWeb
partners include EOT: MVHS, OSC, UAH/ASPIRE; UIUC College of Education/Chip
Bruce/Inquiry Project; potential link to NPACI (ECCSE/Zavlesky/GIS); LIS
partners; Illinois DNR/EcoWatch; Mississippi RiverWeb Museum Consortium
partners (NSF-funded project)

5. Diversity and universal access issues
We will recruit teachers from a variety of school districts to reach a diverse
group of students -- of all socioeconomic levels and regions -- and involve higher
numbers of minorities and women in computational science and related fields
where they are currently under represented.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Existing modeling tools are not universally distributed to the effected
schools. Each school has its own, different technological base making it
difficult to define a set of curricular materials that can easily be adopted by all.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Summer institute is still in planning stages. RiverWeb continues with
development and implementation in its latest phase.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
We will be using the web to distribute materials through our webED site (see
other project).

4) Use of Learning Technologies in practice (testbeds)+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Biology Workbench)
(NCSA Training)
Go Back to Top: K: SDSC Training
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HPC Distance Training at NPACI by Amitava Majumdar ---------------------------

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)
HPC Distance Training to teach parallel programming languages, parallel
computer architectures, optimiztion techniques for codes on RISC machines etc.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Both PACI insititutes have users who are interested in these classes. The
distance training effort could provide HPC training for users who are not
able to attend the on site parallel computing training classes. This
effort can also be complimentary to the on site classes so that attendees
could later (when they are back in their university or institute) go
through these asynchronously.

3. Potential audience or user base
Users of HPC machines at both PACI sites and also non-PACI users who are
interested in getting into the field of parallel computing.

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
This could be a part of PACI HPC Training.

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Experience gained from this effor`t could be used in any other EOT PACI
effort for distance education and training. Conversely any distance
learning technologies developed in any other EOT PACI effort could be used
for HPC training.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Need to evaluate effectiveness of this approach and see if this is an
useful alternative to on site training. Should we make trainiers
available (via chat room etc.) at a pre advertised time? Should we try to
make it synchronous?

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
NPACI, with help from University of Michigan, is in the process of making
recorded lectures (video/audio) and synchronized slides available on the
web. I am not sure about NCSA's effort at this time, but they might have
their own effort on this.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Demoed at NPACI all-hands meeting.

Go Back to Top: L: RiverWeb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NCSA and Collaborators RiverWeb Project ---------------------------------------------

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)
Researchers and educators at NCSA, MVHS, OSC & UAH/ASPIRE are collaborating to prototype,
integrate and evaluate tools, methodologies and materials that
a) support engaged learning about rivers and watersheds,
b) integrate science and mathematics teaching and learning, and
c) are linked to national and state standards.

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)
Laying a foundation to scale tools and science content emerging from EH-AT team to meet needs of
broader audiences for the GRID.

3. Potential audience or user base
K-12 educators & students (grades 8-12); preservice educators and students; citizen scientists

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership
EOT: MVHS, OSC, UAH/ASPIRE; UIUC College of Education/Chip Bruce/Inquiry Project; potential
link to NPACI (ECCSE/Zavlesky/GIS); LIS partners; Illinois DNR/EcoWatch; Mississippi RiverWeb
Museum Consortium partners (NSF-funded project)

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Prototype activities & materials designed to engage male & female students & educators from diverse
geographic, economic & cultural backgrounds. Tools to accommodate wide range of workstation and
bandwidth capabilities. Three co-PI's one of whom is female (Susan Ragan, MVHS).

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Integrating withing tightly discipline-oriented high school science curriculum.
Dealing with multiple spatial data formats.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
Alpha prototyping. Restricting FY99 focus to tools to investigate linkages between water quality and
stream ecology.

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Presentation at SC '98. (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/Projects/Toolsuite/sc98_index.html)

Go Back to Top: M: CosmicWeb Portal to Cosmology from David Curtis
David Curtis on CosmicWeb Portal into Cosmology ----------------------------

1. Project description (one or two sentence description)

CosmicWeb, a experimental, web-based educational resource that adapts novel
data visualization tools being pioneered by the Cosmology AT team (as part
of their Simulated X-ray Cluster Digital Archive project) to support
engaged learning about the evolution of large-scale structure in the
universe.
 

2. PACI relevance of the project (how it relates to PACI goals/strategies)

CosmicWeb is intimately linked to the Archive Project, which demonstrates
components required for "post web computing environments." Tools written in
Java will support structured student queries to and interactive displays (1-, 2- & 3-D) of simulated and
observational datasets. In turn, design, prototyping & evaluation of
user-friendly interfaces for non-specialists will provide valuable data
with which to enhance the Archive's useability for high-end research.

3. Potential audience or user base

First and second year u/grads (primarily non-science majors taking
introductory astronomy courses).

4. Partnership links both internal (AT/ET/EOT) and external; can include
potential "targets of opportunity" for partnership.

Current Cosmology AT team partners; EOT partners focusing on undergraduate
education, including Boston Univ., CIC insitutions and PACS. Potential
links: Remote Instrumentation/Radiosynthesis/Digital Image Library project;
Habanero team (to embed java tools into Habanero framework).

5. Diversity and universal access issues
Focus groups will be formed to ensure that design of interfaces and
supporting explanatory materials address a range of learning styles and
student backgrounds. See also 6.

6. Barriers (with technology or other areas)
Large size of simulation datasets pose a challenge for web-serving. Current
design specifications being reviewed for broad educational access.

7. Status of project (i.e. planning, development, production)
In planning and design stage. Completion of prototype slated for 9/30/99.
Evaluation during 1Q00 (Federal).

8. Dissemination avenues - contributions to the literature (i.e. reviewed
journals, conference presentations, etc.)
Integrate or link materials from two existing web sites http://sca.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Cosmos/CosmosCompHome.html into single portal.
Preliminary evaluation during the fall semester '99. Findings to be published on the web.
Supercomputing '99: submissions for paper & poster presentations and workshop are being considered.