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

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.

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 –>3000 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 Windows to the Universe Website 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

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

Major Website Sections ~7000 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

~ 910,000 sessions in March 2005 ~ 788K unique ips ~ 10.4M page views ~ 30.6M hits ~ 11 pgs/session

January – March 2005

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

El Sol

La Tierra

Content page Spanish

Content page English

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

Image data- base facilitates access to ~7000 images across the website, as well as associated metadata (captions, credits, etc)

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

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

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