1. The Visual Geophysical Exploration Environment Raj Pandya DAWG Meeting 27 November 2003

2. DAWG 01 Recommendations  Identify a few use cases to frame the educational content  Demonstration project linking a few distributed Earth data sets… and evaluated within one or more educational contexts  Demonstration … showing in-depth development of tools and data access  Develop automated packages to construct data sets and learning resources

3. Overview  DAWG 01 Recommendations  THE VGEE as: A demonstration project  an inquiry- and data-based learning environment about ENSO  Preliminary Evaluation Integrating data access and tools: an instance of a compound document A developers tool- kit

4. VGEE as a demonstration project  An inquiry-based curriculum to guide student exploration  A learner-centered interface to a scientific visualization tool  Concept models to help students understand scientific principles and their role in data  A suite of El Niño-related data sets adapted for student use (and connections to distributed, real-time data)

5. Step 1: Identify Patterns Using the Visualization tool and data sets, students notice that the Western Pacific is considerably warmer than the East.

6. Step 2: Relate Patterns With data and visualization tool, Learners explore relationships: this one shows that upward motion, above average precip, and warm SST all occur together

7. Step 3: Explain Patterns Concept models are used to explore and explain relations in an idealized context.

8. Step 4: Integrate Understanding Concept models can also be used to probe the data. This helps students apply the basic physics toward understanding geoscience data.

9. Evaluation Question Number Average Score

10. VGEE is a Compound Document  Curriculum is an integrating framework From a conceptual viewpoint, it guides student use of tools (concept models and visualization tools) and data. From a technical point of view, it anchors access to tools and data

11. Compound Documents  DOCUMENTS: A curriculum to model inquiry  Standard HTML-based Multimedia Document  TOOLS: A scientific visualization tool with an interface for students  Integrated Data Viewer – java tool with web-enabled installation Concept models to inform student data exploration  Java applets  DATA: Multiple data sets to enable student discovery  THREDDS catalog

12. Compound Documents in Digital Libraries  The VGEE curriculum is catalogued in the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) Will be discoverable in the National Science Digital Library (NSDL)  Educators can find data, then, along with a context to guide use and tools to use with data “ Most teachers/students will use data as part of educational materials that include tools and curricula in addition to data” - Developers’ Workshop

13. Starting in DLESE

14. Discovery of VGEE

15. VGEE Curriculum

16. Launching the Visualization Tool

17. The IDV-based Visualization Tool

18. Using THREDDS to Access Distributed Data The IDV can read THREDDS catalogs and locate and load the cataloged data set.

19. Concept Models/Probes

20. Connecting Data, Tools, and Curriculum Learners & Educators Ocean Data GIS Data Solid Earth THREDDS DLESE Images Simulations Curricula Concept Models IDV Curricula VGEE VGEE Data Concept Models Researchers

21. A Developers Toolkit  An educational materials developer can find data sets in THREDDS thematic catalogs (in NSDL/DLESE) find related Concept Models in DLESE/NSDL modify or build a new interfaces for the IDV engine (including importing concept models) use VGEE as a scaffold to build curriculum

22. Dynamic Curriculum  A student or teacher can Use curriculum with chosen, static data sets (as now) Access thematic catalogs to look for the most recent related data sets  Catalogs can (in the future) Contain pointers to configuration info for the IDV (including customizing the interface

23. A Geologic Example  GEON (with UNAVCO) provides an opportunity to extend the VGEE model of leveraging Unidata efforts Use THREDDS with solid earth data Enhance IDV to work with solid earth data Develop curriculum for earth science Develop and repurpose concept models to support solid earth investigations

24. DAWG Recommendations Revisited  Identify a few use cases to frame the educational content An initial demonstration around ENSO  Demonstration project linking a few distributed Earth data sets… and evaluated within one or more educational contexts Preliminary evaluation, plans to expand the scope of evaluation  Demonstration … showing in-depth development of tools and data access Leveraging development efforts of IDV, THREDDS  Develop automated packages to construct data sets and learning resources Compound Document, with IDV and THREDDS catalogs, as general tool for Geoscience Ed. Development

25. Acknowledgements  The VGEE curriculum and concept models were developed by: Dan Bramer, Colleen Contrisciane, Ryan Deardorff, Dean Elliott, Ken Hay, Katia Issa, Mary Marlino, Rajul Pandya, Mohan Ramamurthy, Caryssa Seider, Marianne Weingroff, Robert Wilhelmson, and and John Yoder  VGEE Data were prepared by Don Middleton and Tim Scheitlin of the VETS group in SCD  The IDV was developed by the Unidata IDV developers: Jeff McWhirter, Don Murray, and Stuart Wier  THREDDS tools are designed and maintained by Unidata THREDDS developers: John Caron, Ethan Davis, Ben Domenico, Robb Kambic, and Stefano Nativi  All work supported by the National Science Foundation.

26. Links  VGEE Curriculum www.dpc.ucar.edu/vgee  IDV Visualization Environment: www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/metapps/webstart  THREDDS: www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS  DLESE: www.dlese.org  NSDL: www.nsdl.org