Papers in PDF format

environment. Unfortunately, a large fraction of the general public does not have the computer literacy to
navigate the information highway unaided in order to access these images. In addition, the user interfaces
available, while elegant in their design as network tools, are not well suited to novice users. Many existing
World Wide Web resources focusing on science are not specifically created in content and design for the
novice user. These resources are usually written at the college level, using terminology not commonly in the
lexicon of K-12 students. The important point is that a focused effort in the development of the presentation of
content material and the crafting of the user interface is necessary before data on the Internet becomes
information available for all users.
Although continually expanding in availability and use, Internet connectivity remains unavailable to a wide
spectrum of the general public in their homes and schools. Museums and public libraries are prime locations
for intersecting significant numbers of people, representing a broad cross-section of the general public ranging
in age from pre-school to the elderly and including both sexes, multiple races, and diverse religions and
nationalities. The yearly attendance at science museums nationally in 1993 was over 55 million persons.
There are over 89,000 public and school libraries serving nearly every hamlet and community in the nation.
These libraries are used by approximately half of the national population each year. These figures suggest that
a focused effort on providing Internet access in libraries and museums may be a promising way to promote
both technology and scientific literacy as well as to encourage recognition and use of the data bases available to
the public. In recognition of the important role they have to play, libraries and museums throughout the
country are increasingly including Internet connections and computer resources in their plans as budgets allow,
and are highly interested in information resources that are appropriate for their settings. This development
parallels the interest in and expansion of Internet connectivity and use in K-12 classrooms.
This paper describes the “Windows to the Universe” project, funded as a component of the NASA Public Use
of Remote Sensing Data Bases Program (through the NASA Office of High Performance Computing and
Communications Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications Program) to develop, implement,
and deploy a network-based test-bed in libraries and hands-on science museums and designed to complement
the curriculum needs of K-12 students of the Earth and space sciences. The goal of the project is to provide an
attractive, easy and fun to use information resource in these settings as well as to attract and maintain the
interest of casual, non-scientifically oriented users. After an initial description of the project, we discuss the
content included in the site, the way the site is structured, educational uses, and plans for the future.
Description
Windows to the Universe (http://www.windows.umich.edu) is an innovative, user-friendly web site that guides
users in museum, library, and classroom settings through informational text, images, movies, animations, and
sounds to explore the rich archives of data collected by the satellites and spacecraft that have explored the
Earth, the solar system, and the universe. Users can browse through the site (now including over 2000
individual html documents) in an intuitive fashion through the use of graphically enhanced button panels [Fig.
1] which illustrate the content available from a given page. The interest of the user is stimulated by
elucidation of the historical and cultural ties between scientific knowledge and the human experience, as well
as by providing information on new research discoveries, current events, and links to data bases of interest to
users.
In order to be appealing to the broadest spectrum of the general public, primarily in informal learning settings,
the site is highly graphically based. The over 1000 images and 80 animations and movies included within the
site include hundreds of images of objects within the solar system (primarily from NASA), hundreds of images
of astrophysical objects from NASA and observatories world-wide, historical photographs and movies from
NASA missions going back to the beginning of the space age, photographs and paintings of famous scientists
and philosophers dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, photographs and artistic renderings of works of art
from around the world relating to mythology about the planets, the stars, and conceptions of the universe, as
well as numerous original images and animations created by artists working on the project.
Through their pre-college education, students are expected to develop an increasingly sophisticated
understanding of science [American Association for the Advancement of Science 1993, National Research
Council 1996]. Internet resources can make a significant contribution as information resources and potentially
active partners to aid students as they develop these understandings through activities assigned by their
teachers. We describe below in the section below on [Educational Use] how we are designing Windows to the
Universe to meet the needs of the K-12 students and their teachers.