ECOlogic has established collaborative relationships with investigators of other publicly funded projects (documented in letters of commitment) and will seek to cross-invest knowledge and cross-disseminate information by involving them directly in the ESSCC testbed or integrating the products of their research. In order to pilot broadcast and interactive network data interexchange, we will synchronize student investigation of ozone distribution with the public television broadcast of Live From Antarctica (G.Haines-Stiles).
Students in the testbed will view the Live From Antarctica broadcast on PBS, use video and text data in their investigations provided to the ESSCC testbed by G. Haines-Stiles on videotape and diskette, and provide peer telementoring by Internet E-mail to students in the broadcast audience on the content and techniques of their investigation. We will prototype automation of this media redistribution process by collecting user requirements for the design of a digital library (WWW, Gopher). This will assure that the design of the digital library will be pedagogically responsive. We will study and evaluate (1) the educational benefit of coordinating media venues, and (2) students' derivation of information from these data sources and integration in scientific communications. We will study the human-network broadband interface requirements which are of particular importance to NASA in its leadership of a national migration from narrowband to broadband network architectures in its NREN initiative.
Faculty and students in the ESSCC testbed will also test and evaluate software tools by applying them in their investigations. ECOlogic has been closely involved in the development of NCSA Mosaic and will capitalize on the NCSA effort to integrate z39.50 more closely in the WWW architecture and complete a CDF to HDF conversion utility.
The Earth System Science Community Curriculum Testbed
keeler@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov