Oceans
This is the future location of our Oceans resource.
If you have ideas on how to present the ocean to K-5 students,
send mail to the oceans team.
You can also see the Oceans Production Schedule.
Some of our plans include:
I. Main Menu
The menuing interface must be whimsical and inviting. One suggestion is a clickable dive bag where the diving equipment is the buttons. Another is an underwater research institution under glass where you can click on the water (Interactive Reef), an underwater school (Classroom Activies), a remotely operated vehicle (Reef Cam), an underwater satellite dish (Hotlist), or a signpost (Navigation Guide).
II. Interactive Coral Reef
Jacques, David, and Clayton have been experimenting with a graphical multiuser interface called The Palace (see http://www.thepalace.com). Users can go to a variety of theme Palaces, move from room to room, and have discussions with other users. Palace pages can be linked to web pages and vice versa.
We can create a Palace themed around a coral reef. Clicking on sections of the coral reef would let users "enter" sections of the reef or find out more about an animal or plant on the reef. In some cases clicking on a fish could let a user enter that fish and look out from the inside of the fish.
For non-palace users this could take the form of a clickable interactive reef on the web. This would be similar to the pH Panel but could be designed to run more quickly.
III. Classroom Activities
Carol Delancy has been conducting an integrated thematic unit on Oceans at Avocado Elementary School. She has also been creating web pages to document her students' work and instructions to teachers on materials and procedures.
IV. Reef Cam
An underwater camera that takes pictures of an artificial reef every five minutes and uploads them to the museum server. The most recent pictures could be viewed, and the pictures could be composited over time to create a time lapse movie of reef growth.
Alberto has suggested the use of hardware and software developed at RSMAS to display the water temperature, turbidity, salinity, and luminescence at the same time as the image is taken.
The engineering of this apparatus has been discussed with Vic, Alberto, Victor Castro and Joel Tavio, among others. Vic has been experimenting with the necessary hardware and software as part of the Cybercity exhibit. However, no implementation schedule has been set yet.
V. Mariner of the Month
Each month a new person could be profiled in this section. Users could see photographs of the person in action, read or hear an interview of the person, and send the person questions via e-mail. An archive of previous months would also be included.
"Mariners" could include marine scientists, MUST students (with links to their research projects), fishermen, SCUBA instructors, and environmental activists, or ocean policymakers.
VI. Hotlist
This hotlist will be divided into several sections, such as kids' resources, aquaria, fish cams, research institutions/marine science universities, and environmental activism. This could also be a section for other resources such as a book list or an e-mail-based hotlist of experts to contact.
VII. Navigation Guide
This will include multiple navigation pathways, including: an index (A-Z list of web pages), a table of contents (or clickable outline), a grade level index, and recommendations from teachers in the form of mind maps through the resource.
Museum Menu