MUSEUMS TEACHING PLANET EARTH (MuTPE) is an innovative concept in outreach recently selected to be a member of the ESIP (Earth Science Information Partnership) Federation, a program of NASA's Office of Earth Science. An expansion of the successful "Public Connection" program funded by NASA's Learning Technologies Program, this program uses three independent mechanisms for educating the public about Earth science...
Each of these projects is being developed at Rice University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) and field tested at HMNS and at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH). As each product is fully tested it will be available for replication at other museums and schools around the nation.
EARTH UPDATE is an interactive educational computer program, suitable for a stand-alone exhibit at a museum or school or as a CD resource for personal use. This linked set of six interactive real-time computerized modules (which can run independently or as a single exhibit) shows real-time data in five SPHERES:
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Air
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ATMOSPHERE
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Life
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BIOSPHERE
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Ice
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CRYOSPHERE
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Land
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GEOSPHERE
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Water
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HYDROSPHERE
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It also gives the basics of remote sensing.
As EARTH UPDATE runs from a CD-ROM, the program displays images and movies of the best of earth science research and is documented with web references of how to find out more. A significant fraction of the material represents "today's data" - current as of the time when the CD-ROM is burned.
Sample
screen from HYDROSPHERE module
By installing the software on a hard drive, the user is able to update
the software to truly show "today's data" by downloading today's images
free from the internet; or we will update your modules remotely each
day (for a monthly charge) to keep your software up-to-date, even if
it is in use!. Each of the submodules are able to run separately, resulting
in six separate kiosks if desired.
The
EARTH
UPDATE
software itself is a point-and-click information system which can run
on a modest personal computer. "Push" technology allows automatic daily
updates of the data sets to the display computers at the participating
museums - even while they are in use. Schools behind firewalls or more
infrequent users can use "pull" scripts to retrieve today's data whenever
desired. Written in Macromedia Director, it is fast and simple, and
does not allow the user unlimited access to the often inappropriate
material on the World Wide Web. After extensive testing in museum and
school settings is completed, this software is ready for release in
both Mac and Windows versions.
One of the most exciting components of our MUSEUMS TEACHING PLANET EARTH project is our GLOBE THEATER immersive theater. We are creating full-dome digital productions using "SkyVision" projection technology from Sky-Skan of Nashua, NH. The Burke Baker Planetarium at HMNS was the first immersive theater to open in the world, and is still the leader in innovative shows. Our partner, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, has the highest-resolution (5 projector) panorama "Earth Theater". The technology uses multiple overlapping computer-driven projectors to achieve panorama (3 projector), full-view (4 projector) or full-dome (6 projector) productions. Each production uses 12 MB of data each 1/30th of a second, or 30 Gigabytes per minute! The first production, "Cosmic Mysteries", opened December 1998. "Destination: Moon" opened July 1999, and "Powers of Time" opened January 2000. The Museum's most recent production (opening June 15), "Alien Oceans - Dharmok's Gate", is the world's first full-dome movie, based on scenes from the popular "Planetary Traveler" video from Third Planet, Inc.. "Dharmok's Gate" brings the visitors in the 200-seat theater an amazing travel through scenes never before viewed with human eyes. Narrated by George Takai (Star Trek's Mr. Sulu), this scifi wonder is yet another first for the Burke Baker Planetarium.
This product already exists as a successful, operational simulator and exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Dr. Carolyn Sumners headed the HMNS team that designed, pro-grammed and now operates the Earth Forum. In developing Earth Forum's physical design and software, her team replicated the successful team problem solving strategies Dr. Sumners had used in designing the first Challenger Learning Center simulator. The Challenger Center has now been replicated at 29 other sites in the U.S. and Canada. Video from National Geographic, population projections from the United Nations, and environmental data from the World Resources Institute are also included. In simulator mode, the Earth Forum is designed for 24 - 36 visiting students staying 1.5 - 2.5 hours. Students in teams are assigned to work stations representing the world's continents and resources. Faced with the challenge of an increasing global population, students will use MTPE data bases to evaluate the effects on their continent and resource. Students are assigned roles as geographers, demographers, statisticians, resource scientists and political scientists. We propose to update the Earth Forum to include MTPE data bases and recon-figure it to emphasize specific problems addressable by MTPE data and Shuttle images of Earth.
