Enhancing Research Projects with Environmental Informatics and Web Technologies

1
Enhancing Research Projects with Environmental
Informatics and Web Technologies

• Stefan Falke, Erin Robinson and Mark Kieffer
• EECE
• April 2, 2009

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Static versus Dynamic Research Projects
Dynamic
Static

• Email only
• Powerpoint slides
• Pdf reports
• Sharing/publication only of final results
• Literature references in document or your own
  EndNote

• Email shared web workspaces
• Screencasts, WebEx
• Multi-author content creation
• Sharing/publication of workflow (data to
  information)
• Literature references online, community
  annotations

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What does the Web bring to Research?

• Sharing and communication of research from
  initial to interim to final results
• Connections to related research and researchers
• Easier ways to document, augment and archive the
  research project
• Richer research team interactions
• A broader learning environment

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Environmental Informatics

• The science, engineering and practice of the
  creation, exchange and use of data, information
  and knowledge relevant to environmental
  researchers, managers and the interested public.
  Cross-disciplinary across computer, information,
  environmental, geographical, and social sciences.

Wisdom
Knowledge
Evidence
Data
Information
Adapted from Bolstad, 2005
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Web 2.0

• Term coined by OReilly in 2003 to describe the
  rise of
• user-generated content
• folksonomy
• on-line collaboration between users
• Web 2.0 tools emphasize
• Blogging
• Tagging
• Commenting
• Modifying
• Augmenting
• The Participatory Web it is easy to publish
  your own content
• User interaction with web has expanded from
  one-way information download to include
  user-driven information content Web 2.0
• Within the science and engineering domains, this
  next phase of the web is referred to as
  cyberinfrastructure, e-science, and service
  oriented science.
• new capabilities for sharing information,
  conducting research in a distributed environment,
  and achieving new insights that would have taken
  longer, or not occurred at all, in independent
  organizations.

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Data Sources

• Observations Models
• Surface
• Satellite
• Forecasts
• News
• Blogs (Technorati)
• What you collect and generate

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Del.icio.us

• Social bookmarking tools
• Storing bookmarks on-line, publicly, with a
  folksonomy categorization
• Can tag the bookmarks for others
• Collectively collect of sites/resources/online
  texts using particular set of tags (S. Cal
  Example)
• Has an RSS feed for all pages
• More information

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Online Photo Sharing Flickr

• Online photo management and sharing tool
• Allows tagging, commenting and organizing photos
  (S. Cal Ex.)
• Has an RSS feed
• More Information

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Flickr for MAGEEP Symposium

• Our group shared photos by using a common tag
  mageep2008

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Screencasts and YouTube

• Screencasts are simple demonstrations used to
  show instead of tell
• Video blogging
• Screen capture
• Presentations
• YouTube allows you to publish your screencast,
  the same way flickr allows you to publish photos
• Videos can be tagged, commented on, and shared
• More Information Screencasts YouTube

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Screencasts and Video Capture for Travel

• Most digital cameras have some video capability
• Videos can be easily published and shared through
  YouTube
• Once on the web, they can be embedded many places

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Blogs

• A website that can be individually edited
• Gives everyone space to share news blog posts
• Readers can comment
• Blogs can be linked and cross-referenced
  (backlinking)
• Has both RSS feed from the blog and can embed
  other feeds inside the blog (Example)
• Can search blogs through Tech.no.rati or Google
  Blog Search
• More Information

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Travel Blogs

• Good way to capture the trip and communicate with
  friends/family
• Could be useful for connecting the class trip to
  the rest of the department

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Skype and WebEx

• Skype is a Voice over IP service (Internet Phone)
  
• Skype-to-Skype is Free and Skype-to-Phone has
  lower international rates
• WebEx is a way to share your desktop
• More Information Skype WebEx

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Wikis

• Wikis are collaborative web sites where anyone
  with the proper permission can create, edit and
  organize the pages.
• They are good for
• Aggregating and archiving group knowledge
• Connecting people with similar interests
• Can act as an RSS Aggregator
• S. Cal Page
• More Information

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Google Sites http//sites.google.com

• Google sites is a cross between a Portal, Blog
  and wiki
• Using different kinds of pages it can be any of
  the above
• Easy editing
• All Google apps work in conjunction with the
  sites (Calendar, Docs)
• More Information

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Twitter

• 140 character limit feeds that you can subscribe
  to
• Simple way to keep track of whats going on
• Twitter is breaking news
• CNN learned of a Jetliner crash in Turkey via
  Twitter
• During the 2007/2008 California wildfires, many
  people relied on twitter feeds to learn the
  latest on where houses were burning and roads
  closed

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Using Web Technologies for 2008 EECE Beijing Trip

• How we used them
• What worked
• What didnt work
• Recommendations

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How we used web technologies

• Google Site
• Central location for information
• Potential for student/teacher collaboration
• Individual student pages
• Skype
• Facebook

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What Worked

• Resources page for presentations and articles
• Class announcements page
• Student pages were useful for storing sources

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What didnt work

• Student pages were only used for sources
• No collaboration between students/teachers

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Recommendations

• The more work you put into a workspace the more
  mileage you get from it
• Use del.icio.us to set up an RSS feed for photos
• Make a blog on the workspace

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Portals

• Can act as an RSS Aggregator
• More Information

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Mashups

Mashups - applications constructed by combining
services from disparate sources
Top Mashup APIs - All
Top Mashup APIs Last 14 Days

• Web services approach uses standards-based
  interfaces for accessing and working with data.
  Next steps go beyond searching and visualizing
  data to include data processing and analysis
  services.
• More Information

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RSS Feeds Mash-up Glue

• Really Simple Syndication
• Share content between websites when new
  information is available
• Need RSS Feeds to subscribe to
• More Information

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Other Aggregators
Yahoo!
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Weatherbonk.com
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Southern California Wildfires
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Mashing Mashups, the value chain
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Southern California Smoke
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References - Web Style
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How to get started

• Tutorial sessions on April 3 and 10 will
  introduce Google Sites, Flickr, Delicious and
  YouTube applications. This will also be a time
  to
• Figure out how you want to communicate prior to
  Korea trip, during trip and after you return
• Find coordinators/facilitators in your group
  who can set up the web technology and initiative
  group content creation and interaction
• Explore the links provided in these slides
• This is far from an exact science. What youll be
  doing will help define how the web is most
  effectively used in environmental research.
• What you create will be reused in subsequent
  trips and research projects