Network Members


Network Meetings and Workshops


Content for spheres


Funding

Evaluation Info


NOAA Office of Education


Science On a Sphere^® Web site

NOAA Education Plan

The SOS Users Collaborative Network has worked toward the development of guidelines for creating effective content for spherical display systems. The guidelines are still under development and are updated during workshops of the Network. The current draft guidelines based on the recommendations of the network are that content should:

• Be structured to tell a compelling Earth system science story that is related o NOAA's mission. The story should explain an Earth system phenomenon and provide the context and relevance of this phenomenon to the general public;
• Have clear messages and learning objectives that will be evaluated;
• Be based on an appropriate combination of data visualizations, animations, video and still imagery, and computer graphics;
• Feature use of NOAA data (can be complemented by other, non-NOAA datasets). Examples of current visualizations involving NOAA data can be found at the Science On a Sphere Picture and Image Gallery (http://sos.noaa.gov/gallery) and the NOAA Environmental Visualization Program (http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/);
• Be able to be displayed on spherical display system, including NOAA’s Science On a Sphere (SOS) System;
• Be of a minimum resolution of 2048 X 1024 pixels for all sphere content;
• Have planetary images plotted on an equatorial cylindrical equidistant projection for all sphere content;
• Be made available as an MPEG-4 file, and/or as a directory of JPEG images with accompanying MP3 file for all sphere content;
• Be evaluated for efficacy at delivering environmental messages after fully developed