Oceanography 549--Communicating Ocean Science--Spring Quarter 1996

Oceanography 549B
Communicating Ocean Science on the World Wide Web
Spring Quarter 1996

Class sessions: Mondays, 3:30-5:00 p.m., 205 Ocean Teaching Building.
Graded C-NC. SLN 7655.

Instructors: Russ McDuff (e-mail: mcduff@ocean.washington.edu, 3-3058) and Dean McManus (e-mail: mcmanus@ocean.washington.edu, 3-0587)

Explosive growth of the World Wide Web over the past two years has provided a powerful new tool for communicating information to our peers and to the public. The focus of this course will be two individual student projects, one aimed at communicating the individual's research interests to others working in the area and the second at communicating the same information to a lay audience. A weekly lecture/workshop session will provide 1) instruction in web page creation, and 2) a forum for discussion of and feedback on individual projects as they evolve. Instruction will include information about the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), an extensive discussion of issues in discussion of stylistic issues: compatibility with the many browsers in use, the mechanics of converting existing materials for use on the web, and advanced topics (imagemaps and the cgi to executable modules). A second focus will be to incorporate individual projects into the departmental web. The resulting virtual open house will help communicate to the public which supports our work, and provide an important resource for K-12 education.

Class Sessions

WeekTopicPreparation, Session Objectives
1Course OverviewAn overview of the course.
2Scientific Content on the WebSurf the web with the specific goal of finding examples where scientific content has been presented well (some starting points). Spend some time looking at the source code for one of these examples. The class discussion will focus on contrasting approaches that work with those that do not. What elements do the effective approaches share?
3Individual Projects: ProspectusOutline the material you plan to include in your individual project. Be prepared to give an overview to a small group in class with small groups provided feedback and hints. Class discussion of how the projects taken as a whole could improve the School's web. Are important components missing that compromise having a collective goal?
4HTML Generation Review the material in the NCSA tutorial, the University of Kansas quick reference guide, the W3 Consortium style guide and, for the really curious, the W3 Consortium HTML specification. Class discussion of basics of html markup and methods of editing HTML documents (manually, dedicated editors, word processing converters, program generation)
5Serving Content to the Web; Graphic Library for Science; Syntax CheckingReview the material in World Wide Web Basics concerning Web architecture. Class session on how to incorporate material onto our server. Discussion of special problems in html markup for science applications and use of the scigif library. Introduction to syntax check with weblint.
6Working with ImagesClass session on graphics formats, scanning, conversion of formats, palettes, file sizes
7Individual Projects: ReviewPrior to class review the projects being developed. Small groups during class session to provide feedback, hints, and help.
8Web Clients and HTML Implementations; Anchor Checking  
9Imagemaps; Common Gateway Interface; Access Statistics 
10Individual Projects: Synthesis 
Ocean 549 Home
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Russ McDuff (mcduff@ocean.washington.edu)
Copyright (©) 1996 University of Washington; Copyright Notice
Last Updated 5/20/96