CU Science Update

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Final Project Report

I. Title of the project and URL

CU Science Update
http://cuscienceupdate.coloradodjlabs.org

II. Members, classifications and emails

1. Ina Damm Muri: inadmuri@gmail.com, Grad Student
2. Haley Fritzen: haley927@hotmail.com, Undergrad
3. Heather Hansman: hhansman@gmail.com, Grad Student
4. Kylee Perez: Kylee.Perez@colorado.edu, Grad Student
III. Division of Labor (who did what?)

Ina-Dino dung stories
Haley-Chasing hurricanes stories
Heather-Site building and design
Kylee-River delta stories

IV. Resources (a list of sources with contact information, research materials, major electronic resources used, etc.)

CU Science Update

Podcasts

Chasing Hurricanes
- For the chasing hurricanes segment, the main focus was the video with Dr. Joshua Wurman. He is the President of the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder. He is also featured on the Discovery Channel's reality program Storm Chasers. Dr. Wurman provided the interview for the video and the pictures for the tornado photo gallery.
- The map of the United States features some of the most impacting tornadoes and hurricanes in US history. Information for the storms was mostly gathered on Wikipedia and from sites like this: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml from NOAA.
- The photos in the gallery on Hurricane Ike were provided by Dr. Katja Friedrich, an ATOC faculty member at CU-Boulder.
- The following links also provide information on hurricanes and tornadoes:
Center for Severe Weather Research

CU Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

The National Center for Atmospheric Research

National Science Foundation

National Weather Service


River Deltas
Most of the information for this story came from Irina Overeem and her published papers.
-The map of River Deltas came from the paper LAND-OCEAN INTERACTIONS IN THE COASTAL ZONE (LOICZ).
-The major obstacle in this story is not being able to go to
any of these deltas to see firsthand what Overeem was talking
about, or to get any multimedia elements.

The Army Corps of Engineers

Irina Overeem's INSTAAR website

The Louisiana State Department of Natural Resources Office of Coastal Management Page


Dino Dung

Most of the information came from the interview with Dr. Karen Chin. Because she is a professor, I am a student, and the we were in the midst of finals it was difficult to schedule the interview. But after the interview it finally came together. Luckily Dr. Chin has a lot of her fossils in her office so I really got to see and get a detailed explanation of what her research is about. Otherwise, her web site, the CU Paleontology web site, and the CU's Museum of Natural History web site was very helpful.
Creating a map and a timeline was a lot easier than I first thought. What I thought would be the easiest turned out to be the most difficult. I wanted to have a rolling slideshow with a little text following the picture, and I figured out that I could do that in Adobe Fireworks. But somehow I could not figure out how to export the file and send it. I tried opening it in different other programs such as dreamweaver or flash, but these programs recreated the format of the pictures. Even though I did not get my slideshow I think the pictures look good where they are in the article.

University of Colorado Museum of Natural History

All About Dinosaurs

Karen Chin's Website


V. Strengths of the Project

We managed to cover a lot of ground and provide multimedia content about a variety of interesting projects going on at CU. Our stories were diverse and detailed, and ranged from quizzes to videos to timelines. We presented them in an organized, clean, easy-to-navigate manner and made they interesting and interactive. Because we were each responsible for a separate segment we had very little conflict over direction and content. It came together pretty smoothly.

VI. Weaknesses of the Project

Because we were working autonomously there is some inconsistency in the content. The individual pages are a bit different from each other, so there is some visual and content-based disparity. Working in a group was difficult because we are all very busy and never actually found the time to meet as a whole group. Because we didn't have a lot of time with each other in person, most of our communication was through email. And communication via email isn't the best way to create a cohesive group project. Working autonomously also negated the idea that journalism is
becoming more of a collaborative effort. We didn't really bounce ideas or problems off each other but more just put individualized content onto the same space.

VII. Lessons Learned (positive and negative)
Start working way before you think you need to.
Communication is key.
Dreamweaver is complicated
posted by heather at 9:53 AM 1 comments

Friday, March 19, 2010

Project Proposal

I. Preliminary title of the project –CU Science Update


II. Members, classifications and emails

1. Ina Damm Muri: inadmuri@gmail.com, Grad Student

2. Haley Fritzen: haley927@hotmail.com, Undergrad

3. Heather Hansman: hhansman@gmail.com, Grad Student

4. Kylee Perez: Kylee.Perez@colorado.edu, Grad Student


III. Statement of purpose - A general mission statement about the purpose of your project.

The purpose of our project is to add dimension to the existing CU Science Update episodes and put it on a platform where more people have access to it.


IV. Scope and scale - How you will frame your topic to be broad enough to be of interest, but narrow enough to execute in the time you have.

The topics covered by the existing CU Science Updates are all-encompassing and we will use those pre-existing podcasts as jumping-off points for our research.


V. Division of labor - Who will likely perform what tasks to complete the project.

Heather will be the one to compile our website. Ina, Haley and Kylee will be the reporters and gather the content.


VI. Preliminary story topics and media needs - 4-8 story ideas and media considerations.

We will figure out which topics are most of interest to each of us and then decide.


VII. Anticipated barriers or obstacles - What your team is concerned about at this point.

It will probably be hard to get everyone together, with our busy schedules. And making this project in a short amount of time will be challenging with our beginner web design skills.

posted by haley927 at 8:53 AM 0 comments