BugSCope ITOP

In general, the scientific research community is enthusiastic about supporting educational outreach efforts (e.g. remote access to scientific instruments via the Internet) if they can be achieved with minimal impact on the primary research mission of a research group. The research proposed here is the development of information technology (IT) to automate the infrastructure, administration and data handling tasks necessary to support remote instrumentation projects for K-16 education. The goal is to develop an IT infrastructure that can be readily adopted by other academic research groups. One result could be the incorporation of the remote use of research grade scientific instrumentation as an integral part of teaching within K-16 curricula with little time and effort from the research groups supplying the scientific resources. The outreach project, Bugscope, that will serve as the focus of this work will be structured so that the instrument, an environmental scanning electron microscope, is provided as a resource while leaving the planning, execution and control of the experiment in the hands of teachers and students. Projects such as this can provide benefits not only to the students involved but also have the potential to provide the general public with better insight into the goals, techniques and instrumentation used by scientists.

We have completed the first aim of ITOP: development of a core data template design for describing the information elements necessary for managing the Bugscope project. Please follow the BugscopeXML link below to view our implementation of XML into Bugscope.

• Publications:
• A. Lazarevich, B. Carragher, C.S. Potter, and D. Weber, "An XML Language Template Design for Managing a Remote Instrument Educational Outreach Project" (Submitted to Microscopy and Microanalysis 2001 on 2/15/01)
• Sponsors:
• National Science Foundation , EIA-0081117

For more information contact Leginon.