GLOBE Technology Working Group

In the summer of 2014 - at the International Student Learning Expedition in New Delhi, India, the GLOBE Implementation Office along with NASA's GLOBE Program Manager established formal working groups to engage in discussions around a variety of GLOBE Research/Science, Education, Evaluation, Communications, and Technology challenges now and into the future.

These groups comprise memberships from around the world with participants from science, education and technical institutions, and GLOBE Country and Regional Coordinators.

I was honored and pleased to have been elected to chair the Technology Working Group. My colleagues on the Tech WG include Maria Auxiliadora Portuguez Campos (vice chair and Coordinator for Latin America and Caribbean), Krisanadej Jaroensutasinee (recorder and Coordinator for Thailand, Asia-Pacific), Nadhira Iharthy (Coordinator for Oman, Near East & North Africa), Charles Mwangi (Coordinator for Kenya, Africa), Matthijs Begheyn (Coordinator for Netherlands, Europe and Eurasia), along with ex-Officio Working Group members - Nargess Memarsadeghi (NASA/GSFC Technology Manager), David Overoye (Raytheon), Cornell Lewis (JPL), and our GLOBE Leadership Director Tony Murphy and Ming-Ying Wei (NASA Program Manager).

Now the good stuff!  Our group initially met in New Delhi to come up with a number of priority Technology Issues. We accomplished a lot while in India and then commenced to meet monthly/bi-monthly to address each issue as best we could. In all of our meetings we had representatives from NASA, Raytheon and JPL as technical advisors who helped us reign in our ideas and who graciously took our questions and suggestions to heart and then immediately jumped to develop/redevelop or implement solutions. 

Overall, this has been a wonderfully productive year for the Technology Working Group... and for GLOBE!

We are so proud to have been involved in discussions that led to a new GLOBE Web Interface and in the development of mobile apps for Data Entry and a citizen science cloud observations app. 

Here is the full list of our Original Goals and Objectives for the last year:

 - Website Reorganization (redesign, streamline, simplify)

 - GLOBE Collaboration Tool (enhanced "MyPages" and other means of connecting)

 - Data Entry Apps (iOS and Android Apps for mobile field data collection)

 - GLOBE Data Visualization (enhanced methods of identifying schools and their data for graphing)

 - Advanced School data search and sort (an additional tool added to the Visualization pages)

 - Enhanced Multi-Lingual Access (adding more language translations for the main GLOBE Website and many other online components)

 - e-Training (updates for GLOBE Protocol videos, etc)

Over the course of the last year, our Technology Working Group achieved nearly all of our original objectives. We provided insight and critique for the new GLOBE Interface, new Apps development, Communications and Visualizations Tools, and more.

So, please, please take a good long look at the New GLOBE Website and all its updated enhancements. We know you will love the progress made and appreciate the very hard work put in by all of GLOBE's partners.

Our working group will meet again, face-to-face in Los Angeles the July. We will further hone our goals and objectives, identify new one and keep the ball rolling (thee globe turning).

Finally, it has been my great honor and priviledge to work with all my Tech Working Group fellows over this past year. I look forward to many more greatly productive meetings.... and an ever evolving, updated, capable and inviting GLOBE!

Sincerely,

Scott M. Graves