Science Connections For All

Campinas, São Paulo | Discovering Science Connections

Science Connections For All

High-Level Project Summary

Education is one of the most important assets of humanity, with it we can do wonders. But many people have trouble accessing information, especially those that have a disability. Science Connections For All is an inclusive website project, that will possess translation in many languages, including sign language and audio description (first, only in Portuguese and English). The goal is to teach sciences to more and more people. The site has a mission to make learning about subjects that people see as hard, easy and funny, while connecting them to each other and to your day-to-day life.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/IDSaAARrDP8

Link to Final Project

https://scienceconnectionsforall.wordpress.com/

Detailed Project Description

Science Connections For All is an inclusive website that tries to include more people in the field of science as an addition to the usual audiences. The site has the same information for many languages and easily and funnily. The best thing is it includes all people, independent of age, language, or even if they have trouble using digital resources. 


We chose to include multiple translations, sign language (ASL and LIBRAS - American English and Brazilian Portuguese), and audio descriptions (also, at first, in English and Portuguese). Many might think that because the website mostly brings written and visual content, that people with hearing disabilities have full access to it. In our research, we learned that many deaf people don’t learn to read or have trouble reading. Therefore having a language they are familiar with - sign language - is the most inclusive way to build a website.


In hopes of inspiring others to love science as much as we do, we selected easy experiments to do at home. With these experiences, one can understand concepts such as gravity and Newton’s Third Law and how they apply in their daily life. That way we can bring science closer to those who think it is something unreachable. 


Another important aspect of our website is a page dedicated to women who contributed to the history of science. Hypatia, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Valentina Tereshkova, Katherine Johnson, and many more are not shown in school and many times not even mentioned in science educational books. Each of them contributed wonders and deserves to be known by everyone. As fellow women, we see it as our duty to inform more people about them.


How was the website build?


We built our site using WordPress, for it being a free website program that uses CSS as its base. For the translation in LIBRAS and ALS, we used an app called Hand Talk. Unfortunately using the app was a backup plan, given that our original idea was unavailable on free WordPress. We started making our project before we knew we could get Pro WordPress with NASA’s resources, because of the limited time, we decided to stick with the website we were developing and adapt, instead of starting from scratch.


What is featured in it?


Our site includes 4 main parts (Home Page, Connections, Experiments at home, and Women in Science) that can be found in the top horizontal menu. Clicking on Home Page, we have an introduction to our project, our motives behind it, and who we are. Passing the mouse through Connections, other 5 items appear Earth Science, Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Planetary Science, and Biology and Physics Science. Each of the titles opens to separate pages that explain and bring information on that topic. In Experiments at home, we bring ideas and examples of easy science projects that are related to daily concepts and also fun extra videos of astronauts demonstrating those concepts on zero-G. Lastly, in Women in Science, there is a timeline with important female names that everyone should know of. All these pages were built to grab one’s attention and to be accessible to everyone. The website is originally in English but we certified that it is translatable to other languages. 


Because of the short time limit, you may find some pages with nothing written yet, such as in Biology and Physics Science, PET bottle rocket, and Stargazing with friends. 


In our original idea, we also included a Quiz page, somewhere you can test what you learned while having fun. Nowadays, short and simple quizzes such as the ones BuzzFeed usually publishes, catch anyone’s attention and they have fun by wanting to answer it correctly. Thereby we also saw it fit as an easy learning method. From the beginning, we had the intention of doing something that makes someone else want to learn and not rely on simply memorizing the subject.


What are the benefits of this project?


Well, regarding the benefits, there is only one simple answer: bringing more diversity to the field of science. We want to inspire and show people that if they have a dream, nothing can stop them from reaching it. We want to see more disabled people being able to access web information as well as seeing more women in STEM. We hope that in the future we see more and more websites enabling accessible and inclusive information. We also hope that our project might help and peak an interest in someone out there.


Space Agency Data

Our project was mostly based on information brought by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, mostly on the topics of Earth Science, Astrophysics, Heliophysics, and Planetary Science. We also used specific information on various missions: Artemis Program, Hubble Space Telescope, ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), and MinXSS (Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer). 


In addition, for our Earth Science page, we used two very important maps brought by GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. 


We also used many photos taken of space, planets, cosmos, rocket launchers, and more, brought by NASA Image and Video Library.


Hackathon Journey

Our journey in this Hackathon was very inspiring, the chosen challenge was Discovering Science Connections and the project was to make an inclusive website. Therefore we can know better the reality of so many people; stopping to think about the next one makes us better people. Choosing this theme was because of a news report (from before we even knew about the Nasa Space Apps) about the small number of accessible websites (less than 1% in Brazil). By doing this we can make a difference.


We approached the project with the thought of wanting to include minorities in a space where they are little to no access. From that, we thought of an accessible website and started developing it on WordPress. We were very happy when we found it was a free website program that uses CSS as its base. However, we did have some stepbacks when trying to implement the sign language program and the audio descriptions. To put those in we had to upgrade to a higher plan and at the time we had no idea we could get the Pro WordPress with NASA's resources, so we continued developing by adapting our ideas. We transformed the translations and the audios into videos. Then we were able to add them to our YouTube page and later on, to our website.


We would like to thank our mentor Marcos Linhares, who was helping the region of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.

References

SPACE AGENCY DATA





OTHER WEBSITES





OTHER DATA



  • IGNOTOFSKY, Rachel. "Women in science: 50 fearless pioneers who changed the world". Published by Ten Speed Publiss in 2016.
  • ANDREWS, Georgina. "50 Science Things to Make & Do". Published by Usborne in 2008.

Tags

#website #diversity #science

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.

Discovering Science Connections

The NASA Science Mission Directorate studies our home planet’s systems while exploring the worlds in our solar system and the elements of the larger universe. Your challenge is to find the connections between the diverse NASA science disciplines and communicate those linkages in an innovative and interesting way to new and diverse audiences.