Project Proposals for Geog 518

Your proposals for your project, which is 40% of your grade, are due on 11/13/06.  Here is a little guidance.

Proposal Elements:

Statement of Purpose - Why will people want to come to this website?  What will they get from it?  Levity doesn't work here, i.e. the purpose is not to get a good grade in Geog 518 but to provide the public with access to information on the location and damage caused by the historic earthquakes in Indiana - or something like that.  Here is where some thought and creativity will really pay off - before you alter a single html or xml file.  What will people want to see and interact with? Try some google searches, e.g. ArcIMS Student Projects for sample projects.  I could make a list for you but this is about your learning to do these things.

This statement of purpose will take the form of a web page.  Your project will not open with just a map; it will open with an html page.  Here is an example - a group project from San Diego State University where one of the authors of your text works.  http://map.sdsu.edu/group2001/group3/  It need not be this fancy but I want users to come into some text that explains what they are going to see and then a link to the actual web site.

Software to be Used:  ArcIMS or SVGMapper.  If ArcIMS, is it to be an Html Viewer or a Java Viewer?

Data Elements - what data will you be using, where is it?  It is possible to design an interesting website with readily available data but something of interest is better.  On the other hand, I do not want you spending all your time finding and cleaning up data sources.  Go with the most interesting data you can readily find.

I think your projects should have at least 5 data layers and you should have it in hand when you submit your proposal.

Customization Plan - What do you plan to do that will make this project worthy of 40% of graduate credit for a three credit course.  If you take the standard 2 hours outside for every hour of class over 14 weeks of class the expectation is about 34 hours spent in total on this project.  So if the data is available already and you spend a couple of hours on your statement of purpose page, that leaves maybe 25-30 hours you are going to spend developing and customizing the website.  Cranking through the Author/Administrator/Designer process with 5 or so layers of data really shouldn't take more than an hour or two so there will be a lot of time leftover to make this thing look good.

This part could include a sketch of how you want the web site to look along with a list of things you want to change about the default web site to make it look the way you want it to.

I recognize this is the element that will change the most when you get started but I would like some idea of what you plan to do with the 25-30 hours you will be spending on this project.