PaleoPortal SITE GENERATOR FOR GENERATION OF FREE CUSTOM-MADE HYPERTEXT DOCUMENTS ON REGIONAL GEOLOGICAL AND PALEONTOLOGICAL HISTORY

Everyplace has a unique geological and paleontological history, and this history helps explain everything from landforms to local agriculture and natural resources. Yet it can be challenging for educators without a deep geoscience background to create for a classroom or exhibit scientifically accurate and up-to-date overviews of the geology and paleontology of their region. Further, it can be expensive to have a resource graphically designed for specific applications. The PaleoPortal kiosk project exists to enable organizations to easily construct free exhibit kiosk software on the geologic history and paleontology of particular regions of the country, taxa, and geologic time periods. PaleoPortal (paleoportal.org) is a central portal for reviewed paleontology resources on the Internet for multiple audiences, including researchers, K-12 education, government and industry, the general public, and the media.

The PaleoPortal "site generator" (www.paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=kiosk) permits for any part of the U.S. creation of tools tailor-made to one's own area, created directly from the outstanding content available from PaleoPortal.org. PaleoPortal kiosk generator software creates a hypertext document that is a subset of the database-driven PaleoPortal website and that can be viewed with any standard web browser and without an Internet connection. Users can choose their own color palette and attractor screen image (e.g., organizational logo). Thus any organization, such as a nature center, park, or school, can create for free a hypertext document tailored to their uses.

In evaluating the use of PaleoPortal.org, volunteer educators from a variety of backgrounds provided feedback on a prototype version, followed by testing of a regional version of the website (the output of the kiosk generator) with visitors in the permanent exhibits of the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution. Of over 800 visitors observed (about 2/3 of whom were K-12 students), about 25% used the kiosk; about 10% stayed for five minutes or longer, and most stayed for about 2 minutes. About 80% of those who engaged the content said they would use PaleoPortal.org at home.