SHARING THE GEOSCIENCES WITH LEARNERS OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM THROUGH WINDOWS TO THE UNIVERSE AND NESTA

The National Earth Science Teachers Association is the new home to the Windows to the Universe project (http://windows2universe.org). Windows to the Universe is one of the most popular Earth and Space science education and outreach websites globally, with ~16 million users annually. With it's multi-level and bilingual (English and Spanish) content spanning the Earth and Space sciences and related disciplines in the humanities, as well as its extensive use by K-12 classroom educators, Windows to the Universe has become a key website venue for sharing the geosciences not only with teachers and students, but with the general public as well. Demographic studies show that our primary users are youth of middle school and high school ages, followed by a cluster of users between 35 and 55 (including teachers and parents) on a wide background distribution from 5 to 75 years of age. Our website users are also much more diverse than the internet average. This poster will share some of our approaches for engaging website visitors with the geosciences, as well as opportunities for geoscientists and geoscience educators to collaborate with NESTA and Windows to the Universe and leverage this successful, high traffic website to get the word out about your research, resources, and programs.