MINERALOGY 4 KIDS GOES MOBILE

Mineralogy 4 Kids is the highly successful educational outreach website of the Mineralogical Society of America. In it's nearly 12 years, it has been awarded the Kindernet Today page and selected as a SciLinks site by the National Science Teachers Association. The site includes links to Mineral Groups, Mineral Properties, Crystallography, Mineral Identification, Minerals in Your House, and the Rock Cycle.

During the last academic year (Aug-Jun) the site has had nearly 2.5 million pageviews, the first full academic year since Phase I of an extensive revision to the site was completed in March 2012. The average visit to the site lasts over 7.5 minutes, which is extremely high for web site visits. Only social media and gaming sites have a longer visit duration. Nearly 10 different pages are viewed by each visitor. A Google/Bing/Yahoo search for "mineralogy" puts the site within the top 3 and if "mineralogy + kids" is searched, it is the number 1 site on all the search engines.

Revisions in Phase I included a change in the URL to www.mineralogy4kids.org, the addition of 100s of mineral photographs, the redrawing of all the figures, and becoming much less reliant on external websites for content. This past year we've undertaken Phase II of the revision of the website, which is to be compatible with mobile devices such as the iPad, iPad mini and smart phones. The site was redesigned to adjust to the different screen sizes, to take advantage of the touch capability of mobile devices, and be viewable in both vertical and horizontal modes.