Yet Another Stealth Website NASA Can't Coordinate

Looks like eventually it will be pretty cool.
Looks like they are still working on it so maybe they didnt want to announce it til it was ready.
A lot of fields say empty and to be provided.

there have been items designed to notify the owner about an ISS flyover

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/natronics/iss-notify?ref=live

Folks:

Definitely not ready for prime time. Any 'improvements' they make will probably put it out of reach of anyone without a gamer PC. Too many plugins, not intuitive, sparse data when you finally figure how to get to it. As a 'systems' designer (retired), it doesn't pass muster with me.

tinker

tinker is unfortunately correct in a lot of his observations.

Basically it boils down to NASA has a lot of really great material but there web design is generally hodge podge, not in keeping with anyone's standards, not coordinated amongst the different groups even within NASA. Mainly what I hear from the user community, and I interface with them and particularly teachers a lot, is that the stuff is all over the place, disorganized; I cannot tell whats new and current or whats not; I cannot tell what I ought to look at first for the top level versus where to go if I want detailed info. Teachers basically that nothing NASA does in in the form of the national or state standards for science, math or other courses and its really not packaged for the individual classroom, teacher or student. Packaging means generally the stuff has to have a beginning and an end. If its science then it has to correlate to 'inquiry standards', and demos specifically that can be done in the classroom need to be defined, designed, and procedures given. If its more in the history or storytelling genre then much of what is missing is NASA's history; everything is sort of focused on whats next (its usually outdated so its describing what was in the future though now maybe its already happened).

Disorganization and a waste of a lot of resources and disregard for what is usable and that captures attention...

The problems with NASA web sites have existed for a long time.  Once upon a time, years ago when web technology was new, their main site was reasonably useful.  But over time, so many things have been added, without an overall logical navigation structure in place, that it’s now just a huge collection of web pages not a web site.

The various center sites are not much better, for the same reason.  At different times over the years an effort has been made to “organize” the sites, but it has never been carried very far, let alone to completion.

The thing that I’ve never been clear on is, who is actually responsible for NASA web sites and their content?  Is it, in fact, PAO?  There are an awful lot of Webmasters, Page Editors and NASA Officials listed on the NASA.gov site alone.  Who’s in charge?

Steve

As far as teacher-friendliness is concerned, the NASA HQ library's site is trying to gather up links to different NASA educational sites (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/browse/education.htm). There's also a handout in the HQ info center about materials that are in keeping w/national standards-I'll have a look at it & get the document no..