The goal of this Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project was to evaluate the feasibility of creating educational materials for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Entitled Powers of Inquiry: Using image analysis to explore environmental health science, the prototype materials developed for the project employ an advanced technology tool—NASA Image2000 (NI2K)—to lead middle and high school students through inquiry-based explorations of ten case studies related to the mission of NIEHS. A powerful image processing and analysis (IPA) software program designed specifically for use in education, NI2K was chosen because it can put substantial computing power into the hands of students, allowing them to develop their own research questions, conduct investigations, and come to their own conclusions about the data contained within digital images.

The Powers of Inquiry project created a model lesson entitled “Where Did the Ozone Go? The Public Health Implications of a Hole in the Sky” and successfully tested it with a panel of middle school and high school educators. The lesson was well received by the educators, who felt that it met its educational goals. Very importantly, the test panel’s responses indicated that teachers and schools would pay a reasonable price for the lesson if it were commercialized. Based on research conducted during the Phase I project and feedback from the teachers, a revised table of contents for Phase II development was developed.

Feedback from the testers indicated that the teachers liked the paper and CD-ROM format of the materials. They suggested, however, that Science Approach might consider publishing a single guidebook instead of the separate instructor’s manual and student workbook employed in the prototype materials. The testers indicated that they would also use (1) a multimedia tutorial version that opened within NI2K and (2) a DVD-ROM-based version of the lesson that operates like a multimedia CD-ROM. Both of these options are feasible for a Phase II project.
The following lessons learned about NI2K during Phase I caused the project team to re-evaluate how to structure the materials produced by the Phase II project:

1. NI2K needs new functionality to make it usable for two proposed Phase II lessons that engage students in working with geographic information systems (GIS) data. Adding this functionality is technically feasible but not within the budget constraints of a Phase II project.
2. At the beginning of the Phase I project, NI2K was not functional on the Apple OS X operating system, although earlier versions of the software were compatible with OS X. A lack of OS X compatibility would eliminate Powers of Inquiry from the 14% of the educational computing market that uses Apple computers (Burrows 2004). Some OS X functionality was restored to NI2K by the Powers of Inquiry project. Restoration of full OS X functionality is probably within the scope of a Phase II project.
3. NI2K has limited functionality in a few key areas and troublesome bugs that need to be corrected before it could be used for the full set of Powers of Inquiry materials. Correction of all of these deficiencies is not feasible within the budget constraints of a Phase II project.
   After exploring a variety of alternatives, the project team determined that NI2K is not the best choice of software for the full set of Powers of Inquiry materials. Instead, the most effective approach is to use four different software programs in the series: NI2K for the remote sensing lessons (lessons one and two); ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education (AEJEE) (Environmental Systems Research Institute [ESRI] 2005) for the GIS-based lessons (lessons three, four and five); ImageJ for the lessons focusing on macroscopic and microscopic imaging that involve capturing and analyzing images (lessons five, six, and eight); and WebImage (Center for Image Processing in Education [CIPE] 2005) for the multimedia lessons (lessons seven, nine, and ten). This plan plays to the strengths of existing software programs that are currently used by educators and, thus, greatly decreases the investment needed to improve NI2K for the Phase II materials. To overcome the complexity of creating a single product that attempts to integrate four software programs into its structure, Science Approach will develop a series of ten individually marketed lessons. Each lesson will feature one (and in one case, two) of the four software programs described above. The plan will allow educators and schools to purchase only the lessons needed for particular classroom activities, therefore reducing the cost of purchase for the educational market and improving the likelihood of large volume purchases. In addition to the pragmatism of this approach, field testing indicated that educators desire the option of purchasing single lessons.

Based on the work done in the phase I project, a phase II application was prepared and submitted in 2005. The phase II project was funded in 2006.