Our Message

Audience:
We made this site with the age of 12 and above in mind and we like to think that we lived up to it. SolarPedia offers information that is very well researched and up to those standards; all the data on the planets and such is written to reach that age level. From SolarPedia, the audience can expect to learn about our entire Solar System and beyond and it could, in the future be used as a very good resource for information. SolarPedia is in no way biased and can be accessed and used by anyone in the world because the Solar System is a topic that every one, at some point will have to learn about. All the information, though well researched, is quite readable. If we have managed to provide information and a site that is useful and reaches our target audience, then we have done what we were trying to do.

Community Impact:
When choosing a topic, the SolarPedia team wanted to do something interesting for everyone and we decided that the Solar System was an interesting topic and one we had high hopes for because the Solar System might not seem so, but it is an universal topic because it is the universe, our universe. What better topic then one which we see everyday but do not acknowledge? The Solar System is forever going to be a part of our lives and it is good if we are equipped with the right knowledge because that information might be useful one day. The Solar System impacts the community because scientists are always making breakthrough discoveries and this news affects us all in some way or the other. At first glance, the Solar System does not seem to be a globally important topic but think again, without the Solar System, we would not exist because Earth is a part of the Solar System. The universe is part of our lives and it does well for us to learn about it and that is why the team of SolarPedia chose this topic.

Diversity:

Diversity can make an immense difference in a group. Occasionally, it may cause problems but that was not the case with us. We are diverse in many ways—all of us had varying opinions, views and backgrounds as well. Aditya presented a British outlook while Samir and Neal are originally from America and Adrien is, of course, from France as he did the French translation whereas Monica and Divakar would have to settle for home ground, that is India. Samir and Neal, from America, apart from their actual contributions to the team helped with the actual checking of how the site would evaluate and what should be changed and Aditya helped as well because he was the leader of the team. Monica and Divakar represented more ethnic backgrounds and they agreed that there should be a representation of India in the website because that is the country we are all in. Not only are we from different backgrounds but we also have different religions. For example, Adrien is Christian while the rest of us are Hindu. Religion did not get in the way of our work and we can all say, in all honesty, it was fairly easy to ignore our religions while working on SolarPedia.We do not belong to different groups of people or different races even though we do have different backgrounds. All six of us presented different opinions and ideas to the site. We all had different ideas for the layout of SolarPedia and in the end; we managed to pick a neutral background. Adrien gave many good ideas for the quizzes, as did Neal. Aditya and Samir were the brains of SolarPedia so the site is quite a collection of their ideas. Divakar had many ideas about the games and Monica supplied opinions on the written information and how they could be written. SolarPedia is a bank of all of our ideas and views even though we did not agree on all every time. Diversity wasn’t anything that stopped us from completing SolarPedia and we all managed to put aside whatever differenced we might have had to complete SolarPedia.

Collaboration:

Our team worked to achieve one main goal, the submitting of an accomplished website in April 2007. Through days, weeks, and months of school and meetings we managed to create a site about the Solar System that had a good collection of interest-inspiring information and reached out to the key audience of 12 and above. Collaboration was quite well within the SolarPedia team except the occasional disagreements that only represented that our team was not perfect but these disagreements were absolved by working through them. For example, the layout of the website was causing a problem between the group but we finally decided on a layout that was fine with everyone. Then, at the beginning, there were some faint problems with the ages and ability of the members of the team and we became quite hostile towards each other until everyone was given an equal amount of work and they did all of it. Work was done in large amounts. Meetings were placed every weekend, mails were sent back and forth not to mention the amount of work we did in school, which means that our collaboration was obviously not forced. There was pressure for doing the work in time and properly so minute details like those caused problems. Everyone used whatever knowledge they had to contribute to the site. Aditya’s leading skill, programming talent helped the site immensely. He was the brain behind the site and he organized all the meetings and all of the information that we edited or wrote was sent to him. Without Samir’s exceptional programming in Java and DHTML, the site would not have been finished. Divakar’s Internet savvy knowledge was what made him the researcher and Neal’s organization skills helped him to settle out what everyone was doing. Adrien did the entire French translation and without his contribution, SolarPedia would not have been whole while Monica’s grammatical familiarity helped to correct the crudest mistakes in the information. We hope that we reached our goal because we truly tried hard to make an informative and interactive site about the Solar System that appealed to a wide audience but for the most part, we do not think we have failed because our site is something we all worked hard for and are proud of.