Research Track With Southern DataStream

Southern DataStream Internship Activities:

My tentative agreement with Southern DataStream prior to my departure from Ghana was to participate in the cattle Best Management Practices (BMPs) project on the Buck Island. So I was assigned to work on its Statement of Work (SOW) and Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP). It took me the first 2 weeks upon my arrival in Florida to complete these documents and I am yet to move to the field and get myself acquainted with the working conditions, location environment and most importantly to get myself acclimatized to the weather at the project site.

In the last two weeks, under John's direction, I found myself doing something different, new and very exciting. This is also very invaluable to me as far as project management is concerned. This is website development. Keeping project information on the internet serves the following useful purposes:

	Easy retrieval of project information
	Easy dissemination of the information
	Less risk of damaging the information
	Low risk of losing the information
	Easy access to the information by everybody worldwide
	The information can also be protected easily by using a lock & key (pass word) if restricted access to it is desired. This point is illustrated at the thesis page and also at referees' link of the website. I did not want the contact information of my references be displayed on the web and so I created a file that is password protected and the file contains their physical addresses, emails, faxes and telephone numbers. Except for a brief summary of my master's thesis, its entire content is contained in a file that is password protected. Anyone who may want to have a copy or portions of it will have to obtain written permission by email from me and upon my approval, I will disclose the password to the individual.
	It allows easy communication among project staff and funding agencies
	The status and progress of the project can be monitored easily and continuously.
	Facilitates the incorporation climatic conditions using satellites, radar and telemetry. This assures accurate prediction and forecasting of daily weather conditions, which in turns serves as warning tool and protects field staff against bad weather.

I had an initial limitation of the computer skills required to perform this task and so I had to spend the third week developing a personal website to enable me acquire the needed skills for the development of a more professional website. Coincidentally during this time, John had a series of meeting with some faculty members in University of Florida at Gainesville and I had to travel with him to North Central Florida where I could assist him with some literature research to enable him deliver a paper. I must admit that it has not been easy acquiring new skills and at the same time, applying the skills professionally without making mistakes. But with perseverance and constant guidance from John and at a tail end, Ed, I am now progressing comfortably with the revision of the McArthur Agro-Ecology Research Center website (MAERC).

I am employing MS FrontPage to accomplish this assignment. First of all, I had to import the existing web documents from the local server and world wide web. I had a raw data folder called RAW2000 from which I extracted raw data and added onto the imported web.

RAW2000 folder contained the tasks below:

1. Table of content

2. Field notes from the Weather Stations

3. Field notes from the Winter/Summer Pastures

4. Field notes-supplementary activities associated with pasture project

The above tasks contain the following aggregate data files:

	CR10_data
	CR10_sheets
	Notes
	Programs
	Spreadsheets
	Temp
	Unknown
	WQ_data
	Zips

My initial task had been, to first locate on the existing website where these specific data files fit into. Then load the files onto the appropriate templates or segments on the existing web file that I named FobilMAERC. This task requires extensive knowledge of the existing website and details of the existing navigation routes around the website. To be able to convince other staff of Southern DataStream, particularly Dr. Capece that I had mastered all the details to enable me perform the task accurately, I had to write a proposal using flow charts to show all the navigation routes. I successfully added and created links to all the files contained in RAW2000. I have added data contained in two CDs (1^st & 2^nd quarters' data), which contained data files of data collected during the first and the second quarters of research. I will soon make my first publication of the revised web upon John's inspection and approval. While I am still waiting to publish my revised web, I have received and added data from 3^rd & 4^th quarters during the sixth week with SDS. During same week, I have finished with a draft report of an article for publication in a trade journal.