SOUNDPRINT, the weekly half-hour nationally broadcast public radio documentary series, proposes a 16-program SOUNDPRINT SCIENCE SERIES comprising four thematic components of four programs each, which explore and examine current issues and ideas in the areas of 1) Biodiversity and Species Management; 2) Invasions: The Predator and the Prey; 3) Cultural Geography; and 4) The Meanings of Science. The series offers listeners a variety of experiences illustrative of the breadth of what is defined as science. Scientific thought and method are presented through a humanistic storytelling approach that capitalizes on the imaginative quality of sound to immerse listeners in the exploration of phenomena. Each documentary explores a single subject, placing it in a meaningful context, and taking listeners beyond the surface of simple fact reporting. Programs translate complex scientific ideas into accessible, memorable stories that increase awareness and understanding of science for a broad population (SOUNDPRINT REACHES OVER 250,000 LISTENERS EACH WEEK). The SOUNDPRINT SCIENCE SERIES will be broad cast as a series of quarterly, month-long specials, with promotional, education and community outreach materials provided to stations. Post- broadcast application of the programs includes development of teacher guide packets targeted to the middle school level and repacking of programs for educational purposes in multi-media and interactive settings. Cassette copies of programs are shared by listeners in professional, educational, and informal settings. Major scientific disciplines involved include: biology, environmental sciences, geography, life sciences, mathematics and physics. The Proposed SOUNDPRINT SCIENCES SERIES is submitted to the National Science Foundation Informal Science Education Program. Programs in the series are geared to a broad, general audience, elementary through adult populations.
NEON, Inc. a not-for-propfit corporation, proposes a television series for children, initiallyu 30 programs, suitable for daily or weekly broadcast, for home viewing via PBSA (with appropriate availability elsewhere). Program length: 30 Minutes. The premise: Three Wufniks--creatures from the cartoom world--draw their way into our world and with the help of children, undertake the adventure of finding our what it's all about. Thesek characters (played by adult professional performers in structurally sophisticated fantasy/animal costumes), move from dthe uncertain world of animated film into a range of encounters with ourrock-solid environment, get to know children and adults, scientists and laypeople, and must continually reconstruct their naive theories and their image of life on earth. The concept, designed to appeal to five- to nine-olds, combines education with entertainment (and is inclusive of other age groups, such as parents, to enhance educational effect). School and other non-broadcast distribution of program elements is planned, plus ancillary materials including computer software and print. The educational approach is interdisciplinary, with emphasis both on content and the development of positive attitudes towards science and mathematics; sub-objectives geography and history. The Principal Investigators are a television producer experienced in science programming for children, and a scientist with extensive children's educational television background. Program appeal for girls and minorities is integarl to the design; project staff will also cover a broad spectrum. Encouragement of science-and math-related audience activities is a project objective. Planning includesds extensive outreach and promotion related to the show premise.
The Science Museum of Connecticut (SMC) proposes a three- year exhibit project called The State of the Environment. This cost-effective project will serve over 500,000 citizens a year by producing two permanent exhibits - 2400 sf for SMC and 400 sf for SMD's Roaring Brook Nature Center -- and eight traveling exhibits for use primarily in connecticut's Priority schools. These innovative exhibits use highly accurate sculptural relief maps which are animated by laser graphics and responsive to visitor inquiries through a research-calibre database containing vast information on Connecticut's environment. Thorough evaluation will help SMC design visitor experiences that make map-database interaction attractive, easy to use and understand, and educationally satisfying. State accredited teacher workshops will give educators a firm grasp of database capabilities prior to its use in the traveling exhibits for schools. Traveling exhibits will support goals in Connecticut's NSF-funded Statewide Initiative. Teacher's Guides will facilitate in-dept investigations for high school science lessons. These exhibits will provide hands- on experiences with professional tools for environmental research, show how environmental maps are made, teach basic principles of environmental science, and provide-in-depth information about the ecology of an entire state.
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas will develop a 4,000 square-foot traveling science exhibit on FORENSICS: The Science of Criminal Investigation for circulation to eight major U.S. Cities through the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative (SMEC). FORENSICS will examine the scientific methods and technologies used in today's crime labs. Core science areas are: DNA profiling; Fingerprinting; Firearms Identification; Evidence Collection; Composites; Forensic Anthropology; Forensic Entomology; Forensic Geology; Odontology; Pathology; Serology; toxicology; Trace Evidence. The development of FORENSICS will draw from the expertise of a distinguished panel of forensic scientists, law enforcement officers, and science educators. FORENSICS will foster science process skills, problem-solving, and deductive reasoning by challenging visitors to solve a crime mystery. A Teacher's Resource Guide to the exhibit will promote indepth classroom investigations of forensics for middle grade (5-9) science lessons. The exhibit will open in Fort Worth in May of 1993, and then tour nationally to eight major U.S. cities, serving over 2.5 million American citizens during its SMEC travel itinerary.
WGBH/Boston in association with the Chedd-Angier Production plan the production of a series of five one hour public television programs on the environmental history of North America, "A Continent Transformed". Each of the programs will emphasize a key process which has shaped American environmental history: biological invasion, drawing boundaries, linking transportation and market systems, projecting ideals onto the landscape, and increasing the pace and complexity of systematic change. The principal author of the series and its on camera host will be William Cronin, a leading ecological historian. The series will be assisted by a prestigious Advisory Board, educational materials will be developed for series classrom use, and 8 million viewers should see each episode when the series airs in the Fall of 1992. NSF support will represent approximately 10% of the project total.
Project Enhanced Science Learning (PESL) offers learning partners opportunities to engage in authentic scientific inquiry through apprenticeship. Such inquiry is often enabled by dynamic interactions among learning partners in physical proximity. Yet scientific and business practice using Internet and broadband services recognizes that not all partners necessary to an interaction can be co-located. Our vision uses new technologies to extend the collaborative "reach" of PESL to include diverse expertise among remote learners, teachers, and scientists. This work, in atmospheric sciences, extends collaborative media beyond asynchronous text-only email to shared workspaces and two-way audio/video connections that allow for collaborative visualization of science phenomena, data, models - What You See Is What I See (WYSIWIS). Tools for local- and wide-area networked learning environments will enable highly interactive, media-rich communications among learning partners. Research on these learning architectures will provide pedagogy and social protocols for authenticating the science learning experience in classrooms and other spaces. Greater motivation to learn and enhanced science learning in terms of more valid, performance assessments should result from students' participations. The next decade brings widespread, networked multi-media interpersonal computing. This project will provide a blueprint to inform the effective use of interpersonal collaborative media for science education.
NOVA'S CENTURY OF DISCOVERY is a series of five prime-time documentary specials to be shown nationally over the Public Broadcasting Service(PBS) during late 1997 or early 1998. Altogether the programs will tell a sweeping story, celebrating the end of a remarkable century of discovery when science advance further than in all previous centuries combined, and when every scientific discipline underwent a revolution. Yet the closing of the 20th century coincides with an ever-widening gap between what scientists know and what most of the public comprehends. To increase public understanding of science, scientists, and scientific methods, the series will provide a dramatic retelling and interpretation of the century's most enduring scientific endeavors. Each two-hour program will probe several related fields of investigation and application: views of the universe and of matter; origins of the planet and of life; health, medicine, and the human body; human nature and behavior; and technology and engineering. A marriage of scholarship and entertainment, NOVA'S CENTURY OF DISCOVERY will be created using all the tools at the command of its award winning production team including archival footage and stills; personal accounts; letters, dairies, and other primary sources; computer animation; and even dramatic re-creations. Indeed, the series will not only make a unique contribution to the public and historical record, but also offer viewers an unprecedented opportunity to view 100 years of scientific pursuits as a unified whole, to recast their perceptions of science and scientists, and to be intrigued, even inspired, by a view of science as a never-ending and very human quest for answers and solutions. A special outreach and promotion campaign will increase audience awareness of the series, particularly among nontraditional PBS viewers. In addition, carefully developed teaching and learning materials will extend the series' reach into formal and informal educational settings, including high school and college classrooms, and community and youth-serving organizations.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paula ApsellTom FriedmanJon Palfreman
The California Academy of Sciences produces a science news radio feature "EARTHNEWS" which has aired daily on twelve radio stations in California for nine years. "EARTHNEWS" is a background to regular news and provides in-depth interpretation of science and environmental events to assist the public in understanding what they hear or read. In response to a very large volume of mail from listeners, a quarterly newsletter was created four years ago to announce program schedules, enhance the information presented on the radio, and offer scientists and teachers a written forum for sharing ideas. Positive response from the listening audience suggests that this feature has tremendous potential for reaching a broad national audience. The Columbia Broadcasting System has agreed to air three 60-second "EARTHNEWS" features each week and to distribute these features nationwide via satellite. A total of 156 features will be produced annually, each reaching an estimated national audience of twelve to fifteen million people. The California Academy of Sciences is requesting funding for program research and production to develop this national radio program and to continue production of the newsletter.
This proposal requests partial funding for the development of a new paleobiology hall at the University of Nebraska State Museum. This project will give students and the general public a dynamic view of the period of time known as the Age of Reptiles. It emphasizes experience with interactive exhibits that focus on concepts of geologic time, how species adapt and change, relative size, scale and time, the activities of scientists as role models, and it provides reinforcement of these experiences for students in the classroom. This project includes the first use in a museum of SemNet, a software program designed for concept mapping and the representation of knowledge networks, which will be used with a videodisc. Prototypes of all interactive exhibits will undergo formative evaluation to establish maximal audience accessibility, ease of use and educational effectiveness. The exhibit concepts will be disseminated throughout the state of Nebraska through mini- versions, teachers in-service training, and scientist-in- residence programs. This project will also be used as a teaching laboratory for the University of Nebraska's graduate program in Museum Studies.
In fall of 1995, the Denver Museum of Natural History (DMNH) will open the Prehistoric Life Exhibits in 17,000 square feet of new exhibition space. The exhibits will be part of an on-going renaissance in paleontology at DMNH that includes research, educational programming, teacher training, and collections management. Visitors will walk through a series of nine life-size, open, prehistoric habitat dioramas -- "enviroramas"-- representing principally regional sites that feature critical events in 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth. An extension of the Museum's tradition of diorama excellence, the enviroramas will immerse visitors in a multisensory journey, underscoring the message that vast amounts of both time and change have occurred since life began on Earth. Focus area exhibits adjacent to each envirorama will invite visitors to examine fossil evidence and scientific processes. Layered presentations will enable visitors to discover, explore, and study according to their level of interest. Excellent specimens, interpretive exhibitry and hands-on components will allow visitors to gain awareness of past patterns of environmental change and to develop literacy about and appreciation for how science and technology contribute to interpreting the fossil record. A comprehensive evaluation program will ensure that focus area exhibits are effective and provide visitors with "new eyes" for viewing the enviroramas. During exhibit construction, visitors will be able to watch from the viewing area of a state-of-the-art fossil preparation laboratory, completed in l990, as preparators rearticulate the skeletons of Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and other fossils. As part of their Prehistoric Life Exhibits experience, visitors will be able to witness on-going science activities in the laboratory. The National Science Foundation is requested to contribute $1 million over three years toward the $5.3 million Prehistoric Life Exhibits project. The exhibition and associated programming will be a major cultural and educational resource for the Rocky Mountain region , potentially reaching a diverse audience of well over a million Museum visitors and program participants annually.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian McLarenRichard StuckyMerry DooleyAlan Espenlaub
"Stormchasers" is a 35-minute, IMAX/OMNIMAX film to be produced, exhibited, and distributed by the Museum Film Network, NOVA/WGBH Boston, and MacGillivray Freeman Films-the same team responsible for the critically acclaimed film "To the Limit." "Stormchasers" is a tale of scientific discovery and natural wonder that will take audiences on a journey around the planet to encounter the origins of the earth's weather patterns, to experience our most extreme storms (monsoons, hurricanes, blizzards and tornadoes,) and to witness scientists who study and predict weather events. Using a combination of conventional IMAX documentary filmmaking methods, computer animation, and unique photography, the film will depict the intricate relationship between the drama of nature and the efforts of humans to pursue the systematic understanding of the natural world. The film and its ancillary materials will be offered to the 34 space theaters located at U.S. science museums in 1994-1995. Educational materials will be developed to extend the film's reach into the classroom. Special viewing programs will be offered at science museums, targeting minority, disadvantaged, and female youth and their teachers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeffrey KirschPaula ApsellSusanne SimpsonBarbara Flagg
This exhibit will integrate graphics, artifacts, highly interactive electro-mechanical demonstration devices together with state of the art interactive educational computer technology to demonstrate how probability shapes nature. It will draw its examples from a variety of scientific fields including physics, chemistry, earth sciences, and biology. It is planned as a permanent addition to the Museum's exhibition program, but will be designed to facilitate easy reproduction for individual copies or for circulation as a travelling exhibit. Millions of visitors--families, teachers, children form diverse communities--will gain a first hand aesthetic appreciation of the pattern finding process of scientific investigation as well as a better understanding of the usefulness of mathematics in explaining how the natural world works.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
H. Eugene StanleyDouglas SmithEdwin Taylor