The Earth and Sky radio series proposes to produce, distribute, market and evaluate 72 compelling environmental radio programs on oceanic and atmospheric topics featuring NOAA scientists, data and information. These programs will air at a rate of 24 programs per year over a three-year period as part of Earth and Sky's regularly scheduled programming to its many affiliates. Earth and Sky will feature this new radio programming on our web site. The programs will be available in both text and a variety of audio formats including downloadable mp3 files, streaming m3u files, and will be available for podcast. The web site will also feature additional information that augments and supports the content of the radio programs, including links to relevant information, encouraging web visitors to delve deeper into a topic area and learn more. Project Learning Tree (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program designed for teachers and other educators, parents, and community leaders working with youth from preschool through grade 12. PLT will correlate their vast catalogue of existing environmental education curricula to each show. Correlations for each program will be listed next to that show in the dedicated PLT section of Earth and Sky's website.
The Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Network) is a national infrastructure that links science museums and other informal science education organizations with nanoscale science and engineering research organizations. The Network’s overall goal is to foster public awareness, engagement, and understanding of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology. As part of the front-end effort, this report, Part IIB, documents 19 nanoscale STEM programming, media, and school-based projects that have been completed or are in development as of 2005.
An important challenge in urban science education is finding ways to engage all students in the learning of science. However, research in this area has consistently shown that around middle school student engagement in science wanes. Using critical ethnographic methods this study reveals how students cultivate a sense of ownership in an informal science video project. Student ownership of what they they learn plays an important role in how they engage in the learning environment. In this study ownership is characterized by five themes, and the notion of student ownership science is challenged
This external evaluation of the PEEP Explorer's Guide found the Guide effective in meeting its goals. Teachers who used the Guide were extremely satisfied with its content, materials, and usability. They reported the Guide was highly appealing to children, and they used materials from the Guide to forge home-school connections. Teachers found the Guide made useful links between science, literacy, and language. Pre-post comparisons demonstrated that, while teachers were engaged in similar instructional practices before and after using the Guide, the Guide alleviated the challenges of teaching
WGBH's Science Unit is requesting funds to produce for NOVA a two-hour television special based on David Bodanis' book "E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation." Combining dramatic and documentary techniques, the program uses Einstein's iconic equation to explore the physics behind the equation and the nature of the scientific process. A media initiative, an interactive Web site, and an outreach campaign broaden the program's impact beyond the television broadcast. "E=mc2" is intended for prime-time broadcast on PBS in the fall of 2005, to coincide with the centennial of Einstein's "Miracle Year," and should reach an initial audience of seven million viewers. Outreach kits will be made available for free to 16,000 public libraries and 1,000 after-school programs. Notification of educational resources will be sent to all 14,000 high school physics teachers around the country. A formative evaluation of the program and a summative evaluation of the program and outreach materials will ensure that "E=mc2" achieves its ultimate purpose: to enhance public understanding of science and promote scientific careers. Key Project Personnel: Director of the WGBH Science Unit and Senior Executive Producer of NOVA: Paula S. Apsell Writer/Director: Kevin Macdonald Producer: John Smithson Formative Evaluation: Multimedia Research Summative Evaluation: Goodman Research Group
Ironbound Films, Inc. is producing a one-hour PBS television documentary, with ancillary Web site, curriculum and program guides about the causes of language loss, how it affects science and how scientists are responding. Vanishing Voices takes viewers from Native Siberia to Native America, from ancient texts to cutting-edge technology, to demonstrate how scientists record -- even help revive -- the world's tongues. Vanishing Voices is the first film about language loss that addresses the issue as important to science. The ancillary program guide will be designed for use by Native Americans who are interested in studying or reviving their languages. A formative evaluation of the program and a summative evaluation of the program and outreach materials will be conducted by RMC Research Corporation. INTELLECTUAL MERIT: This program is supported in conjunction with the NSF/NEH Interagency Partnership to Document Endangered Languages. The topic is timely and compelling. The production team is well qualified, and they have sought out the support and involvement of the linguistic community and Native Americans involved in reviving their languages. BROADER IMPACT: The project has the potential to educate the public about the crisis of language loss, the scientific and cultural value of linguistic diversity, and the ways in which that diversity can be maintained. With the program's use in classrooms and the program guides targeted to Native Americans, the project has the potential to inspire young linguistic students to get involved in field work and to encourage Native American communities to work with scientists in preserving their dying languages. The teachers guide will imbue science material into the social science curriculum.
WGBH is producing a three-hour television series about the scientific quest for a unified set of laws governing the universe. The programs, to be broadcast as part of the on-going NOVA series, will place special emphasis on the new development in physics known as string theory. Inspired by Columbia University physicist Brian Greene's best-selling book of the same name, "The Elegant Universe" will explore the ways in which our understanding of matter and forces, space and time have shifted over the years, most recently with the emergence of string theory in the 1980s and its resurgence in the last five years. Greene will play a prominent role in the series, both on camera and as a consultant helping the producers shape the programs. The series, planned for broadcast in the fall of 2002, will communicate critical scientific concepts through filmed experiments, carefully crafted explanations, and the latest in computer animation. Interviews with scientists and historians, re-creations of key breakthroughs in the history of science, and sequences featuring physicists working on today's most pressing problems will allow viewers to share in the excitement of scientific discovery. Outreach material will be developed for the public and for teachers. NOVA Online will produce a rich companion Web site to allow viewers whose interest is piqued by the series to enhance their learning in a number of ways, including interactive animations of famous experiments and essays that go deeper into subjects than the programs could.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Margaret DrainPaula ApsellBarbara Flagg
WGBH is producing twelve quarterly television magazine-format programs devoted to the public understanding of current scientific research. The programs will consider the significant areas of on-going research, present the scientists who are conducting the research, portray research as an on-going endeavor and discuss the social impact and ethical implications of major areas of research. Each program will include segments such as the following: Research news update - (5 to 7 mins.) Feature stories about on-going research - 3 (8 to 12 min. each) In-studio discussions following many of the feature stories - ethical, policy and social implications Point/Counterpoint - 2 commentators presenting social, ethical, political and economic aspects of research "Then and Now" segments showing changing nature of scientific research In-studio demonstrations Interstitial moments -- Showcases of interesting and surprising aspects of research Close -- update stories from previous programs, read viewers' input or answer viewers' questions, preview upcoming story. In addition, WGBH will produce three one-hour "Year in Review" programs that report what major research has occurred over the past year and puts it in a context that will help viewers understand the role of current research in all aspects of life. Other major components of the project include on-going collaborations with other Public Understanding of Research Projects, an interactive web site, communication training for scientists to help them explain their work to the public, "Science Cafes" with on-going public programs about cutting-edge research in informal settings, a resource guide for teachers, "Leading Edge" articles in magazines targeted to teens, a "Leading Edge" science contest for students conducted through PBS stations and a station resource kit with information about how to establish local collaborations with researchers, science museums, schools and others.
Twin Cities Public Television, in association with Red Hill Studios, is producing and disseminating an Exploring Time television special and associated outreach material. The project will augment and leverage the Exploring Time traveling exhibit now being developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota (NSF grant #99-01919). The goal of both the exhibit and the television special is to increase the public's understanding of our world by revealing the unseen world of natural change -- the multitude of changes that are occurring in the present but at rates too slow or too fast to be seen. The television special will provide visual explorations of changes that take place over a vast range of timescales -- from billionths of seconds to billions of years. The television series and exhibit will be supplemented by a range of materials. Both low- and high-bandwidth, web-based material will be available and a teacher's guide will be developed for middle school classrooms. A "Time Explorers Toolkit" will be available to both formal and informal learners. This CD-ROM includes detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to create time-lapse movies. The project also will coordinate outreach with the Community Technology Centers Network, the organization that supports technology centers that serve individuals from underrepresented and low-income groups.
The Soundprint Media Center will conduct planning for "Evolution Discoveries," a multi-part radio series on evolutionary science, contemporary issues and new discoveries. The project will help educate the public about the insights evolutionary science can offer current problems and issues, while at the same time help to explain basic principles of evolutionary science. Key planning activities over five months will include identifying gaps in public understanding of evolutionary science, creating a framework for the radio series and producing and testing a pilot program. They will work with an advisory group that includes museums and researchers that are studying visitor understanding of evolution -- geographically, developmentally and by gender. They plan to develop partnerships with informal science organizations (museums, zoos, aquariums, etc.) to extend the reach of the audio material beyond those of public radio. Other components of the project include a public radio station resource guide to help establish local collaborations between stations and local scientists, museums, zoos, aquariums and others; a resource guide for teachers and a website that will complement and be compatible with other online resources such as those supported by natural history museums and the Human Genome Management Project.
WGBH Educational Foundation is requesting funds to produce 20 new shows and new outreach and Web activities for "ZOOM," which will be renamed "Hot Seat." "Hot Seat" is a daily half-hour PBS television series targeted to kids ages 8 to 11. Uniquely by and for kids, the program gives its viewers a chance to explore, to experiment and to share their creativity. The series, along with its far-reaching outreach, offers its audience an innovative curriculum that promotes the acquisition of basic math and science knowledge and the development of problem solving skills called "Habits of Mind." The intended impacts are to: (1) establish a project that uniquely integrates television, the Web and outreach as a model for how media can teach science and math; (2) engage kids and teach them science and math content and process skills; (3) provide curriculum and professional development to organizational partners. Innovation includes developing three new content areas for the series -- Invention, Space Science and Earth Science -- and evolving the project design by incorporating new production techniques that enhance the "reality factor" of the science programming. Outreach for the project will include printed materials for kids, families and educators. A new collaborative partnership is being developed with the American Library Association to help distribute the new afterschool curricula to librarians across the country. "Hot Seat" will support the existing network of "ZOOM" outreach partners and convert the museum "ZOOMzones" to "Hot Seat Spots." "ZOOM" currently is carried by 269 public broadcasting stations and is viewed by 4 million children each week.
Twin Cities Public Television is producing 13 new episodes and new outreach and Web activities for the fourth season of DragonflyTV, the weekly science television series targeted at children ages 9-12. The series presents authentic inquiry-based investigations, created by and for children. The programs focus on children doing their own scientific investigations and sharing the excitement that comes from making their own discoveries. The programs also include real scientists doing research on related themes and snapshots and home movies of the scientists when they were kids. Outreach for DragonflyTV consists of an interactive website where children can share their science investigation, programs at selected Boys and Girls Clubs of America and 4H Clubs, Teacher's Guides distributed through the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and PBS stations, and the development of new community partnerships with established informal science organizations. Multimedia research and Rockman et al will conduct formative and summative evaluations.