KCTS, the public broadcasting station in Seattle, WA, is producing and distributing15 new half-hour episodes for the children's television series, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Topics being considered for these programs include: Caves Jungles Animal Behavior Entropy Home Demo Lakes and Ponds Felines Convection Smell and Taste Life Cycles Minerals Adhesives Atoms and Molecules Organs Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors The project also will include outreach to viewers, teachers, and parents by providing the following materials: A teachers kit to be distributed to 150,000 fourth-grade teachers nationwide Fifty thousand free copies of a printed parents' guide and 15-minuted video distributed through an off-air off and community partner groups Meet a Way Cool Scientist national print contest in which children will be invited to write and illustrate a profile of a scientist in their community Nye Labs Online, a Web site with series information, science topics, hands-on experiments, and an e-mail connection to Bill Nye and the production team Conference Presentations and workshops about the project's approach to science education for PBS stations, teacher groups, and the three partnering organizations, Girls Incorporated, the National Urban League, and the National Conference of La Raza Rockman Et Al will conduct a summative evaluation to extend the understanding of the show's impact on children's attitudes toward and understanding of science. It also will examine the size and composition of the in-school audience, and will assess the use and value of the outreach materials.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth BrockJames McKennaErren GottliebWilliam Nye
The Smithsonian Associates Program at the Smithsonian Institution has a unique, one-time only opportunity to test the potential of producing a very low cost, but high quality science program featuring an outstanding and widely recognized scientist. The program will be an edited hour from an hour and a half interview that Timothy Ferris will have with Stephen J. Gould before a live audience on November 7, 1997. If successful, the program will be broadcast in prime time by PBS and would serve as a prototype for additional programs other eminent scientists. During the requested Small Grant for Exploratory Research phase, the Smithsonian will: * Determine if a viable hour-long program can be derived from a live interview that is only an hour and a half in duration. This 1 to 1.5 ratio of finished program material to the total footage shot is very economical but also is much lower than most television programs which have a ratio of 1 to 3 and up. * Test how to take advantage of Dr. Ferris' talents in a video interview format. While Ferris has interviewed many scientists for print media, this will be his first interview for this kind of broadcast medium. * Assess how successful Ferris is in conducting a live interview so that difficult scientific concepts will be accessible to a lay audience. This interview with Dr. Gould also will provide a rare opportunity to investigate emerging research areas that are likely to be of lasting interest and to present them to the public. The Smithsonian Associates will assess the effectiveness of this approach in two ways. First, a group of five scientists and informal science education experts will review a rough cut of the program to determine if a program can be produced in this manner and effectively convey complex science to a lay audience. Possible members of this group include Bruce Alberts (National Academy of Science), Paula Apsell (WGBH), Robert Hazen (George Mason University), Mary Jane McKinven (PBS), and Maxine Singer (Carnegie Institute). The second gauge of effectiveness will be the acceptance of the program for prime time distribution by PBS and the public reaction to the program. Timothy Ferris is a generalist scholar who has taught in five disciplines - astronomy, English, history, journalism, and philosophy at four universities. He currently is emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has received the American Institute of Physics prize, the American Association for the Advancement of Science prize, the Klumpke-Roberts prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The television producer will be Catherine Tatge who has produced a wide range of programming for PBS and for CBS Cable. Her productions include Playing With Fire: The Tenth Van Cliburn Piano Competition and the feature film of the New York City Ballet version of The Nutcracker. She was commissioned by the Congress of the United States to direct and produce an historical overview of the U.S. Congress. The PI for the project will be Mara Mayor, Director of The Smithsonian Associates and former Director of the Annenberg/CPB Project which supports the creation of educational resources for a variety of media.
This is a request from Claypoint Productions for 124,700 of a total budget of $526,178 to produce a one-hour prime-time documentary program on the Wright Brothers, the processes of science and engineering used in their work, and the science and technology behind their development of the airplane. The PBS program will cover the subjects of aerodynamics, aeronautics, geometry, algebra, applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, the process of invention, and the history of technology. A teacher's guide will be developed to supplement the film.
William Miles, an award winning Black documentary filmmaker, will collaborate with WNET, New York to produce "Black Stars In Orbit," an hour-long television documentary for PBS broadcast on black astronauts and black Americans' contributions to America's space program. The program will utilize personal interviews with archival footage, family photographs, and news headlines to profile such individuals as Edward Dwight, Jr., Guion Bluford, Jr., Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, Patricia Cowings-Johnson and Robert Shurney. Videotape copies of the program will be made available for use by national organizations concerned with encouraging black youth in science and engineering. This film project has a substantial opportunity to reinforce science and engineering role models for black youth. Approximately 50% of the $450,000 project budget will be provided by NSF.
Soundprint Media Center is producing a series of 13 public radio documentaries entitled Exploring Space Science. The series will target a range of audiences: public radio listeners; listeners to radio reading services; visitors to planetariums, public libraries, and museums; teachers seeking additional information for core science subjects; and the parents and students who visit space science education centers. The programs will survey scientific inquiry into and from space. The series will include the architectures of the universe, the origins of the planets, global climate and atmospheric changes, and microgravity's effect on the human biomedical systems. A range of science will be covered including astrophysics, astronomy, planetary science, space policy, climatology and earth science, biomedical science, and the history of science.
This Proposal is a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) to fund a new science radio show targeted specifically for commercial talk radio. The proposed 10 one hour programs will be co-hosted by Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist, popular best selling book aurthor, writer, host of PBS scienceNow, and the frequent contributor on cable television networks including The Daily Show. The programs would be broadcast on CBS Talk Radio Statiion, KLSX. The program will feature a variety of celebrity guests as well as scientists who share an interest in space and science. Listeners will be encouraged to interact with the guests calling in to pose questions and voice opinions. The programs will present traditionally dry or technical topics in a humorous format. The recent pilot program on KLSX generated the most call-ins ever during a weekend talk show on that station. The goal is to reach an audience that is not otherwise served by current programming on public radio and to eventually become self-supporting on commercial radio.
Jim Metzner Productions is producing a national radio designed to reach a diverse audience with compelling, current information about our environment, the science which underlies it, and the people who explore and explain it. The short-format series consists of 780 daily, 2-minute programs designed for commercial and public radio stations and delivers timely information on a full spectrum of seasonal natural phenomena, drawing supportive scientific background from biology, earth science, astronomy, and cultural anthropology. The series will make extensive use of ambient sound and interviews with scientists and knowledgeable spokespersons to present a "daily almanac" of events taking place on the day of broadcast. The series will be developed and produced by Jim with additional production support from the American Museum of Natural History. The Science content Director will be Michael Templeton and an advisory committee of eleven scientists and educators will assist in selecting specific topics for the daily programs and assure the scientific accuracy of program content.
Byrd & Block Communication, Inc. is continuing production and distribution of the widely broadcast two-minute radio spots which focus primarily on astronomy, earth science, or environmental science. Some programs also contain information about other sciences such as marine biology or chemistry. The series is carried on 519 affiliate stations in 627 carriage locations in the United States and can be heard in all 50 states. Of these stations, 315 are public radio stations and 204 are commercial stations. It also is broadcast by the Armed Forces Radio network and by the Voice of America. The current grant will enable the producers to enhance the series by: - Adding programs for weekend broadcast, thereby increasing the number of programs produced each year from 260 to 365. - Making a concerted effort to add more stations, particular commercial stations, that carry the series. - Working with Kalmbach Publishing, fulfilling listener requests for free copies of science magazines. - Producing and distributing classroom materials in collaboration with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific - Conducting a second and third annual "Earth & Sky Young Producers Contest." - Expanding "Earth & Sky's" on-line presence on the Internet. The writer/producer/host will continue to be Deborah Byrd and Joel Block, VP of Byrd & Block Communications, Inc., will continue as studio producer and co-host. The principal content consultant for astronomy is Derek Wills, a McDonald Observatory astronomer, and the primary earth content consultant is Cliff Frolich, a research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics.
First Light is a one-hour documentary to be shown nationally on WGBH-TV's NOVA science series. It tells the extraordinary story behind the building of the Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain in southern California. The film also documents a research effort at the frontiers of astronomy that has pushed the Hale beyond anything its builders had imagined: The attempt to find and map the edge of the known universe. It follows astronomers Maarten Schmidt, James Gunn and Don Schneider as they search for distant quasars. This team recently detected a quasar that is by far the most distant object yet found in the universe; its discovery may challenge our current understanding of cosmic evolution. The documentary is based on the award winning book First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe by Richard Preston. After broadcast, the program will have wide educational distribution in secondary schools and colleges.
Eclipse| is a one-hour program within the prime-time series NOVA, to be broadcast nationally during the 1991-92 season on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The program will document the total eclipse of the sun that takes place on July 11, 1991, and the research performed at the observatories located atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The program will trace three narrative lines. The first will be that of the eclipse itself and its importance for ongoing scientific investigation of the solar corona and solar physics. The second will be that of ongoing problems in understanding the sun, especially the issue of solar variability. The third will place this eclipse within the history of eclipse science. The passage of an eclipse over a major observatory complex is a unique occurrence -- it has never happened before, and will not happen again for several generations. The four minutes of totality will allow solar astronomers to turn deep space instruments on the sun for the first time. At the same moment, however, this eclipse marks what many observers feel is the end of a 130 year research program. Eclipse| will provide its audience with a portrait of a spectacular natural phenomenon and of scientists attempting in real-time to tease new knowledge out of the sun. In addition to its broadcast, Eclipse| will be seen in an estimated 70-90,000 classrooms over a seven year period.
Geoff Haines-Stiles Productions is producing and distributing a project that will follow the upcoming NASA 2003 Mars Exploration Rover project. To Mars with MER consists of three prime-time PBS programs scheduled to be broadcast to coincide with key events in the MER project: the day before the launch, the day before landing and after the 90 day surface mission. These programs will examine such mission milestones as key engineering tests and selecting where to land based on the scientific questions we have about Mars. The prime time specials will be edited and, along with additional live and taped video, distributed to science centers, planetariums, educational cable networks and schools with satellite or high-bandwidth Internet connections. Passport to Knowledge, a partner in the project, will adapt NASA's public domain materials and its own Live from Mars resources (teacher's guide, websites, etc.) to provide customized resources for teachers and students and for the parents and families who will be watching coverage of the mission on broadcast and cable. All materials will be made available online.
WGBH is producing four, two-hour programs on the lives of scientists. These programs will be the initial programs in a continuing series of television portraits of distinguished scientists to be broadcast as regular features in the prime-time science series NOVA. The scientists to be covered in the first four programs are Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, and Percy Julian. By illuminating the lives and scientific careers of these important figures, the programs will enhance public understanding of such basic scientific concepts as evolution, the solar system, the chemical bond and the structure of the atom. Ultimately, the programs will give viewers a new perspective on the process of scientific discovery. Ancillary educational support for the programs will include enhanced content on the web site at NOVA Online and classroom support material in the NOVA Teacher's Guide that is mailed to 60,000 teachers nationwide. WGBH also has formed an outreach partnership with the American Library Association to create informal educational resources for use by families, youths, and adults. The core of this special outreach plan is a set of Library Resource Kits that will be available to all 16,000 public libraries. Paula Apsell, Executive Producer for NOVA, will serve as PI for the project. Members of the advisory committee include: Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, MIT; Kenneth R. Manning, Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and of the History of Science, MIT; Noami Oreskes, Associate Professor of History, University of California, San Diego; Daniel I. Rubenstein, Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University; and Neil D. Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium.