WGBH Educational Foundation is producing a prime time television series and informal education outreach component entitled 'A Life of Science.' Each of the six one-hour programs in the series will profile a contemporary woman scientist: Lydia Villa-Komaroff, biologist; Melissa Franklin, physicist; Misha Mahowald, computational neuroscientist; Marcia NcNutt, geologist; Lynda Jordan, biochemist; and Patty Jo Watson, archaeologist. The stories will present their scientific quests and careers but also will be about scientific lives. An outreach plan, which centers around a national campaign called 'The Missing Persons Investigation,' will target two primary constituencies: girls and boys 11-14 years of age and their adult teachers and youth service community leaders. The project will serve these audiences in formal school-based settings as well as in the informal settings of community-based organizations and institutions. Beyond these immediate target groups, the outreach project will reach a broad and diverse national public through related activities including demonstrations exhibits, community campaigns at local public television stations, and media partnerships. A comprehensive promotion plan has been devised to inform the public of both the series and the outreach component of the project.
SOUNDPRINT is requesting $901,273 over 16 months to produce a series of radio documentaries entitled Making Connections: SOUNDPRINT Explores Science and Technology, related educational outreach materials, multimedia non-broadcast applications, and an aggressive distribution plan. Sixteen half-hour original science documentaries, distributed through national Public radio will address three broad areas of science and technology. These include: the limitations and possibilities of scientific achievement; the requirements of sustainability (surviving); and the explanation science offers for human behavior. An additional 21 programs will be repackaged as special broadcasts to be distributed to over 200 public radio stations. Target audiences include middle school and secondary school students, and adults.
Blackside, Inc. is producing a television series and an outreach component about minority scientists. The goals of the six-hour prime-time series, "Breakthrough: People of Color in Science," are to raise the consciousness of the general public that is largely unaware of the significant contribution of scientists of color and to provide role models that will encourage young people to consider science and engineering careers. The programs will feature the work of contemporary African-American, Latino and Native American scientists and engineers who are active in cell biology, astrophysics, applied mathematics and other fields of science. The stories of their scientific achievements will present both women and men, old and young, at different stages of their careers, and will explore the professional, educational and social worlds they live and work in. Viewers will have immediate access to a comprehensive follow-up effort that will connect them with local, regional and national opportunities in informal science education. Blackside will collect information from existing resources and institutions as well using source material from several extensively researched databases geared toward minority students. Using all of this information, Blackside will create a metadatabase that will connect teachers, parents, mentors, and students to a rich variety of educational programs: extracurricular classes, mentoring programs, national science contests, teacher training workshops, and a myriad of on-line services. To ensure immediate access and, where possible, to customize the information to viewers needs, Blackside will disseminate it through a variety of means: an 800-number with a direct fax-back capability, an on-line service, a CD-ROM, and a printed packet delivered by mail. A principal target audience is gatekeepers in students' lives: parents, teachers, and scientists interested in becoming mentors. The target audience also includes students from fourth th rough twelfth grades. Joseph Blatt will serve a PI for this project and co-executive producer for the television series. His previous experience include serving as executive producer of "Scientific American FRONTIERS" and as a producer/director for several NOVA programs. He also has been executive producer for three television series/college credit courses in mathematics. Henry Hampton will be the other co-executive producer. He was the creator and executive producer of the 14-hour, award winning series, "Eyes on the Prize," about America's civil rights movement. The principal educational consultant will be Ceasar McDowell, assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Michael Ambrosino, the original executive producer of NOVA, will be the principal science television consultant.
This funding is for a planning phase of the Genome Radio Project, a multifaceted project that will produce 17 1/2 hours of radio programming, plus a variety of printed and electronic ancillary materials, exploring the science and social implications of human genetic research. The planning grant will enable the project team to develop further five key areas: o To work with advisors to define their process of editorial oversight and their involvement in the program ppoduction process; o To produce a half-hour documentary pilot program; o To use the pilot program to solidify distribution agreement with networks and major market stations; o To develop ancillary materials to accompany the pilot program and to determine mechanisms for the distribution of these materials; and o To conduct focus group evaluation of the pilot program and to define specific evaluation plans for the broader series.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barinetta ScottMatt BinderJudith Thilman
A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES is a five-part series to be produced by WETA fornational PBS broadcast in the 1993-94 season. The series is to be adapted from the best- selling book of the same title. Its author, Diane Ackerman, will present the programs and collaborate with the producers throughout. Each program will focus on a single sense: smell, touch, taste, hearing and vision respectively. Each will explore: how the world is sensed by animals and humans, including the evolution of the sense; what is perceived; and how human beings reconstruct and recreate their sensory worlds, through cuisines and perfumes, music, sculpture and painting. Shot on location around the world, these documentary films will incorporate viewpoints from anatomy, physiology and neurochemistry, experimental and perceptual psychology, cultural anthropology, literature, art, music and history. Compelling stories and illustrative vignettes and precise graphic animation will arise from rigorous research, in collaboration with a board of advisors. By unifying material from science and the arts and humanities, the series will reach a general audience. Viewers will be awakened to a new awareness of the range and power of their senses. Companion materials for schools will extend the series to the formal learning environment and will motivate further study.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Richard HuttonDavid McGowanRichard Thomas
EINSTEIN is a series of three prime time television programs to be shown nationally on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The series will present a scientific biography of Albert Einstein. The series will treat the life of Albert Einstein on several levels. The central narative thread will trace the development and impact of Einstein's work in physics. The three programs will examine Einstein's impact beyond physics -- as a muse for the arts; a dissident voice in politics; a moral sensibility; ultimately as the greatest public symbol of scientific accomplishment. With original texts (including newly identified documents from the Einstein archives), historical footage, interviews, documentary sequences, the most sophisticated computer animation available, and other techniques as appropriate, EINSTEIN will present to its audience a unique picture of the role of Albert Einstein in the making of the modern world. Beyond its broadcast in 1992, the series also will receive wide educational distribution in secondary schools and colleges and a large foreign audience.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paula ApsellThomas LevensonBarbara Flagg
WGBH will develop, produce, and distribute a comprehensive project that will review science of the twentieth century. The major components of the project will be a series of five, two-hour, prime time documentary programs for PBS, an outreach campaign to involve the public through informal and formal science education institutions and organizations, material for use in formal classrooms, and a science museum component. The focus of the series will be to review the science of the twentieth century by telling the dramatic story of the struggle to understand ourselves and our world over the past 100 years -- a time when science advanced further than in previous eras combined and when scientific discipline underwent a revolution. However, because at the close of the century there is an ever-widening gap between what scientists know and what most of the public comprehends, the series will explore the century's most enduring scientific endeavors with each two-hour program probing several related fields of investigation and application: views of the universe and of matter; origins of the Earth and of life; health, medicine, and the human body; human nature and behavior; and technology and engineering. It will offer viewers an opportunity to view 100 years of scientific pursuits as a whole, to recast their perceptions of science and scientists, and to be intrigued and inspired by a view of science as a never-ending and deeply human quest for answers and solutions. The outreach component of the project include: Video-based Components - videocassettes of the series, video modules selected for classroom use, level one videodiscs, and a prototype for a CD-ROM for home learning. A Discovery Challenge Activity - a national campaign targeted primarily for girls and boys 11-14 years of age. The two-phase activities will be offered through middle school science and social studies classes; through youth groups such as Girls Inc., Family Science Programs, 4-H, and Girls and Boys Clubs; at museums and science centers; and through other informal education outlets. Activities will be designed so they can be undertaken by youth with a wide range of interests, learning styles, and skills. Print Components - teacher's guide, video module activity guide, videodisc guide, poster, and a companion trade book. On-line Component - an electronic bulletin board and e-mail center related to the project. Public access sites will be established in libraries, community centers, and schools throughout the country and members of the public with home computers will be able to connect to WGBH at no cost. Service and activities offered on-line will include the ability of viewers to critique programs, ask questions of the production team, download educational materials, and ordering project material. The bulletin board will provide an electronic forum for educators to exchange strategies and ideas as they use the project's resources and enable participants in the Discovery Challenge to tap into the on-line resources and share information. The on-line component will be managed and controlled at WGBH. Museum Component - consisting of a museum tool kit and activities to be incorporated Science-by-Mail. Paula Apsell, executive producer for NOVA and director of the WGBH Science Unit, will serve as executive-in-charge of production. Jon Palfreman will be executive producer and will head up a project team consisting of the executive editor, Thomas Friedman, a senior producer, and two producers. Outreach activities will be the responsibility of Beth Kirsch, Director of Educational Print and Outreach, and Simone Bloom, Outreach Manager.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paula ApsellThomas FriedmanJon Palfreman
South Carolina Educational Television Network will secure rights for one additional PBS broadcast plus three additional years of off-air recording for educational purposes. In 1990, NSF awarded $367,430 to the South Carolina Educational Network toward production and dissemination of a television series entitled, "Spaceship Earth." The series takes a satellite's-eye view of the Earth, providing a unified look at the rich variety and interdependency of life and land on our planet. Topics considered in the programs include: an overview of a new global geography, population, earth's crust, world markets, weather, seas and oceans, rivers, forests, food, and "the watchkeepers," Earth's inhabitants who are responsible for its well-being. That series was completed and broadcast over a three year period. During that time it attract large general audiences and was widely used in schools. There is continued interest is use of the series, however, broadcast and off-air taping rights have expired. South Carolina Educational Television also will develop and disseminate promotional material to alert audiences and teachers of the continued availability of the project.