WGBH Educational Foundation is producing a four-hour documentary special, "Fire," to be broadcast as a NOVA special. The series will present the story of fire as an important but often overlooked key to understanding the natural world and our shared environmental history. Humans have used fire in virtually every aspect of our existence: for heat and light, as a tool and a source of power, for the private rituals of spiritual life and the monumental reshaping of entire landscapes. Fire acts as a significant agent of change in our world today, and the interaction of fire and humans is now acknowledged as a significant part of global climate change research and of biodiversity and ecosystem health studies. Fire will examine these and other powerful and fundamental scientific questions related to fire being explored today. The project will integrate fire history with an understanding of the scientific principles of fire chemistry and behavior, and it will link that knowledge with ecology, agriculture, forestry and resource management. An integrated outreach campaign will accompany the television series. It will be built around a resource kit, offered in both print and CD-ROM formats, with activities and other resources for families and youth organizations at the late elementary and early middle school level. There also will be special web pages within NOVA's award-winning web site that will include the "Fire" resource kit materials. The PI and Series Producer will be Judith Vecchione whose credits include the NSF-supported series on women scientists today, "Discovering Women." Paula Apsell, Executive Producer for NOVA, will be Executive-in-Charge. The Film Director will be Kirk Wolfinger whose prior NOVA productions include "Submarine!," "Titanic's Lost Sister," "Daredevils of the Sky," and "To the Moon." The Series Senior Advisor is Stephen J. Pyne, Professor of History at Arizona State University. Dr. Pyne is an environmental historian and author of the five-book "Cycle of Fire" suite. Other advisors include: Norman L. Christensen, Dean of the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University; Johann Georg Goldammer, Senior Scientist and leader of the Fire Ecology and Biomass Burning Research Groups of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry; Robert Huggins, Servicewide Education Coordinator for the National Park Service; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; Marcella Russell, Regional Liaison for the Massachusetts Parent Involvement Project; and Brian Stocks, Senior Fire Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service.
National Geographic Television is producing a large-format, 3D film, "Sea Monsters," about prehistoric marine reptiles. The project will also include formative and summative evaluations, educational materials for home, after-school and classroom use, professional development for educators, an interactive website and innovative outreach to underserved youth. The film will present the current scientific understanding of Mesozoic marine ecosystems and the biology and behavior of prehistoric marine reptiles. The storyline of the films sets paleontological discovery into historical context, and reveals much about the scientific method and process of inquiry. Innovative intercutting between live-action paleontology sequences and photo realistic 3D animation of the reptiles will bring the fossils to life and allow audiences to make connections between the remains that are uncovered and the reptiles' activities, all of which are driven by concrete evidence in the fossil record. Sea Monsters will have a strategic impact on the field of informal science education by using groundbreaking computer-generated imagery technologies, and by demonstrating that a strong, dramatic storyline is a powerful and effective method for communicating scientific concepts. Standards-based lesson plans for the classroom and informal activity guides for families will augment the impact of the film. National Geographic has teamed with leading scientific experts and formal and informal education specialists to inform and advise the project. Multimedia Research and Knight-Williams Research Communication, respectively, will conduct formative and summative research.
This project will produce an educational 30-minute DVD/TV film and interactive website with classroom materials about climate change and its effects on biota by presenting past and current research on the Adelie penguin, Antarctica's most accessible indicator species. The project will target students in grades 5-8. Each component of "Penguin Science" will present an engaging case study to teach students about ecology, the complex science of climate change and its impacts, both positive and negative. It will not only feature the work of David Ainley and co-PI's Grant Ballard and Katie Dugger, but also William Sladen who began the first NSF-sponsored penguin studies 48 years ago during the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Archival film clips of Sladen and his work from the 1970 documentary, "Penguin City" (CBS), will convey the value of long-term research and show biotic changes during just one professional lifetime. The project will be completed in 2007 to coincide with the International Polar Year.
The objective of this award is to inform the public about the science and engineering research that is being conducted to determine the scope and impact of the Gulf oil spill. In response to the this environmental disaster facing the U.S., NSF has funded numerous RAPID awards to send scientists and engineers to the Gulf to research the impact of the spill. MacNeil Lehrer Productions, producer of the PBS NewsHour, will report on this research that is ongoing as a result of the unanticipated and disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The PBS NewsHour team of experienced producers and correspondents will produce at least nine segments for broadcast, along with extensive material for online. All the stories will revolve around scientists and engineers and the work they are doing in the Gulf in response to the spill. The online material will include blogs and additional web-only video reports that will deliver content to augment broadcast coverage. The NewsHour will encourage user engagement through regular posting of stores on social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, UStream and Disqus, to help the reporting on the oil spill go viral. The online/on-air correspondent Hari Sreenivasan will conduct web-exclusive interviews with scientists on the forefront of the Gulf research. The NewsHour Extra, the website that reaches 200,000 educators per month, will post the science coverage on the Daily Video Clip Tool, which provides educators resources and lesson plans to help initiate discussions with students about the science, environmental and engineering issues raised by the rapidly-changing story. The new Student Reporting Lab project will locate classrooms in Louisiana to contribute original, youth-focused reporting on the oil spill when school opens in August. The NewsHour will coordinate efforts with PBS stations located in the Gulf to create a synergy and extend the usefulness and life of these efforts. The reach of the PBS NewsHour is significant. The national daily broadcast delivers an audience of approximately 1.1 million viewers. The NewsHour public radio broadcasts reach an average of 63,000 listeners daily across the nation. Outside the U.S., the PBS NewsHour television broadcast is available on the American Forces Television to more than 800,000 military and State department personnel around the world. In addition, audiences across Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America tune into the service via various channels and satellite services. The Online NewsHour visitor numbers exploded in May 2010 to 5+ million monthly pageviews and 1.5+ million unique visitors. The NewsHour Extra website, which targets educators, will provide resources for classroom teachers to discuss the science, environmental and engineering issues raised by the spill. The proposed Student Reporting Lab promises an innovative new addition to the outreach efforts to engage young people in directly reporting on the oil spill and the impact on their communities. The deliverables produced under this award will be consolidated on the NewsHour website (www.pbs.org/newshour) where they will create a permanent record of this critical research for the general public.
Flood of Mud: The Roanoke River -- Past and Future is a video project examining long-term impacts of historic land clearing and erosion on temperate rivers and their floodplains. The 17-minute video targets youth and adult visitors to the North Carolina Aquariums. The video highlights the NSF-funded research project EAR-0105929, "Modeling the Impacts of Post-settlement Sediment Deposition on Floodplain Vegetation," which applies paleoecological and dendrochronological methods and computer modeling to examine and predict the impact of sedimentation on forest composition, productivity and functioning of the lower Roanoke River in North Carolina.
This planning grant supports the development of a new half-hour television series with related vodcasts, blogs and outreach designed to inspire young people to consider careers in taxonomy and zoology. Teams of scientists with expertise in every taxonomic category and environmental niche will descend on a typical backyard with the goal of describing and identifying every living organism living there. The project will bring together scientists working in various supported ecology and biodiversity research to act as experts both on camera and behind the scenes. Other collaborators include the Tree of Life project, The Wildlife Society Urban Wildlife Working Group, National 4H, the Verizon Foundation, Thinkfinity Partnership, and the AAAS Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs. Deliverables for the planning grant will be six short (two to three-minute) show segments for evaluation purposes; a website with four sample podcasts and organism fact cards; a marketing kit; and an evaluation from Multimedia Research.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Albert FisherRobert HirshonBarbara Flagg
Frozen Planet is a landmark multi-media seven-part television series, with complementary website, whose goal is to inform and inspire audiences about the environment and ecology of the Polar Regions and the science being carried out there. The series will highlight multiple disciplines including climatology, volcanology, geology, glaciology, as well as natural history. Frozen Planet will be produced in High Definition by the BBC Natural History Unit and Discovery Communications for broadcast worldwide on Discovery Channel in 2011. The proposal to NSF is for 1) field support for filming various NSF-supported research efforts in Antarctica and 2) funding to cover evaluation of the project's intended learning impacts in the United States. Goodman Research Group will conduct the summative evaluation to measure learning impacts centered on the audience's understanding of the polar environment, the science being undertaken there, and the implication of the new scientific findings to their everyday lives. For scientific and field support, the production team is collaborating with many organizations in addition to NSF's Office of Polar Programs including the British Antarctic Survey, the Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project, and NASA. Through repeated broadcast, video-on-demand, the website, and DVDs, the project will provide a comprehensive, enduring resource. The project is anticipated to reach more than 65 million people across the U.S.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dan ReesCarlos GutierrezChrstine Weber
WGBH's newest mission is to develop the Children's Sustainability Project - a daily animated series for kids ages 8-11 that will teach the STEM concepts underlying systems and sustainability. Our promise is that 7-8 kids from around the world become trapped, one by one, in an inventive, multi-leveled video game. The kids, unlikely heros all, are initially happy to be stuck but eventually want desperately to get out of the home. To do this they must become inventive and creative and play the game to the end. Stakes are high and only systems thinking and sustainable actions can save the day.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History is developing a large format film on the Pantanal in Brazil, the world's largest wetland. The film will focus on the Hyacinth Macaw, an indicator species whose health reflects the health of the entire ecosystem, and will explore the relationship between the climate, geology, hydrology and ecology of the region. It also will examine three threats to the region: a large scale river channeling project which would drain 50% of the marsh, gold mining activities that dump millions of tons of sediment into streams, and large-scale corporate farming which pollutes the region with pesticide and fertilizer run-off. Science content for the series will be under the direction of Dr. Richard Smartt, former Director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The series will be co-produced by Timothy Aydelott, from the museum, and Constance Bennecke, an independent producer in Brazil. Barrie Howells will be executive producer and Rodney Taylor will be director of photography. Both Mr. Howells and Mr. Taylor have extensive large format film experience. Ralph Adler of RMC Research will conduct audience research during the planning phase The major activities during the planning stage include: Conducting audience research to determine the familiarity of the public with the ecosystem and with the concepts to be presented in the film. In addition to topic testing, the research will assess the audience's current knowledge or misconceptions about wetland ecosystems and the Pantanal; Convening the project advisors to develop the science content, finalize content goals, and to suggest ideas and strategies for presenting the science; Attending a regional planning conference in the Pantanal to establish working relationships with scientists in the field; Developing a script treatment for the film.
The goal of this project is to educate children between the ages of 10 and 18 about the ecology of insects and forests, how human activities affect their interaction, and how scientific research is conducted. It will disseminate information throughout Indiana based on research award DEB 0345331, Cicadas and Forests Education. For a period during May and June 2004 the United States was captivated by periodical cicadas in an unusual convergence of popular and scientific interest. This project will use this heightened awareness as a vehicle for informal science education as additional broods emerge in 2007 and 2008 in the Midwest and South. The project will use existing video footage from the research to produce a documentary film on periodical cicadas for airing on public television stations and distribution on DVDs to schools; an interactive computer-based presentation in PowerPoint; and an interactive 3-D animation of the cicada life cycle for use in a science center. Project collaborators include local public television stations, Wonderlab (a science museum), the Indiana State Museum and school systems in Indiana.
The Self Reliance Foundation in association with the Hispanic Radio Network over a five year period will produce and distribute a variety of daily Spanish-language radio programs on science education topics and follow-up outreach services to network listeners on science education and career opportunities. The applicants will add two science related episodes each week to Buscando La Belleza, the four-minute daily radio series for families that focuses on social issues, work issues, women's rights, and educational and career opportunities. It is carried on 100 stations with a weekly cumulative audience of 2,567,000 listeners. The new episodes will include: 52 role model interviews with Hispanic men and women who have careers in science, mathematics, and technology from technical positions not requiring a college degree to Ph.D.'s engaged in cutting edge research; 26 family involvement episodes with suggestions for parents to build their confidence in helping their children with homework, doing simple science activities with their children at home, encouraging their older children in their studies, and working with schools and community organizations; and 26 academic and career resource/success stories highlighting Hispanic students who have been successful in their pursuit of careers in science, mathematics, and technology. The second series included under the grant is Salvemos Nuestro Planeta, a two-and-a-half minute series that focuses on environmental issues. It currently is carried on 89 radio stations twice a week with a total weekly cumulative audience of 2,494,300. The producers will expand the series to seven original episodes per week with five episodes focusing on science, mathematics, and technology themes: general science literacy, environmental management and technology, computers and information technology, environmental activities for youth, and SMET career opportunities. Outreach will consist of a national Spanish language toll free phone number that will refer listeners to resources related to opportunities for scholarships in science and engineering, activities and resources for parents and children in science education, etc., and in some cases, connect callers to the subject of that days interview. The PI will be Roberto Salazar who has been chief assistant to Vicente Llamas at the Comprehensive Regional Center for Minorities. He has been involved in numerous science education project for Hispanics and has a background in radio. The Executive Producer will be Jeff Kline. Major science consultants will be Vicente Llamas, Director of the Comprehensive Regional Center for Minorities, and Estrella Triana, Hispanic Science Education Director for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Roberto SalazarGilbert SanchezRobert Russell
Independent Broadcasting Associates, Inc., is producing a series of twelve radio features for National Public newsmagazines about the Ganges river basin in South Asia. The purpose of this series is to examine the relationships between science and culture as they converge and diverge over issues concerning the Ganga: through (a) examination of the ecology of the river in two key areas; and (b) study of the relationships between scientific and religious attitudes applied to the environmental issues raised in both reaches of the river. The radio series is complemented by a Web site and extensive educational outreach through 11 state Geographic Alliances, an AP Environmental Science module and a pilot Virtual River program developed and tested in collaboration with the Museum of Science in Boston.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julian Crandall HollickKelly AlleyVinod TareRK SinhaGraham Chapman