The daily radio series EARTH AND SKY began airing nationally on September 30, 1991. It consists of 2-minute programs about Earth science and astronomy. Produced in association with the American Geophysical Union, it is designed for people of all ages. Its aim is to make science accessible and interesting to millions whose common bond is that they happen to be listening to the radio. On February 1, 1992, the series was airing on 63 commercial and public radio stations, which had paid for it, and the number of stations was growing. Producers and hosts Deborah Byrd and Joel Block were responsible for 5,000 daily programs in the award- winning STAR DATE radio series. Partial support is requested for the production, distribution and promotion of 780 programs in the EARTH AND SKY series. The goal for the grant period is to acquire a large listening audience via heavy promotion. After three years, EARTH AND SKY will be self-supporting on 371 stations, more stations than for any previous series of this king.
WHYY, Inc., in cooperation with the Franklin Institute Science Museum, is producing and implementing a radio-based science education program for families. Skytour is a live radio program designed to involve the public in observing astronomical phenomena and engaging in science activities related to the sciences of the sky. Each program centers on a particular science theme and includes short pre-produced pieces designed to capture listeners interest, a live orientation to the night sky with specific instructions to listeners about how to locate the phenomenon being discussed, and discussion with a guest astronomy expert. During the broadcast, listeners can call in to ask questions and to discuss their observations on-air. The program has been successfully piloted in Philadelphia. The current project will enable the applicants to increase the number of shows to six, two-hour shows each year of the project and to expand broadcast to at least three other areas. WHYY currently has definite commitments to participate in the project from four radio station/planetarium partners: New York City: WFUV and The Hayden Planetarium Pittsburgh: WDUQ and the Buhl Planetarium Raleigh-Durham: WUNC and The Morehead Planetarium Vermont: Vermont Public Radio and The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium Outreach components of the project will include a newsletter, local sky parties organized on the evenings of the Skytour broadcasts, related hands-on science activities and workshops at each of the participating planetaria, and a Skytour World Wide Web site. The PI will be Derrick Pitts, Vice President and Chief Astronomer at the Franklin Institute. Neil Tickner, WHYY Special Projects Producer, will direct all production activities. Dale McCreedy, the project director for the Franklin Institute's National Science Partnership and Girls At the Center, and Minda Borun, the Franklin Institute's Director of Research, Evaluation and Planning, will both work with the project in their respective areas of expertise in outreach and evaluation. The project team will work closely with an advisory team of astronomers, informal science educators, and parents.
The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory is requesting $581,736 over three years to produce and distribute a Spanish language version of Star Date, a daily radio program that covers astronomy, space exploration, and other space-related topics. The purpose of the new program is to increase scientific literacy among the Spanish-speaking segment of the American population, inspire a greater interest in astronomy and space science, and encourage younger listeners to enter space or other science-related fields. Collateral ancillary material related to astronomy will also be developed and distributed.
The American Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI) will develop and distribute a traveling version of their permanent exhibit, Behind the Screen. The project, which consists of a 4,000 to 6,000 square foot traveling exhibit and related educational materials, will focus on the science and technology underlying movies and television, including motion, light and optics, sound, electricity and magnetism, chemistry, and geometry/trigonometry. The exhibit also will examine the impact of advances in the technology of movies and television and the resulting impact on audiences and society. The PI will be Rochelle Slovin, founding director of the AMMI. Carl Goodman, Curator of Digital Media, and Richard Koszarski, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, will serve as exhibit content specialists. The integration of science principles and activities into the exhibit will be under the direction of Ted Ansbacher, a physicist who previously served as Director of Exhibits at the New York Hall of Science. Thom Thacker, Director of Education at the AMMI, will be responsible for the development of educational outreach material.
COSMIC VOYAGE will be the first film in IMAX to survey the whole universe. Its main objective is to convey to a broad museum audience the enormous range of space and time scales spanned by the universe, and to locate our familiar human place in this context. The film's centerpiece will be a continuous "cosmic zoom" extending from the largest observable structure of the universe down to the subnuclear realm, a guided tour across some 42 orders of magnitude. This will be followed by a similar excursion through the dimension of time, from the first instant of the Big Bang to the present day some 15 billion years later. The film will take special care to explain the utility and importance of "orders of magnitude". It will indicate the observational basis underlying our description of the physical world. The narrative will emphasize the continuity as well as the open- ended nature of the scientific enterprise over a wide range of disciplines (cosmology, high-energy physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry and biology), and it will integrate the whole into a coherent picture of the universe. COSMIC VOYAGE will communicate this material in ways that are scientifically accurate and instructive, as well as visually absorbing and entertaining. The overall aim is to produce an unparalleled film about the universe that is both beautiful and powerful.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bayley SilleckJeffrey MarvinSteven SoterEric ChalssonMartin Harwit
The Cincinnati Museum of Natural history, working with MacGillivray Freeman Films, will conduct developmental work on an OMNIMAX/IMAX film about caves. This pilot phase will include: (1) Development of a treatment for the film that takes advantage of the qualities of the IMAX medium; maintains the high quality science which is in the preliminary draft treatment; and adds the storyline, adventure, and interest factors needed to attract and hold an audience. (2) Conduct trial filming in a cave to test the feasibility of working in this "hostile" environment. No post production will be completed on this short footage at this stage of the project. However, the film will demonstrate the ability to film with the bulky IMAX equipment well into a cave, to produce moving camera shots if they may be part of the film, and to get sufficient lighting into the cave to shoot high quality film.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kit AndersonJacqueline BelwoodBarbara Flagg
The Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science (CMNHS) is producing a large format film on caves. The film will be a multidisciplinary introduction to the little-understood world of caves and cave science. Caves will introduce viewers to the alien beauty and wonder of caves and the scientists and explorers who study them. It will explore the formation of caves and speleothems, the highly adapted life-forms found in caves and the varied use of caves by people, past and present. A comprehensive educational package of ancillary materials will be available to schools and to the general audience. The PI for the project will be Kit Anderson, Director of Film Projects for CMNHS. The principal science content specialist will be Jacqueline Janine Belwood, a researcher in vertebrate zoology at CMNHS. She will work closely with an advisory committee of eighteen experts in caves, in the various science disciplines relevant to the cave environment, and in large format films. She also will have access to the expertise found among the staff of the CMNHS. The film will be produced by MacGillivray Freeman Films, the company that produced the large format film, "To Fly".
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kit AndersonJacqueline BelwoodBarbara Flagg
The excitement of astrophysical research and discovery is brought into the high school science and mathematics classes through a flexible set of student activities and projects on variable stars. The project includes a computerized database, of 400,000 measurements of brightness of 150 variable stars in five constellations over 25 years, from which students can deduce properties, processes, and evolution of these stars. Students can make additional measurements and discoveries from carefully selected time sequences of 125 35mm slides or from actual measurements from the night sky. A comprehensive student manual and instructional videos make the materials self-contained and easy to use. The teacher manual enables the instructor to adapt the materials to skills, objectives and local curricula. The material can be used in a variety of contexts: traditional mathematics and science classes at both the high school and college level, independent projects, summer institutes, and community science clubs. The material will be field tested in classes and refined through workshops with teachers. A newsletter and a video about amateur astronomers is planned.
Lawrence Berkeley Labs developed a CD containing educational materials, staff training and the software necessary for informal science education centers to offer to middle school students one- hour sessions, multiple-day workshops, and ongoing participation in a drop-in computer lab. Hands-On Universe (HOU) is an active science education program that provides participants access to observing time on professional telescopes through the use of a personal computer and the Internet. The CD contains: exploration experiences and challenge games; resource material including images from other national labs, descriptions and animations of related topics, and astronomical catalogs; image processing software; a telecommunications package to interface with HOU telescopes and support network, the Internet, and World Wide Web; staff training material. The target audiences are youth in grades three through high school, and adults.
Cornell University is producing a documentary television program about the 100-meter radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. The film, planned as a PBS special, will document the engineering and technology behind the construction of the telescope as well as examining and explaining the science of radio astronomy. Ancillary educational material, including a 20 minute version of the video, will be developed and distributed for use in informal education setting through the American Astronomical Society and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In addition images and information about the Green Bank Telescope and the science of radio astronomy will be made available through an electronic bulletin board service such as GOPHER or MOSAIC. Teaching materials also will be developed for use in the secondary school curriculum and an "Across Space and Time" undergraduate curriculum developed at Cornell University will be made available to faculty at other colleges and universities. In addition, the film and related material will serve as the centerpiece for short courses for college teachers at Green Bank under the National Chautauqua Short Course Program. The PI and major content developer is Martha Haynes, Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University associated with the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. The film is being produced by PhotoSynthesis Production of Ithaca, New York. David Gluck is co-producer, director, and cinematographer and Deborah Hoard is co-producer and writer. A twelve person advisory committee of astronomers, teachers, and informal science educators will guide development of the project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Martha HaynesDavid Gluck
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Project A.S.T.R.O. is a program to bring both amateur and professional astronomers into the schools to assist fourth through ninth grade teachers in the classroom, with day and evening observing activities, with individual student projects, and with inspiration to provide a greater appreciation of science and lead students to science and engineering careers. Amateurs are a largely untapped resource for science education and this project will explore the impact their enthusiasm and experience can have in providing significant assistance to teachers and students in grades where crucial science attitudes are formed. The California-based pilot program will -- after the development of appropriate protocols and materials -- use 40 astronomers and 40 teachers to test the effectiveness of astronomers (especially amateur astronomers) as school resource agents. The project has four related components: 1) the assessment of existing programs of this type and of materials to help both the visiting scientists and the teachers; 2) workshops to train the astronomers, prepare the teachers, and continue developing activities and resources; 3) school visits and other activities by astronomers for a full school year; and 4) the production of a loose-leaf Teachers' Resource Notebook and a How-to-Manual for bringing astronomy to the schools. Formative and summative evaluation by those involved and a professional evaluator will be a key component of each phase. A set of guidelines for the national dissemination of the project will also be developed.
The Smithsonian Institution's Office of Environmental Awareness, National Museum of Natural History, and Traveling Exhibition Service are developing a major traveling exhibition, Ocean Planet, that will heighten public awareness of the need for ocean conservation. Ocean Planet will show how our lives are connected to the seas, illustrate the rapidly mounting problems threatening coastlines and open oceans, and feature promising efforts to manage oceans and oceanic resources in a sustainable manner. The exhibition and its accompanying programs will introduce the American public to the science underlying ocean conservation, including the fields of biogeochemistry, economics, fisheries biology, geology, marine anthropology, marine biology, and oceanography. Evaluation studies conducted before, during, and after exhibition development will help make the exhibition and programs more responsive to its audience. Following a six-month showing in the National Museum of Natural History, and modifications based on visitor studies, Ocean Planet will visit eight American cities, introducing millions of museum, aquarium, and science center visitors to environmental issues affecting oceans. The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive program of educational materials and activities outside of the host site. A program of education grants to the venues on the national tour will encourage collaboration with local educational institutions and community groups. We request $951,050 from the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education Program to Support exhibition research, designs, evaluation, fabrication, and the development of accompanying educational materials. The additional $3,000,000 needed complete the project will be raised from corporate sources, private foundations, and the Smithsonian Institution.