New for the 2002-3 school year, "Science Concepts in Context" (SCiC) offers 16 x fifteen minute classroom videos (packaged by many public television stations as 4 hour-long programs) organized by Earth, Life, Physical and Space science.
Each video is the lead component in an integrated, multiple media package of instructional materials and experiences inviting a comprehensive exploration of a fundamental science concept and the Standards and Benchmarks most closely associated with it. The SCiC package offers teachers and students an integrated suite of…
• video programs
...designed to motivate and facilitate in-class investigation and deep understanding of the concepts.
PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE is working with participating public television / PBS stations and educational broadcasters to facilitate digital delivery to stations and their end users whether from the P2K website or from local servers (supported by stations or their academic or industry partners.)
All supporting materials (e.g. Teacher Guides and activities, correlations with National and State science education standards and benchmarks, assessment protocols of varied formats, informational handouts and student worksheets, online background, BIOgraphies, learning games and interactive simulations) are, or soon will be, available online. Check back throughout the month of September as this site grows, and to subscribe to the moderated discussion and support forums.
The availability of multiple media, including fast-paced, high quality videos, is intended to help teachers engage the varied learning styles found in a typical classroom, including students traditionally less interested in science. Each fundamental concept is introduced in a 15-minute video featuring exciting real-world contexts and the work of contemporary researchers who serve as on-camera explainers of the concept. The researchers, diverse in ethnicity and balanced in gender, also serve as role models, providing on-line background about their own careers, rewards and challenges.
These scientists and engineers are members of ongoing NSF, DOE, NASA, NOAA and NCAR-UCAR research projects rather than participants in special and one-time only expeditions staged for TV or the Web. This approach also exposes students to the structure and organization of contemporary research as well as the instrumentation, technology and experimental designs without which scientific discovery is impossible.
Program descriptions:
EARTH SCIENCE (2002-2003)
1.2 Jet Streams and Ocean Currents: The Global Circulation of Air and Water
1.3 The Greenhouse Effect
1.4 The Water, Carbon and other Geochemical Cycles
LIFE SCIENCE (2002-2003)
2.2 Food Webs: connections across the natural world
2.3 Adaptation and Natural Selection: evolution at work
2.4 Life in Extreme Environments
PHYSICAL SCIENCE (2002-2003)
3.2 The Electromagnetic Spectrum
3.3 Force and Motion
3.4 Convection, Conduction and Radiation
SPACE SCIENCE (2002-2003)
4.2 Objects in the Sky: planets, stars and more!
4.3 Fusion and Fission: atoms and energy
4.4 How we explore Space: extending our senses beyond Earth
• online resources, and
• hands-on activities
1.1 Sun and Seasons, Day and Night
How Earth's relationship to the Sun determines our days and our years, with examples from across the USA, and from the poles to the Equator
How temperature and pressure differentials set air and water in motion, and how these circulations determine weather and climate.
How the natural greenhouse effect makes Earth habitable, and evidence for possible global climate change resulting from human activities.
How the recycling of the air we breathe and the atmosphere, the water we drink and the oceans and rainfall, and the planet's crust on which we stand shape our world and our lives.
2.1 Photosynthesis: from Sunlight to Life
How the Sun's energy powers life, explained at an organismic, cellular and chemical scale.
Producer-consumer and mutualistic relationships in environments both tropical and polar, very hot and very cold!
How Darwinian evolution operating over time results in the wide variety of creatures and body plans that inhabit Earth.
Creatures surviving in the ocean deep, far underground and in extreme cold stretches our definition of the essence of life.
3.1 Light, Optics, Mirrors and Telescopes
Newton's principles at work in the bathroom mirror and giant observatories, and in spacecraft exploring the Universe.
How charged particles in motion are light, why we see colors and what exists beyond the visible spectrum.
Newton's laws at work in sports (pool and billiards) and spacecraft en route to Mars.
How heat energy travels through space and matter, and how and why an object's color affects its temperature.
4.1 Gravity: Mass, Weight and Motion
Why gravity keeps the planets in orbit round the Sun, and keeps our feet firmly on the ground.
The families of objects we can see in the skies, how they got there and why they look the way they do.
The meaning of Einstein's e=Mc2, and why it helps explain how stars shine and nuclear energy.
The scientific principles at work in spacecraft, telescopes, and the human enterprise of discovery which puts them to work: technology serving research.
