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JANUARY 17, 1995                                                UPDATES-LFA-6
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W H E N    T H E    C A M E R A     R O L L S    O N   J A N .  1 9 t h

             Y O U R    Q U E S T I O N    C O U L D   B E


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     %%%%  See Telecomputing Section Below for More Details   %%%%%

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                ---====|     |NTRODUCTION     |=====---
                       ------------------------

The Live from Antarctica project has three basic components

                       ___
                        |ELEVISION
                         ___
                          |ELECOMPUTING
                             ___
                              |EACHERS

We send you this newsletter each week to keep you informed of our progress in each of these three areas.

                       --------------------------
                ---====|   T E L E V I S I O N   |=====---
                       --------------------------

We hope you saw program three: "Spaceship South Pole." NOAA's satellite and a cast of many dedicated people at the South Pole and around the world worked very hard to bring you the:

  _
   |
   |  --- ---
   |  |__  |
   |  ___| |   E V E R    L I V E   V I D E O    I M A G E S  F R O M
 ----

                    T H E    S O U T H    P O L E

We hope you not only learned something about astronomy at the Pole, and what it takes to live at work at one end of the Earth, but were also touched... inspired... enlivened by the participation of student Elizabeth Felton in the repositioning of the marker of Earth's exact geographic South Pole!

And now we are hard at work on the last adventure in our electronic field trip:

Program 4: FROM POLE TO PLANET, January 19th, 13:00 EST (1:00 pm)

This program focuses on Antarctica as a laboratory for the entire planet. New forms of scientific research under the extreme conditions of Antarctica are revealing information about global processes which are crucial for our future.

If the technology cooperates, and operational logistics permit, we will be able to take you "live" to the U.S. Coast Guard ice-breaker "Polar Star." The second live site at McMurdo will be outside one of the original supply and staging huts built by the English explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. These sites, new and old, mirror the program content as we look backwards and forwards to understand this very unique global laboratory.

We hope that you are enjoying the journals from Lt. Katy McNitt from NOAA
whom you will meet in the fourth broadcast. She was part of the group at the
                   South Pole last week but she will be traveling back to
      -----*-----  McMurdo station and will join us in our final program.
   *=====[_]L)     This program will feature a comprehensive discussion
         -'-`-     of ozone and the consequences of changes in our global
                   environment that have been measured in Antarctica.
You will hear how years of data have provided conclusive evidence that
human-made Chlorofluorocarbons/CFC's in the stratosphere is one of the
causes of the Antarctic ozone hole.  Kate McNitt will demonstrate a Total
Column Ozonometer that was sent to Antarctica and the South Pole by TERC,
one of our partners in LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA, and the originator of the
ongoing, initially NSF-supported GLOBAL LAB project.

You will see Lt. Katy McNitt use this instrument to take measurements to compare with those made with her along her Dobson spectrophotometer, which she works with at the Pole. (See teacher section below and on our gopher for more information on how your students could use these tools.)

You will see a demonstration in our Maryland Public Television studio by students who have been using data available on the Internet in their own explorations of issues related to ultraviolet radiation, ozone and stratospheric pollution. This is part of a NASA-supported Earth Ssystems Science Community Curriculum Testbed Project, headed by Michael Keeler and Farzad Mohootian out of Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC. Deaf students from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf will also demonstrate how online resources equal the "playing field" for those otherwise excluded from much scientific discourse.

We will also take you -- safely, on videotape -- to the site of something that well may surprise many of you -- volcanic Mount Erebus, which dominates the McMurdo skyline! As you'll hear, it is quite active, and we'll explore its beautiful and instructive ice-caves.

Other live guests will be biologist Donal Monahan who runs a "University on the Ice" for undergrads at McMurdo, and NSF's Representative in Antarctica, Dwight Fisher, both of whom will be able -- along with Katy McNitt -- to answer just about any question that students might have.

As in the previous programs, we will have a number of "on camera" classrooms representing you and your students.

We will have Assu Casarotti, Larry McCalister and their students from Hopson Middle School in Barrow, Alaska -- the northernmost school district in the United States. They are as close to the North Pole as our crew will be to the South Pole in Antarctica. They will help us see the similarities among and differences between the two poles of our planet.

Mary Donovan and her students from Gwynn Park Middle School, Brandywine MD will be in joined by students from Gonzaga High school, and from Gallaudet-affiliated Model Secondary School for the Deaf, DC who are participating in the Earth System Science Community. They will be available in the Maryland Public Television Studio and will have computers linked to the Internet which might provide us a direct link to you!

And finally we will visit Canton Middle School in Baltimore MD LIVE via a microwave link and find out how these students have been preparing for their electronic field trip to Antarctica, with many interdisciplinary activities, including writing poetry and debating issues involving international collaboration.

And we'll announce the winners of the "Outhouse" Challenge Question and their prizes. And we will invite viewers to participate in the future by sending us their evaluation of this project.

        NOTE:  Subject to Shuttle missions and other major
        priorities, NASA-TV will be rebroadcasting all of
        the programs,one per day, over a four day period
        from Jan 23-26, at 13:00 hrs Eastern.  NASA-TV then
        re-broadcasts each program on a 3-hour rotation
        throughout the day.

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           ---====|   T E L E C O M P U T I N G   |=====---
                  --------------------------------
               <~><~>~<~>~<~>~<~>~<~><~>~<~>~<~>~<~>
               <~>   NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR         <~>
               <~>        INTERACTION            <~>
               <~><~>~<~>~<~>~<~>~<~><~>~<~>~<~>~<~>

We are experimenting with another way to increase the degree of interaction on our electronic field trips.

We are going to make it possible for your students to ask questions of our live guests from your computers before and DURING program four.

You can ask Katy McNitt questions about

Dwight Fisher will respond to questions about

Donal Monahan will field your questions about

Or if you have questions about a topic or issue in Antarctica that we have not addressed in any of the previous programs, our guests will be happy to respond to you.

We will try to include your questions in our final program in two ways. The questions that we receive between now and the program, we will use to guide decisions we are making about the program content. During the program, we will have students in our studio location downloading your questions and then reading some of them as part of the "live" interaction with our guests in Antarctica. So send your questions and suggestions and we will do the best we can to shape this final program to address your interests.

The account is open now and we are looking forward to hearing from you. We will try to respond to as many questions as we can during the program. But as always, if you we did not answer your students' questions during the broadcast, you can address them to our Antarctica Team for a personal reply.

Online Update:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a quick update on how our other online activities:

      A conference for updates and journals (959 subscribers)
      An interactive environment for teachers (242 subscribers)
      Four Learning Centers for student exchanges (about 25 classes in each)
      Students' questions to the Antarctic Team (over 350 questions)
      Mail list for receiving all question-answer pairs (82 subscribers)

      Weekly Challenge Questions for students
      A searchable encyclopedia of question-answer pairs
      Research Journals written by our Antarctic Explorers
      Online Teacher's guide
      More activities to extend program content in the classroom
      Resource materials on Antarctica
      Links to world-wide resources available on the Internet

World Wide Web (http://passporttoknowledge.com/antarctica)

            ___                                                      ___
  _-==-_   (___)----------------------------------------------------(___)
 /  ..  \__|   | For information on all online features, send email |   |
/| `--' |___)  |          To:  ptkinfo@passporttoknowledge.com      |   |
||      |  |   |                                                    |   |
(___\/___) |   | The "Live From Antarctica Infobot" will quickly    |   |
           |___|           send you details by email.               |___|
           (___)----------------------------------------------------(___)

WEEKLY REPORT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Challenge Questions

NOAA Lt. Katy McNitt will be answering last week's challenge questions on Ozone during the television program this week.

???????? NEW Challenge Question NEW ????????

WHAT IS ANTARCTICA'S PRIMARY EXPORT?

Research Journals
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We hope you are enjoying reading the research journals. This week we have sent journals entries from:

        Jim Sweitzer, CARA researcher, University of Chicao
        Elizabeth Felton, student, Space Explorers, Chicago
        April Lloyd, 3rd grade teacher, Burnley-Moran Elementary in Virginia
        Katy McNitt, Lieutenant in the NOAA officer corp
        Terry Trimingham, radio operator with ASA

April is also posting pictures of her Antarctica Adventure online for those that can access www sites:

http://pen1.pen.k12.va.us:80/~alloyd/AAA.html

                        -------------------------
                ---====|    T E A C H E R S      |=====---
                       --------------------------

NEW THIS WEEK:

*Internet Resources* Help Files

Many teachers involved in the Live From Antarctica project are new to the Internet or are just becoming familar with the vast resources available. As a service to educators and students one of our team members, Jan Wee, has organized some "Internet Help Files" including, the following three:

  1. Favorite Internet Resources--a list of Jan's recommendations for background information about the Internet, clear explanations of Internet tools (telnet, email, file transfer, search tools, gopher, world wide web, etc.), and excellent guides and journals written for K-12 educators. This file has already been sent to participants in "Discuss-LFA" and shortly will be found online on the Live from Antarctica Gopher under "Resources to Help You Use Internet"
  2. Internet Resources: Weather -- this file identifies some of the most popular weather resources on the Internet, including weather forecasts, real-time images, storm data, and special weather questions and answers. Internet addresses are included with a description of each resource. This file will be sent to teachers on Discuss-LFA this week and placed on the Live From Antarctica gopher in the directory called "Online Links and Pointers to Related Internet Information".
  3. Internet Resources: Ozone, Global Warming, Environment, and Earth and Space Science -- this file identifies eighteen key resources related to the content of Program 4, airing this week. This file also identifies some of the most popular K-12 gophers containing pointers to projects and curriculum related resources. This file will be sent to teachers on Discuss-LFA this week and placed on the Live From Antarctica in the directory called "Online Links and Pointers to Related Internet Information".
  4. Bruce Rigby of TERC is putting the finishing touches on a document that includes two activities dealing with health risk from UV and linking to Antarctica and ozone thinning. It will be an additional classroom resource and will shortly be available on the Live From Antarctica gopher.

We hope that these files will help you find ways to integrate the Live from Antarctica broadcast with Internet resources.

TEACHER FEEDBACK AND EVALUTION

Here are a two of the many comments we received on program three:

From Deanna Turco and Donna O'Callaghan from Alpharetta, Georgia:

   "The program was fantastic! One and two were good, but this was
   outstanding.  We especially enjoyed the many shots of the entire
   South Pole complex and its sweeping panorama on a beautiful calm
   summer day-perfect.  Elizabeth Felton was delightful, and we got
   chills, not from the weather, as we watched her reposition the
   geographic South Pole.  We enjoyed the human touch as we watched
   April Lloyd respond to questions from her third grade students.
   The projects and experiments being done by the students in Hawaii
   motivated us to plan to do more hands-on activities with our students.
   The questions asked by the students in Chicago provided more
   interesting information about Antarctica."

And from Macomb ISD and Jim Wenzloff:

   Last evening the Macomb ISD hosted two classes Armada Elementary,
   Frank Miracola,teacher, and Cherokee Elementary,Mary Lou David,
   teacher at our site for the viewing of Program 3.  We had over
   50 students and 20 or more parents and teachers present. The kids
   were great and enjoyed the program. We also had an inflatable
   planetarium on site so the kids spent some time before and after
   the program exploring the skies. Mrs. David also helped the
   students construct "sky wheels" they can use at home to view
   the stars. Mr. Miracola lead a discussion after the broadcast
   and it was evident that the kids got a lot from the program.
   Today, a picture of some of the kids watching the program made
   the front page of our county newspaper. It was a great experience
   for the kids.  Thanks to everyone who helped provide this great
   experience for kids.

We are eager to her your comments. Both positive comments like these and suggestions for ways of making future programs as useful as possible. Feedback is ESSENTIAL!! This is a collaborative project and we need and want your help!

You can order a printed copy of the Teacher's Guide from Passport to Knowledge.
                  

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      /                                                                   \
      |            Final~~ LIVE FROM ANTARCTICA ~~ Program                |
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      |          F R O M    P O L E    T O     P L A N E T                |
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      |                      J A N .  1 9 TH                              |
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      |         NASA-TV REBROADCAST DATES: JAN. 23, 24, 25, 26            |
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Live from Antarctica Team                                    End of File