Live from the Rainforest is an integrated multimedia project, which uses

• Online resources
• Print materials, suggesting hands-on activities
• Live interactive video and tape

Each medium is used to contribute what it does best. Participants in previous Passport to Knowledge Modules report their students benefited most when all three components were used in complementary ways. However, flexibility in local implementation strategies and a wide range of choices are also hallmarks of every PTK Module.

Online

The Internet breaks down the walls of the classroom and brings the world and world-class researchers to any school, any place, any time.

Field Journals and Biographies provide behind-the-scenes and “beyond the screen” anecdotes which personalize the scientific process in ways no textbook or broadcast TV program can

Online opportunities facilitate direct, individual interactions with leading scientists and their support teams through Researcher Q&A.

Journals, expedition photos, and project Updates will be available over the Internet in close to real time: LFRF can be experienced both as an exciting expedition or “electronic field trip.”

Teachers share curriculum ideas and implementation challenges with other teachers via online mail lists, such as DISCUSS-LFRF. Through such mail lists Passport to Knowledge provides opportunities for meaningful participation for those with only limited access to simple e-mail as well as those with full access to the World Wide Web.

Print

This Guide and associated print materials provide all an educator needs to implement this unique learning experience successfully in a science class or interdisciplinary team teaching environment. The Guide provides a teacher-friendly, easy-to-use introduction to the entire Module, and is co-packaged with copy masters of Student Worksheets and other Blackline Masters to support the Activities and an original full-color LFRF poster.

Hands-on Activities simulate the most significant aspects of the research seen on-camera or online, and illuminate key science concepts

Many Activities suggest adaptations for elementary and high school students in addition to PTK’s initial target of middle school classes

Several Activities also suggest ways to connect across the disciplines, beyond science, as indicated by the icons to be found throughout this Guide: math, social studies, lang. arts, and art computers.

Each Activity retains the pedagogically-sound Engage, Explore, Explain, Expand/Adapt/Connect format of previous Passport to Knowledge Guides.

Opening and Closing Activities help teachers create anticipatory set, and reinforce and assess student learning outcomes at the conclusion of the experience

A Multimedia Teacher’s Kit includes this Guide and its co-packaged materials and provides more extensive materials: a sixty-minute Teacher Resource Video with background information on the Amazon rainforest; scenes of PTK Teacher Advocates modeling three key Activities; sample online materials; additional curriculum support and instructional materials; a slide set and a full-color map.

Television provides the sights and sounds of people, places and processes which wraps a living “context” around the simple words of “text” alone.

Personal portraits of the researchers and their lives humanize the hard work of doing science and demystify high-tech careers

Cutting-edge telecommunications and live events connect students to remote or otherwise inaccessible locations

Graphics and dynamic visuals simplify complex concepts. Real-time, two-way exchanges between students and researchers symbolize the interactive possibilities universally available via the Internet

Teachers rate the live component of the Live From... videos highly, although most teachers use them on tape: there’s no contradiction. The excitement of the original live interactions is maintained while teachers gain flexibility by using the video on tapes.

Hands-On

Activity 1.5, “A Day in the Life”, invites students to research the behavior, physical characteristics and ecological niche inhabited by a particular rainforest organism.

Online

Online in the TEAMS section, read Dr. Claude Gascon’s Field Journals and Biography. Now field director for the BDFF project, Claude explains how his lifelong interest in frogs began as just such an exercise, during a college biology course.

Video

In Program 1, Mission to Planet Earth, Dr. Gascon takes us on an on-camera tour through virgin rainforest, including a visit to his “frogs.”

The powerful multiple media combination of TV, hands-on Activities and online resources and experiences should make your students truly feel as if they were “co- investigators” with scientists engaged in significant research in the real world. And if you have questions about how best to implement the Activity, or have stories to share about your students’ successes or failures, you can post messages to discuss-lfrf and connect with fellow teachers geographically dispersed across the nation, and even across the planet.