October 6th, 2009
From Green Right Now Reports
Digital media resources from Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, including on-demand video, lessons plans, student activities, and historical archives, are now available through the PBS Teachers web portal.
The site includes preK-12 educational services and a searchable library of more than 9,000 local and national standards-based instructional resources.
PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 will host a webinar on Oct. 7 to demonstrate ways to integrate the National Parks educational media and other free technologies into classroom instruction. Through the National Parks resources, educators can create an engaging tour of the nation’s historic and natural treasures while teaching students core curriculum lessons and 21st century skills.
During the PBS Teachers LIVE! webinar, “Teaching About Place With Ken Burns’ National Parks: America’s Best Idea” on Oct. 7 at 8 p.m. ET, educational experts will discuss digital storytelling, including geographic and historical projects, and model classroom activities. Educators will learn how to use National Parks and ArcGIS, a free, downloadable, 2D/3D geo-exploration and presentation tool, in teaching about national parks and curricular topics.
The webinar is sponsored by ABC-CLIO, award-winning publisher of reference titles in the field of history and social studies. In partnership with PBS Teachers, ABC-CLIO offers The Making of National Parks, a free collection of resources, including park profiles, biographies, maps, and images, to spark student interest in the creation of national parks, preservation and the dilemmas that come with it.
Filmed over 10 years, National Parks is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and stunning cinematography, the film traces the birth of the national park idea and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years through the stories of the people who helped create and save them.
The National Parks educational resources are designed for middle and high school grade levels and cover art, language arts, science, and several social studies disciplines, such as history, geography, economics, and civics. Among the unique resources to help educators infuse technology into instruction are the place-based digital storytelling modules. Several video screencasts along with printable quick-start guides provide educators with step-by-step instructions on using the latest technologies to create digital storytelling projects, addressing basic to advanced level technology skills. The modules illustrate the processes of geotagging, video editing and special effects, uploading stories to the National Parks site to a part of a public collection, and more.
