Producing New Geo-media to Increase Outreach and Diversity

A new television series, Doug's Geology Journal, will be produced and premiered on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network under this project. The series is designed to make geological concepts compelling to a large and diverse television audience. For viewers who want to delve deeper into geology, and for teachers wishing to use the series' content as a teaching aid in the classroom, a series website will be launched with classroom lessons, and additional related video content that instructs students in making their own science video with minimal equipment.

Also under this project, a separate one-hour television documentary, Planet of the Plates, about geology's leading theory, plate tectonics, will be produced. This project aims to bring to the attention of the public exciting geologic advancements and the work of a community of geoscientists making new discoveries in challenging settings around the world.

This is crucial at a time when knowledge of geological concepts is becoming increasingly important in addressing growing natural resource shortages, climate change, and geologic hazards such as earthquakes, flooding, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. This project addresses the desire of the PBS audience for more geoscience-oriented programming, while highlighting the vital work of a highly diverse groups of scientists to more fully understand and appreciate the Earth's geological attributes.

This proposal will enable the production and distribution of the first set of episodes of a new geoscience television series for PBS and international broadcast, as well as distribution via streaming and DVD. A companion website of educational resources that expand the impact of the series to the classroom will be launched, including a training video that instructs users in the basics of making their own video about their own science explorations.

A new television series, Doug's Geology Journal (working title) will be produced and premiered on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network under this project. The producers of both the series and the one-hour documentary are Doug Prose and Diane LaMacchia of Earth Images Foundation, filmmakers who have produced eighteen successful documentaries for PBS broadcast, filmed on location on all seven continents.

The primary goals of this project are to produce outreach products that raise public awareness and interest in geoscience concepts, research and careers, as well as to provide effective educational resources to enhance the teaching of geology by K-12 teachers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.