In July 2007, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded funding to a proposal developed by ACRF Education and Outreach and WGBH Boston—public television’s pre-eminent production house. The winning project, titled “Engaging Alaska Natives with the Geosciences,” will add digital media and teacher professional development resources related to the Arctic geoscience to the WGBH Teachers’ Domain website and use them to engage Native Alaskans in the geosciences.

Teachers’ Domain is a mission-driven service designed to harness the broadcast, interactive, and educational programming resources of public television and its institutional partners to support standards-based teaching and learning in grades K-12. Currently focused on science, these digital library collections and online courses feature video segments from series’ such as NOVA, Frontline, and The American Experience, as well as interviews, audio clips, interactive web-based activities, photographs, animations, graphics, and primary source document texts.

With funding from NSF, principle investigators will develop a collection of background essays, lesson plans, and digital media that focus on Arctic geoscience. A total of 40 new resources, many of them focused on climate change and its impacts on Native way of life in the Arctic, will be added to Teachers’ Domain. The project directly addresses the goals of broadening participation in the geosciences and increasing visibility of the geosciences among underrepresented communities, in this case Native Alaskans. To this end, a diverse range of academics, teachers, scientists, and Native organization representatives have been recruited to serve on the project’s Advisory Board.

Andrea Maestas, ACRF Education and Outreach Coordinator, will serve on the project’s management team. ARM will offer ongoing access to researchers and scientists engaged in atmospheric sciences, especially those involved with the program’s North Slope of Alaska research site. In collaboration with local Native service providers, ACRF Education and Outreach will also assist project partners in developing a series of live training and support sessions.

Many of the multimedia resources collected by ACRF Education and Outreach for the development of its interactive kiosk series called “Climate Change: Science and Traditional Knowledge” will be used throughout the project. The kiosk series has a strong focus on traditional knowledge, and the interviews with elders from the Barrow community will be key to representing Native perspectives on climate change. ACRF Education and Outreach will also contribute lesson plans and other resources previously developed for North Slope schools.

Collaborating with WGBH Boston and the various partners involved in this project is a significant step toward expanding the capacity of ACRF Education and Outreach. While the project will inherently focus on Native Alaskan students, the Teachers’ Domain is used by science educators in 144 countries and all 50 states. The resources developed though this project will serve to promote the relevance of the geosciences worldwide.