The WGBH Educational Foundation is supporting K-12 teachers and students in learning about the focus, findings and implications of current research efforts in polar regions by developing and pilot testing the prototype of a digital library collection of relevant media-based resources. The project integrates with proposed research, education and outreach activities associated with the International Polar Year 2007-08 (IPY), leveraging the inherent appeal of the Arctic and Antarctic regions to teach about related science issues and their relevance to the Earth system. This initiative builds upon and expands the power, scope and established user base of WGBH's Teacher's' Domain (www.teachersdomain.org), a featured portal in NSF's National Science Digital Library (NSDL). This award-winning online service currently presents nearly 1,000 annotated rich-media resources selected and produced specifically for K-12 educators, organized by commonly taught curriculum topics in the Life, Physical and Earth/Space Sciences. The new "Polar Sciences" collection prototype will include video segments, interactive activities and other rich-media drawn from the archives of WGBH, PBS and a wide range of organizations, agencies, universities and other media outlets involved in polar studies, all fully contextualized in the Teachers' Domain model (e.g., with background essays, standards correlations, lesson plans, etc.). Structured to serve as a platform for additional media-based educational resources developed during and after the course of the IPY term, this prototype collection will also include a new "guided exploration" component that featuring multi-media resources produced as part of field studies conducted through the Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating (TREC) program at the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS).
