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April Prime Time for Teachers
PBS TeacherSource
Every day you’ll find online resources to extend PBS’s children’s, prime time and weekend programming at http://www.pbs.org/teachersource. PBS TeacherSource’s vast array of resources include:
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education’s best resources by curricular subject, topic and grade level and standard;
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in-depth professional development services like PBS Mathline and Scienceline;
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details on PBS station outreach activities in your community;
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tips on how to effectively teach with technology;
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PBS television programs with extended taping rights for educators;
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access to convenient online shopping for your favorite PBS videos;
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best practices information from other teachers “in the trenches;“
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convenient tools for teaching, such as recommended books and Web sites;
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interdisciplinary teaching suggestions;
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free weekly electronic newsletter highlighting new TV and online programming from PBS;
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and much more!
Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers
Airdates: Tuesdays, April 1 & 8, 9 pm to 10 pm each night
Educator Rights: 1 Year
Online: http://www.pbs.org/saf
Calls of the Wild (April 1)
Eavesdrop on creatures as diverse as elephants and spiders, warblers and bees, crickets and bats. What are they saying — and why?
You Can Make It on Your Own (April 8)
As digital technology gets smaller and less expensive, it is empowering people in unprecedented ways — from villagers in rural India who use computers to monitor the quality of their food and water to children who use PCs to write and play music.
American Experience
Daughter From Danang (April 7)
In 1975, with the end of the war imminent, Mai Thi Kim sent her seven-year-old daughter from Vietnam to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as “Operation Babylift.“ The girl was adopted by a single woman, renamed Heidi and brought up in Tennessee, where she concealed her Asian past and became “101 percent American.“ Twenty-two years later, Heidi tracked down her birth mother and visited Danang. Their reunion became fraught with tension and misunderstanding as the cultural gulf between Heidi and her Vietnamese family grew larger and larger.
Seabiscuit (April 21)
Despite his boxy build, stumpy legs, scraggly tail and ungainly gait, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. His fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith, and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory turned Seabiscuit into a national hero.
This series examines the threats posed by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and brings viewers face-to-face with the people racing to use them. The series also reports on the actions that individual citizens are taking to reduce the chances that these weapons will be used in any of the conflicts around the globe.
Frontline
Blair’s War (April 3)
For the past few months, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been fighting the biggest political battle of his career. Caught in the center of a high-stakes political storm, he is trying to bridge the gap between the United States and its European allies over the impending war on Iraq. This documentary examines the roots of the discord within the Western Alliance, the perilous role Blair is playing, and the stakes for him and the West should this old alliance fall apart. (Repeats April 5, 11 pm)
Kim’s Nuclear Gamble (April 10)
The world is running out of time to strike a peace-preserving deal with North Korea’s strange and reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il. For ten years, threats, deceptions and diplomatic ploys have shaped U.S. relations with the Hermit Kingdom. What happens next depends on the outcome of a raging debate within the Bush Administration over how best to handle Kim. (Repeats April 12, 11 pm)
Cyber War (April 24)
A new form of warfare has broken out and the battleground is cyberspace. With weapons like embedded malicious code, probes and pings, there are surgical strikes, reverse neutron bombs and the potential for massive assaults aimed directly at America’s infrastructure — the power grid, the water supply, the complex air traffic control system and the nation’s railroads. This program investigates just how real the threat of war in cyberspace is and reveals what the White House knows that the rest of us don’t. (Repeats April 26 at 11 pm)
NOVA
Airdate: Tuesdays at 8 pm, April 1, 8, 15 & 22
Educator Rights: 1 Year
Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova
Deep Sea Invasion (April 1)
French biologist Alexandre Meinesz was diving in the Mediterranean when he spotted a strange blanket of bright green plants on the seabed. Meinesz was alarmed to find that the toxic algae were decimating marine life in the Mediterranean but his findings were ignored for years by the scientific establishment. Nicknamed the “killer algae,“ these organisms have since taken over thousands of acres of seabed, and no one knows how to stop them. Recently they appeared for the first time off the coast of California, and now U.S. officials are struggling to contain their spread up the coast of California.
Runaway Universe (April 8)
NOVA presents the first attempt on television to explore the riddle of quintessence — a mysterious repulsive force that some scientists believe counteracts gravity. The program follows the efforts of two rival teams of astronomers as they search for exploding stars, map out gigantic cosmic patterns of galaxies and grapple with the ultimate questions: what is the size and shape of the universe, and how will it end?
Search for the Lost Cave People (April 15)
NOVA follows an international team of archaeologists and spelunkers into the Rio la Venta Gorge deep in the Chiapas jungle of Central America. In a rugged canyon they find caves filled with the startling remains of a people called the Zoque who lived hundreds of years before the Maya. The extreme inaccessibility and relative dryness of the caves has preserved rare artifacts, including bones, clothes, rope and jewelry. Moving downstream from the caves the team finds a legendary city hidden in a tangle of jungle vines. Evidence of the Zoque’s sophisticated writing system and their practice of ritualistic cannibalism and child sacrifice is shedding new light on a little known civilization.
Secret of Photo 51 (April 22)
April 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of one of science’s great milestones: the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. This “cracking“ of life’s essential molecular “cookbook“ was credited to three British scientists, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. But their breakthrough would have been impossible without the work of a brilliant molecular biologist and crystallographer named Rosalind Franklin. In 1962, when the three men were awarded a Nobel Prize for their discovery, Franklin’s name wasn’t even mentioned. Tragically, she had died of cancer, four years earlier at age 37. The cancer was probably the result of radiation exposure she suffered while taking the x-ray photographs of the DNA that were directly responsible for decoding its structure. NOVA investigates the life of Rosalind Franklin and her unsung contribution to one of science’s greatest discoveries. Through eyewitness accounts and the replication and re-enactments of numerous experiments, viewers will see the tragic story of a brilliant young woman and the male-dominated race to find the scientific secret of life.
Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution
Airdate: Wednesday, April 9, 9 pm to 11 pm
Educator Rights: 1 Year
Online: http://www.pbs.org/empires/peterandpaul/
This program brings to life events that changed the world forever. Combining the words of Paul and other ancient writers with contemporary scholars, modern archaeology, and dramatic reenactments filmed in Europe and the Middle East, the special explores how two men weathered crippling disagreements and political persecution to lead one of history’s most astonishing religious movements.
Race: The Power of an Illusion
Airdate: Sundays at 2 pm, April 27, May 4 & May 11
Educator Rights: 1 Year
Online: http://www.pbs.org/race/
The first television series to scrutinize the very idea of race through the distinct lenses of science, history and social institutions, the three one-hour programs challenge some of people’s most deeply held beliefs. The series examines several discoveries that illustrate why humans cannot be subdivided into races, and reveals that there are no characteristics, no traits — not even one gene — that distinguish all members of one “race” from all members of another.
Yalta: Peace, Power and Betrayal
Airdate: Monday, April 21 at 10 pm
Educator Rights: 1 Year
On Feb. 4, 1945, three of the most powerful leaders in the world — Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin — met at the seaside Crimean resort town of Yalta to craft a peacetime settlement that would forever alter the European landscape.
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