Underwater Webcast Links students with Waterways

Press Release from Texas Parks and Wildlife, May 3, 2000

HOUSTON - More than 10,000 schoolchildren across Texas and other states will see live streaming video of a marine scientist underwater in the Gulf of Mexico on May 3, as the educational Internet webcast Rivers To The Ocean from Texas Parks and Wildlife and a host of partners reveals the ecological connections between rainfall, rivers, estuaries, bays and the open ocean.

Through a moderator based on a BP Amoco and gas production platform about 200 miles east of Galveston and 90 miles offshore, students will be able to ask real-time questions of Dr. Quenton Dokken, associate director of the Center for Coastal Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation. Dokken will don SCUBA gear and go 60 feet below to show students the amazing sealife that abounds around the legs of an offshore platform.

During the dive, biologists and other experts, along with students from El Paso, Colorado City, Austin, Van Vleck, Palacios and Laredo will be gathered in the Houston TV studios of KUHT (PBS). This will be the nerve center for the webcast, a cyber-era combination of live video production, Internet chat and on-screen graphics and photos. The students helping to lead the webcast, along with thousands of others, have been getting outdoors to take water samples, studying watersheds, and creating web pages to share what they've learned as part of the Cyberways and Waterways™ program conceived by 4empowerment.com. The program is funded through a grant awarded to the Science Academy of Austin and the Austin Independent School District by the Texas Education Agency.

"When a student in Laredo can ask an underwater scientist "What is that?" and have the scientist answer from 60 feet down, almost a hundred miles out in the ocean, that's pretty cool," said Nancy Herron, TPW education coordinator. "Looking at students' river projects and then the Gulf really brings home the connection between water in the backyard, flowing down the rivers and into the Gulf of Mexico. We're all basically living on one big drop of water around the globe."

Herron has produced 12 webcasts for Texas Parks and Wildlife since 1998, along the way finding support from NASA, the Texas Water Foundation and various other public and private groups interested in the innovative use of the web as a learning tool.

"We reached a crossroads in TPW Education where we saw we were either going to be roadkill on the information superhighway or get on the highway," Herron said, explaining the motivation for a state agency whose constituents have traditionally been more interested in the great outdoors than cyberspace. "The upshot is we're now leading the nation in terms of state agency use of webcasts for outreach and education."

Still, Herron believes the cyberworld is no substitute for the real world.

"We will never replace real life experience with the web. We want to use the web as inspiration to experience the outdoors, to go outside, observe, have fun. To my knowledge, we're not aware of anyone who's gone live over the web from underwater. People have gone live via television, but not via the web."

TPW webcasts are bridging the "Digital Divide" that is said to separate less wealthy rural and inner city minority schools from wealthier suburban schools with better access to learning technology such as the Internet. Based on teacher registration data, about 60 percent of the participants in the last TPW webcast were ethnic minorities such as African-American or Hispanic, and many are from far-flung rural schools in small towns like Quitaque. Some of these, such as Valley School near Quitaque, have received technology education grants to purchase faster T1 Internet connections, so that they get better web video reception than big urban schools on slower connections. In this way, the Internet is in some cases leveling the playing field for rural schools.

The Rivers To The Ocean webcast will start at 8:30 a.m. central time on May 3. There will be a brief introduction featuring Steve Amos of 4empowerment.com and Kim Ianelli of the Texas Water Foundation. The first live dive from the Gulf will take place at 8:45 a.m., with a second dive at 10:45 a.m. The webcast will include sessions with TPW experts and others on river riffles and fish, student volunteers who help track the health of freshwater mussels, garbology (the study of human trash and recycling), the importance of biodiversity, kids on the Colorado River, a Wet in the City activity, the vital role of coastal estuaries (where rivers meet bays), artifical reefs, the famed Flower Gardens coral reefs in the Gulf and more. The webcast will conclude at 11:30 a.m.

Teachers may register to take part in the webcast and receive educational materials by mail to enrich the learning experience. A web link to the online registration page for TPW Electronic Field Trips is on the Texas Parks and Wildlife home page at www.tpwd.state.tx.us All of the past webcasts are also archived here, covering diverse topics such as Spaceship Earth: The Water Planet, Wild In the City, Lone Star Dinosaurs, Mysteries of the Lower Pecos, Travel the Texas Time Machine, Treasures of the Gulf Coast and more.

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