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About Exploration Nation – Super Engaging Kid-Hosted Video – made for the classroom

Exploration Nation features real kids engaged in real science adventures. Instead of recycling old television shows, we start with standards and produce high quality docu-adventures specifically for use in educational settings. If your students watch MythBusters, Dirty Jobs and Bill Nye, they will love Exploration Nation. Nobody can reach and inspire kids like other kids. Presented in the media language today’s students understand – the popular documentary style of popular television programing; concepts and topics are presented through the voice and eyes of peers. Every video is full of real excitement, humor and amazing adventures that connect kids to real science in the real world.

Standards Aligned Lesson Plans – fits perfectly into curriculum

Each unit of Exploration Nation includes four lessons with videos and complete teacher’s guide, student guide and assessments. Designed to support existing curriculum and developed using the 5E model, this unique supplemental program is perfectly suited to classroom use. Our pedagogy is to use the short video segment at the beginning of the lesson to heighten interest and puts students in an active learning mode. Just when the excitement is at its peak, a fun, activity based lesson program builds on the concepts in the video segment.

Minimal Prep Time Required – saves time

Let’s face it. Teachers are under more time pressure than ever. With ever expanding class schedules, busy teachers simply don’t have enough time to prepare. We have designed Exploration Nation for teachers that have limited prep time. Created as a “plug and play” adjunct to existing curricula, activities are designed using commonly found, inexpensive materials. Printable student guides and assessments are ready for reproduction. Each lesson includes additional resources for extending lesson plans.

Easy to Teach – no scientific knowledge required

We created Exploration Nation in an easy to follow, step by step format that is easy to teach. From teachers just starting out to experienced veterans, Enzoology simply makes teaching science easy and fun. Starting with a list of everything needed to implement the lesson, an easy to use DVD and complete standards alignment, Exploration Nation is simple and fun. As an added bonus, every lesson comes with an on-line companion video showing a live application of the lesson in a real classroom, plus extensive additional resources.

About Life Sciences Volume One: Grades 3-5

Includes four complete lessons: Diversity, Habitats, Adaptation and Defense Mechanisms

• Four complete, 50 minute lesson plans
• Four exciting video segments on DVD
• Fun activity guide including worksheets and activities for students
• Comprehensive teacher’s guides

Each video is accompanied by complete, standards aligned lessons including teacher’s guide and student field guide delivered on DVD ROM.

TEKs Objectives (Also aligned with NSEA and STAAR)

Grade 3

(3.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking and answering questions, making inferences, and selecting and using equipment or technology needed, to solve a specific problem in the natural world.
(3.2B) collect data by observing and measuring using the metric system and recognize differences between observed and measured data.
(3.2C) construct maps, graphic organizers, simple tables, charts, and bar graphs using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate measured data.
(3.2D) analyze and interpret patterns in data to construct reasonable explanations based on evidence from investigations.
(3.2F) communicate valid conclusions supported by data in writing, by drawing pictures, and through verbal discussion.
(3.9A) observe and describe the physical characteristics of environments and how they support populations and communities within an ecosystem.

Grade 4
(4.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking well-defined questions, making inferences, and selecting and using equipment or technology to answer his/her questions.
(4.2B) collect and record data by observing and measuring, using the metric system, and using descriptive words and numerals such as labeled drawings, writing, and concept maps.
(4.2C) construct simple tables, charts, bar graphs, and maps using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate data.
(4.2D) analyze data and interpret patterns to construct reasonable explanations from data that can be observed and measured.
(4.2F) communicate valid, oral, and written results supported by data.

Grade 5
(5.2A) describe, plan, and implement simple experimental investigations testing one variable.
(5.2B) ask well-defined questions, formulate testable hypotheses, and select and use appropriate equipment and technology.
(5.2C) collect information by detailed observations and accurate measuring.
(5.2D) analyze and interpret information to construct reasonable explanations from direct (observable) and indirect (inferred) evidence.
(5.2F) communicate valid conclusions in both written and verbal forms.
(5.2G) construct appropriate simple graphs, tables, maps, and charts using technology, including computers, to organize, examine, and evaluate information.
(5.9A) observe the way organisms live and survive in their ecosystem by interacting with the living and non-living elements.
(5.9C) predict the effects of changes in ecosystems caused by living organisms, including humans, such as the overpopulation of grazers or the building of highways.

Who knows how long man has looked at soaring birds and felt jealous. Leonardo DaVinci was obsessed with designing flying machines in the 1400‘s even though none of his designs ever got off the ground. It took another 500 years to invent the hang glider.

Even the genius of Leonardo couldn’t understand the physics of flight. Then some guy named Sir George Cayley, a British engineer figured out that flight required some outside forces including lift, propulsion and control.

But Isaac Newton was the scientist who’s Laws of Motion really allowed man to fly like a bird. These laws describe the forces that make flight possible.

I had a chance to explore Newton’s laws by flying a real airplane. After a couple days of ground school, we took off in a Cessna 172 SkyHawk. I took off and landed several times and made some amazing turns in the air. We even created weightlessness by doing something called a parabolic arc! I about lost my lunch!

Here’s what I learned.

Newton’s first law says, “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” Ok, what the heck does that mean? It means that if an airplane is not moving it’s going to just sit there until some outside force acts on it. Or if the airplane is moving, it’s going to keep moving until an outside force acts on it.

If the airplane isn’t moving, the outside force is provided by the propeller and the motor. The kinetic force of moving air blasting back from the propeller makes the airplane go forward. It’s the same thing with the airplane in flight. If I’m flying straight, in order to turn, I have to move the controls so airflow is changed – providing a force to turn the airplane.

But you also need Newton’s third law to make it work. The third law of motion says: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That means that the blast of air (the force) moving back from the propeller makes the airplane go forward (the action).

The same thing happens to create lift. Lift is what overcomes gravity to keep the airplane in the sky. Air rushes over the wing which directs the air flow (the force) downward. This downward force makes the airplane go in the opposite direction – up!

It’s the same thing with making the airplane turn – by adjusting control surfaces (like the rudder) it changes how the air pushes on the plane. The air goes one way – the airplane the other.

There are a lot of forces that work on an airplane including drag, gravity, velocity and more. There are also other scientific rules that help (like Bernoulli’s Laws).

What is interesting to me is that scientists still can’t agree as to why exactly airplanes fly.  Even though there are about 45 million flights per year, we still can’t figure out exactly how it works!

But when it does work, we humans give those birds a run for their money. As Leonardo DaVinci said “For once yiou have tasted flight, you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skywards”. I totally get that. I can’t wait to fly again.

Watch out for the Blue Tongue of Vegetation Death!

In this segment, Enzo works with some of the nation’s leading zoos to go behind the scenes to learn all about how these unusual animals have adapted to their environments. From feeding African Penguins and Okapis to learning how the Capybara sleeps underwater, students will love this engaging adventure in science. The video above is a short preview. You can purchase the entire video and lesson plans including teachers guide in “Life Sciences Vol. 1″.

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, Enzo teaches students about three animals, the Okapi, the African Penguin and the Capybera focusing on their special adaptations. Students further explore adaptations by comparing animal adaptations, researching other animals, and creating an imaginary animal and describing its adaptations.

Objectives

Grade 4
(4.10E) Students explore how adaptations enable organisms to survive in their environment, such as comparing birds’ beaks and leaves on plants.

Grade 5
(5.12A) Students explain how organisms use their adaptations to modify their environment to insure survival such as beavers using their tails to build dams and animals burrowing during forest fires and how these changes may affect the environment.

Scientists call it the “visible spectrum” because the light we see is only a small part of a bigger spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Ranging from radio waves to gamma rays, what we perceive as “light” is a relatively narrow band of from about 390 to 750 nm. But for that to make any sense, we need to back up a bit!

Light is measured by frequency. The distance between the peaks of a wave is measured in nanometers. That’s one billionth of a meter!

So the distance between “A” and “B”  in Figure 1 below can be measured in nanometers. The top wave has a greater distance so it is a lower frequency. The bottom wave has a shorter distance so it has a higher frequency.

Figure 1: Frequency

Our eyes can only see electromagnetic waves that fall within about 390 nm to 750 nm. This energy is what we call “white light”. It is made of a mixture of many different frequencies of light

The Visible Light Spectrum

Bees and many other insects can see light in the ultraviolet range, which helps them find nectar in flowers. They see things our eyes can’t. Birds, too, can see into the ultraviolet range (300–400 nm), and some have markings on their bodies, which are only visible to other birds and any animals that can see ultraviolet.

You might recognize some of those colors – it’s the colors of the rainbow!

When there is a lot of water in the air the light from the sun is bent by the water droplets. This is called “refraction”. The water droplets actually slow the light down. But it doesn’t slow it down evenly – it slows one side of the spectrum more than the other. When this bent light passed through a second droplet, it “disperses” that means it is separated into different colors. The result is that white light from the sun is split into its different colors!

You can see this effect using a prism. A scientist named Isaac Newton was the first to observe that when a narrow beam of sunlight strikes the face of a glass prism at an angle, some of the light is reflected and some passed into and through the glass, emerging on the other side as a spectrum of colors. Newton divided the spectrum into seven named colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

You can really see how a prism bends light using a laser. Here I’m shining the laser into the prism and you can really see how it bends! Amazing!

A laser emits only a narrow band of light. This green laser I’m using only emits light in the frequency of XXX nm. Not only does it only emit a single frequency, it also lines up the light waves so the peaks and valleys match up. This is called “coherent” light. Normal white light is a chaotic mix of frequencies (colors) and the waves just crash into each other randomly. This is called “incoherent” light.

The human eye is an amazing machine. But if you think about it, we are only seeing a tiny fraction of what’s out there. Not only that, but everything we can see is really just reflected light. The air is full of invisible waves like radio waves, microwaves and magnetic waves. Scientists use all sorts of instruments to be able to “see” these invisible energy waves.

So, next time someone asks you if you have “seen the light” ask them, “which one?”.

The video above is a low quality version. Get the full high quality version for home use or classroom use on “Biodiversity Vol. 1″ DVD!

Look out when this little guy has a temper tantrum! When the coatimundi (or “coati”) gets hyper and angry, hide everything that weighs under 20 pounds. (Yes, even that dirty pair of underpants). And for the love of all that is holy,  put a diaper on him!

They have been known to fling poo and anything else they can get their claws on.

While I was on camera for our coatimundi episode, I was trying to see if he would go after a cricket or a strawberry… the cricket went up my sleeve before he could decide! Lucky for me, that rowdy, but sweet coati was very patient and didn’t have a hissy fit. He just dug in the dirt for his own invertebrate treat, while I wrestled with a cricket in my shirt. (He was a rescue coati raised by humans. Please do not play with wild animals!)

I met a Mountain coatimundi, but their are several different kinds of coatis. Brown-nosed or white-nosed coati, South American coati, and Cozumel Island coati. The Mountain coati has been recently split into two species, the Eastern mountain coati (from Venezuela), and the Western mountain coati (from Colombia and Equador). They also have silly nicknames, like hog nose coon, Snookum bear and Brazilian aardvark. Snookum bear? Seriously!?

The coati, is a member, of the raccoon family. These mammals are native to South America, Central America and have moved into the southwestern United States. They prefer more wooded regions, because they are great climbers. They have musk glands under their bodies so they can tell each other apart, you know, the jungle stinks enough already!

Coatis are mostly diurnal, which means they are active in the daytime. These omnivores are about the size of a large house cat and the males have large, sharp canine teeth. They have long claws for digging up invertebrates. Their snout is also long and has a great sense of smell to locate their tasty diet of lizards, rodents, fruit and bird eggs.

These guys can be pretty fierce, but they still have enemies. Natural predators include foxes, ocelots, jaguars, hawks, eagles and humans. White-faced capuchin monkeys also hunt their pups.

Even though these little creatures are related to raccoons, they have been around for millions of years. They walked alongside dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, and now they still walk alongside with us. They may have even eaten dinosaur eggs! They’ve been around in the past and they will hopefully, be around in the future.

In this lesson, Enzo teaches students about many different organisms. Students further explore how organisms can be classified and compared by playing a diversity game and completing a classification lab.

TEKS Objectives

Grade 3
(3.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking and answering questions, making inferences, and selecting and using equipment or technology needed, to solve a specific problem in the natural world.
(3.2C) construct maps, graphic organizers, simple tables, charts, and bar graphs using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate measured data.
(3.2F) communicate valid conclusions supported by data in writing, by drawing pictures, and through verbal discussion.
(3.3C) represent the natural world using models such as volcanoes or Sun, Earth, and Moon system and identify their limitations, including size, properties, and materials.

Grade 4
(4.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking well-defined questions, making inferences, and selecting and using appropriate equipment or technology to answer his/her questions.
(4.2C) construct simple tables, charts, bar graphs, and maps using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate data.
(4.2D) communicate valid, oral, and written results supported by data.
(4.3C) represent the natural world using models such as rivers, stream tables, or fossils and identify their limitations, including accuracy and size.

Grade 5
(5.2A) describe, plan, and implement simple experimental investigations testing one variable.
(5.2F) communicate valid conclusions in both written and verbal forms.
(5.2G) construct appropriate simple graphs, tables, maps, and charts using technology, including computers, to organize, examine, and evaluate information.
(5.3C) draw or develop a model that represents how something works or looks that cannot be seen such as how a soda dispensing machine works.

Enzo tracks the endangered Giant Garter Snake with his friends at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey and Wildlands, Inc. In this lesson, Enzo learns how environmental factors have reduced the Giant Garter Snake’s habitat to a small region in Central California and what humans are doing to help. The video above is a short preview. You can purchase the entire video and lesson plans including teachers guide in “Life Sciences Vol. 1″.

Lesson Summary
In this lesson, Enzo teaches students about giant garter snakes and their habitat. Students further explore habitats by completing a word search puzzle, completing a lab to identify mercury in snake tissue, and calculating levels of mercury as it travels up the food chain.

Objectives

Grade 3
(3.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking and answering questions, making inferences, and selecting and using equipment or technology needed, to solve a specific problem in the natural world.
(3.2B) collect data by observing and measuring using the metric system and recognize differences between observed and measured data.
(3.2C) construct maps, graphic organizers, simple tables, charts, and bar graphs using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate measured data.
(3.2D) analyze and interpret patterns in data to construct reasonable explanations based on evidence from investigations.
(3.2F) communicate valid conclusions supported by data in writing, by drawing pictures, and through verbal discussion.
(3.9A) observe and describe the physical characteristics of environments and how they support populations and communities within an ecosystem.

Grade 4
(4.2A) plan and implement descriptive investigations, including asking well-defined questions, making inferences, and selecting and using equipment or technology to answer his/her questions.
(4.2B) collect and record data by observing and measuring, using the metric system, and using descriptive words and numerals such as labeled drawings, writing, and concept maps.
(4.2C) construct simple tables, charts, bar graphs, and maps using tools and current technology to organize, examine, and evaluate data.
(4.2D) analyze data and interpret patterns to construct reasonable explanations from data that can be observed and measured.
(4.2F) communicate valid, oral, and written results supported by data.

Grade 5
(5.2A) describe, plan, and implement simple experimental investigations testing one variable.
(5.2B) ask well-defined questions, formulate testable hypotheses, and select and use appropriate equipment and technology.
(5.2C) collect information by detailed observations and accurate measuring.
(5.2D) analyze and interpret information to construct reasonable explanations from direct (observable) and indirect (inferred) evidence.
(5.2F) communicate valid conclusions in both written and verbal forms.
(5.2G) construct appropriate simple graphs, tables, maps, and charts using technology, including computers, to organize, examine, and evaluate information.
(5.9A) observe the way organisms live and survive in their ecosystem by interacting with the living and non-living elements.
(5.9C) predict the effects of changes in ecosystems caused by living organisms, including humans, such as the overpopulation of grazers or the building of highways.

Enzo works with Texas Parks and Wildlife and The Trinity River Authority to collect striped bass for spawning at Texas fish hatcheries. In this video field trip, we learn about how the environment and weather affects wildlife, how scientists collect and analyze data, the life cycle of the striped bass and much more! The video above is a low quality version. Get the full, high quality version on “Biodiversity Vol. 1″ DVD.

Want to engage your students and get them excited about science?
Exploration Nation™ is a supplemental multimedia STEM educational program that features exciting videos and complete lesson plans aligned to state and national testing standards. This unique program, designed for grades 3-6, is designed to help teachers and home school parents be more effective in the classroom while saving time and making STEM easier to teach. It fits perfectly with existing standards.

About the Program

• Includes comprehensive Teacher’s Guide
• Features fun activities and lessons
• Includes DVD
• Aligned to Texas and National testing standards
• 5E development model
• Digital curriculum featuring video and activities
• Unique peer to peer model
• Proven in classrooms

Unlike Discovery and National Geographic, Exploration Nation is purpose built for the classroom. Your students have never seen adventures like this before. Exploration Nation is the only program featuring kids teaching kids!

Available Now: Life Sciences Volume 1

Diversity
Enzo gives a fun overview of some of his favorite animals, what makes them unique and how they got that way. Full of cool facts, amazing and exotic animals and more.

Habitats
Enzo tracks the endangered Giant Garter Snake and shows how large scale, man made habitats are built. Students will follow Enzo as he works with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to locate giant garter snakes outfitted with transmitters. Students will also learn how man is helping this endangered species by building special natural habitats.

Adaptation
Featuring exotic wildlife, this lesson highlights how a variety of creatures have developed specific adaptations that help them survive in their environments. With examples ranging from how penguins lost their ability to fly to how the Okapi uses its prehensile tongue to feed to the unbelievable abilities of the world’s largest rodent, this lesson is chock full of amazing adaptations.

Defense Mechanisms
This exciting lesson features unique adaptations that animals use to defend themselves from predators. From the spines on African hedgehogs and the color mimicry of milk snakes to giant cockroaches using sounds and the largest scorpion species, Enzo gets you up close and personal with some of the world’s most defensive creatures.

Here’s what you get:

• Four complete, 50 minute lesson plans
• Four exciting video segments on DVD
• Fun activity guide for students
• Comprehensive teacher’s guide

The program is specially designed for elementary students in 3-5th grades. Students watch a short video segment, then complete exercises and lessons suggested by the study guide. Special emphasis is put on promoting outdoor, experiential activities that include parents outside the classroom setting.