Overview

Classroom Encounters, LLC
is a teacher-directed media-making arts organization committed to enabling teachers to better teach their students the thinking, communication, and problem solving skills they need as 21st century global citizens. Our goal is to give teachers fingertip access to a media library of world-class, content-rich science that simultaneously conveys the passion, curiosity, and thinking skills of scientists as they apply those concepts to the real world. They can also use video to connect students to current discoveries and authentic data, and teach standards-driven curriculum in a way that engages and motivates students. The video clips expand the repertoire of teachers, giving them new ways to introduce concepts, grab attention, or paint the big picture. Teachers also can use video segments during a lesson, hands-on activity or lab to pack a punch, emphasize key points, synthesize, or wrap up.

Classroom Encounters ™
with Global Change Scientists
is a multi-part series on DVD that provides an accessible cutting edge library of science media for citizens, teachers, and students covering some of the most compelling issues of the day. The series is a new and completely original classroom and community-friendly learning resource for all who care about the unprecedented changes on the planet today and are committed to raising the scientific and environmental literacy of Americans. Featuring down to earth, fascinating, pioneering planetary scientists who are pushing the limits of our understanding, the DVDs model scientists interacting with intellectually and emotionally engaged ninth graders. Using multiple cameras, satellite images, charts, maps, photos from the field, and interwoven with graphs, diagrams, original illustrations, and student art and music, these interactive DVDs are scientifically rich, meaningful, and timely learning tools that introduce viewers to the passion and commitment of scientists. Each DVD features an informal learning encounter with an inspiring and world-renowned scientist, followed by student and teacher interviews of the scientist and chapter stops for easy navigation. Each scientist offers a unique vantage point and an elegant, succinct, and understandable real-world view of how the planet works and the converging forces of environmental and planetary change that challenge humanity as never before. The DVDs are organized by 1-5 minute chapter stops per topic so the viewer can navigate to specific segments.

How Is Classroom Encounters™ Different?
Classroom Encounters brings teachers, filmmakers, scientists, students, artists, and musicians together in a participatory endeavor to “teach through arts and media-making” to improve how science is communicated.

Classroom Encounters scientists connect the dots integrating earth sciences, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, oceanography, astronomy, atmospheric science, and climatology.

	Dr. Daniel Schrag, Paleoclimatologist, Director of the Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.
Dr. Willam Moomaw, Atmospheric Chemist and Climate Change Policy Expert, Professor of Enviornmental Policy, Fletcher School of International Diplomacy, Tufts University
	Dr. Paul Hoffman, Expert on Extreme Climate and " ," Professor of Geology, Harvard University
Dr. Andrew Knoll, Paleontologist and Conservation Biologist, Member of the Mars Exploration Rover Science Team, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
	Dr. Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Meteorology, MIT, World Authority on Hurricanes Expert on Hurricanes and Climate
Dr. Gregory Stone, Diver, Oceanographer and Marin Biologist, Vice President of Conservation, New England Aquarium

 

How Classroom Encounters™
Came To Be
Classroom Encounters was founded by a classroom teacher and independent filmmaker, and grew out of a high school teacher’s effort to connect student learning to real-world science, and the global problems scientists and citizens are confronting. What began as a science initiative to create filmed learning encounters between students and world class scientists, snowballed into a ground breaking DVD series on planetary change designed to inform and change how and what we all learn.

Classroom Encounters' Rita Chang & Alan Fine

Navigating the Site
On this site you can see clips from the series on the Samples page, order titles which supports these independently produced films on the Ordering page, make a tax-deductible donation to support our efforts on the Want to Donate? page, find supporting materials in the Teacher Forum, find out more about the featured scientists in the Scientist Gallery, see student-created videos on climate and planetary change, prose, artwork, music, PowerPoints, and research in the Student Gallery, check out the Scientists' Bulletin Boards with students, find out about or contact Classroom Encounters on the Details page, or see what Classroom Encounters is up to on the What's New? page.

How are Classroom Encounters ™
Filmmaking and Educational Initiatives
Funded and Supported?

By contributions and by sales of DVDs, which can be ordered from this site.

We are grateful for the seed grants from the Wellesley Education Foundation and the Wellesley PTSO that that first supported the concept of a series of filmed encounters with scientists, and the support from Wellesley High School where the series was filmed. A 2005 grant from the Oak Foundation helped us move to the next step. Blind faith, friends, family, and people from all walks of life who stepped forward offering expertise, contacts, professional services, artwork, music and much more made it possible for us to take the plunge forward. We are especially grateful to those who made financial contributions last year to help Classroom Encounters edit and produce the three completed DVDs in the seven part series.

With limited funding, Classroom Encounters has been -- and continues to be -- a labor of love. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Fractured Atlas in behalf of Classroom Encounters. Classroom Encounters is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts-service organization in New York.

• If you are a teacher or professor and have ideas or would like to help develop educational tools, please let us know about you and join our family. Please email us at supporters@classroomencounters.org and visit our Teachers Forum.
  
• If you are a teacher or professor and would like to use the films as an educational tool, teaching tips can also be found in our Teachers Forum section.
  
• If you would like to receive our periodic newsletters, please email us at supporters@classroomencounters.org with the work "subscribe" somewhere in the subject or body of the email.

Keep checking back, because more curricula ideas will be coming soon!

Thank you all.