National Park Foundation Unveils Gulf Islands National Seashore Electronic Field Trip Web Portal at WWW.ELECTRONICFIELDTRIP.ORG

/PRNewswire/ -- Using the Gulf Islands National Seashore as its classroom, the National Park Foundation, the official charity of America's national parks, is inviting students across the country to experience firsthand how science is used to monitor and manage human and natural change in an eco-system through an innovative new Electronic Field Trip (EFT) on Tuesday, March 1, 2011. As part of the program, the National Park Foundation has unveiled www.electronicfieldtrip.org/gulfislands, an interactive online web resource for students and educators to get a jump start on their interactive adventure to Gulf Islands National Seashore, featuring interactive games, lesson plans and more. Teachers and broadcasters are encouraged to register for the program FREE now at www.electronicfieldtrip.org.

The Electronic Field Trip, "Sea Change: Gulf Island National Seashore," will include two live, hour long broadcasts (10am ET and 1pm ET) from Gulf Islands National Seashore, made available through the website (www.electronicfieldtrip.org/gulfislands) as well as on participating public television stations. The FREE program is designed for students in the 4th through 8th grades. The Gulf Islands program is the second in a series of investigative EFTs produced this year by the National Park Foundation to discover the lessons that science being done in national parks can provide to students in classrooms.

Previous EFTs have educated millions of students across the United States and around the world on historical events, climate change, biodiversity and more. For more information about the National Park Foundation's EFT program and a full catalogue of all previous EFTs, visit www.electronicfieldtrip.org

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National Park Hosts Live Electronic Field Trip for Students

On Tuesday, November 3, millions of students from all over the country will visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park on an Electronic Field Trip, during which they will explore one of the richest ecosystems on earth. The National Park Service, National Park Foundation, UPS Foundation, and Apple are teaming up to showcase the biodiversity of the Park for students around the country via this live broadcast. From the comfort of their classrooms, elementary and middle school students will be able to interact with National Park Rangers and local student hosts from North Carolina and Tennessee and learn about biodiversity and the wonders of the Smokies.

An interactive website, www.smokymountainseft.org, is now available for teachers and students to prepare for the electronic field trip through six learning modules with interactive games, video podcasts, and lesson plans. Schools can still register to participate in the broadcast through the website. Once schools have registered on the website, they can begin their adventure to Great Smoky Mountains National Park exploring the Park’s rich biodiversity of plants and animals. During the live broadcast, students can call in or e-mail their questions, and a bank of experts from the Park will be available to answer them. The live 60-minute program will air via satellite, cable and webcast from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, November 3.

“The Smokies is home to more than 17,000 known species of plants and animals making it world renowned for its biological diversity,” said Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson. “Even so, new species are continually being discovered in this mountain wonderland. We’re excited that students around the country will learn about biodiversity, what it is, why they should care about it, and what they can do to protect it both in the Smokies and in their own backyards,” continued Ditmanson.

Local students in 6th through 8th grades in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina auditioned to be the student talent who will work with Park Rangers in the field during the broadcast to search for salamanders, sift through leaf litter, and turn over rocks in streams in order to showcase the biodiversity of the park for other students. The show will be based in and around the Twin Creeks Science and Education Center in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Questions about registration and/or broadcasting should be addressed to: Carolyn Hill, chill@nationalparks.org.

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Electronic Textbooks Offer Students Savings And Convenience

(NAPSI)-There's good news for students looking for ways to save--particularly on textbooks. Many are now enjoying the discounts and added convenience offered by electronic textbooks.

The College Board reports that students pay an average of $1,000 per year on traditional textbooks, more than 15 percent of the annual tuition at an average public school.

Fortunately, a growing number of higher-education textbook publishers are now offering eTextbooks as an alternative to the traditional, pricey print texts. CourseSmart, for example, currently offers students more than a third of all college textbooks as eTextbooks at an average discount of 50 percent.

These savings can help students avoid a reliance on end-of-semester bookstore buybacks, which can be significantly less than expected.

Lucky students may be able to recoup 50 percent of their up-front costs by selling their texts back to the bookstore, but most students know that they are more likely to get $5 or $10 back, or worse, find they can't sell back the book at all. With an eTextbook, the student saves 50 percent up front and eliminates the burden of trying to sell the book.

Savings alone, however, are not the only reason more students are turning to electronic texts. There is also added convenience.

For example, when students are studying and writing papers, instead of searching endlessly through a textbook or a semester's notes for a particular subject or passage, they can use a search function that enables students to immediately pinpoint all references to a particular subject throughout an entire text.

In addition, electronic textbooks share many characteristics with print textbooks, such as allowing students the ability to highlight important passages and take notes. Students can also cut and paste text into study guides, print out important pages and choose between online or downloadable formats to access their textbook.

Many students say there are physical benefits as well. If one big text is heavy, four can be a pain in the back-literally. Fortunately for students who use eTextbooks, all they need is a laptop to access the material they are looking for, at any time, anywhere.

On today's Wi-Fi-enabled campuses, laptop accessibility makes it possible to integrate the electronic textbook with other online learning resources, such as Blackboard, library databases, Wikipedia and Google.

Visit www.CourseSmart.com to learn more.

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AccessText Network Created in Collaboration with University of Georgia Will Improve Student Access to College Textbook Content

The Association of American Publishers has signed an agreement with the Alternative Media Access Center, an initiative of the Georgia Board of Regents and the University of Georgia, to develop and launch the AccessText Network, a comprehensive, national online system that will make it easier and quicker for students with print-related disabilities, such as blindness, to obtain the textbooks they need for their college courses.

The program at UGA is part of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.


"AMAC is energized about working in conjunction with the disability community to guarantee AccessText becomes the conduit between the publishing world and post-secondary institutions' disability programs nationwide," said Christopher Lee, department head and director of AMAC."We are charged with making AccessText the national nucleus of post-secondary distribution of approved alternative textbook file exchanges, training and technical support. Our goal is to make the college disability professional's job easier and, in the long run, help save institutions from the high cost of producing electronic textbooks for their students with disabilities."

Many college students with disabilities are struggling to use required or recommended print textbooks that are essential to their course success, said Patricia Schroeder, AAP's president and chief executive officer.

"By improving the efficiencies of our present process, AccessText will facilitate quicker access to content for more students," she said.

The new AccessText Network will improve the way electronic versions of print textbooks are delivered to campus-based disability student service offices from publishers and streamline the permission process for scanning copies of print textbooks when publisher files are unavailable.

"This project would have not been possible without the early support and direction of Noel Gregg, director of the Franklin UGA Regents Center for Learning Disorders," said Lee. "The AMAC project was incubated under that center, and Noel was a co-founder of AMAC making the project a reality."

The network, scheduled for beta launch in February 2009, will ensure that institutions can more easily obtain information about publishers' course materials, request electronic text files and use more efficient acquisition and distribution channels.

AccessText Network is being funded through donations from publishers Cengage Learning; CQ Press; Macmillan; McGraw-Hill Education; Pearson; Reed Elsevier Inc.; John Wiley & Sons; and W.W. Norton.

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