 Engineers Week 2006 Joins the Cyberchase
An addition to 2006 Engineers Week’s DiscoverE (“E” for Engineering) program materials will be a multi-media activity guide developed from "Cyberchase," the PBS television program and web site. The guide, entitled “Cyberchase: Math in Science and Engineering,” includes activities for kids, a CD-ROM with handouts and graphics, and a DVD with the Cyberchase episodes on which the activities are based. The 2006 Engineers Week volunteer poster will include a Cyberchase activity for engineers to do with young students. WNET-TV, the public television producers of Cyberchase, will engage its Girls, Inc. partners to rally for Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2006. For PowerPoint slides explaining the background of Cyberchase and its connection to math, science, and engineering, go to:
ftp://exodus.thirteen.org
Username: cybereng
Password: yb3tm3 Become a Cyberchase Outreach Site ! Click here for the Outreach Site Application (.pdf). This is a simple request for information related to contacts, program/organization, demographic info about the children being impacted, etc. Sites submit this completed document to EWEEK, which then submits a copy to Cyberchase (see application for details). Click here for the Outreach Site Information Packet (.pdf) The packet contains due dates, background info on the EWEEK/Cyberchase partnership, the math-science-engineering theme, as well as site requirements and available benefits and additional materials. Sites keep this document as reference. Groups submitting an Outreach Site application will receive the Cyberchase Activity Guide: Math in Science and Engineering Activity Guide. Those sites accepted as an Outreach Center will receive further information and materials. About Cyberchase Cyberchase is the only informal mathematics learning opportunity for children currently available on television. (Other television offerings are instructional television programs designed for classroom viewing.) Broadcast by over 350 PBS stations and channels nationwide, Cyberchase reaches five million viewers, including three million children (age 2 to 11), each week. The number of adults watching indicates that Cyberchase is a family affair in millions of homes. The series, broadcast with an available Spanish soundtrack, boasts a diverse ethnic audience. Over one third of Cyberchase households are African-American/Latino. This is higher than the minority representation in either the average PBS full-day audience (21% African-American/Latino), or the U.S. population as a whole. The 2-11 age group audience includes slightly more girls than boys (54% girls as opposed to 46% boys). Children respond to the humor, the action, the suspense of a struggle where good triumphs over evil, and the fact that in this action-adventure, the characters win because they think. The audience impact has been strengthened by the recent launch of PBS Kids Go! This two-hour afternoon time block was created by PBS for school-age children who are ready to graduate from public television’s pre-school line-up. Cyberchase is one of four programs featured in the block. After six months, afternoon ratings are up 36% among 6-8 year-olds, PBS's biggest gain in six seasons. Cyberchase is reaching 320,000 more viewers a week than a year ago, almost half of them 9-11-year olds. Cyberchase consistently ranks among the top 10 PBS programs for Kids 6-11, and ranks #1 in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver and #2 in Houston and Phoenix in the afternoon PBS Kids Go! block. The award-winning Cyberchase has become the mathematics series for today’s school-age generation. Kids and adults constantly say that Cyberchase makes children say they “like math.” Best of all, research indicates that Cyberchase results in direct and transferred learning and positively affects children’s attitudes toward mathematics. 
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