National Geographic January-December 1987 [antikvár]

Joint ventures for joint adventures SOLID PARTNERS are welcome in many enterprises. In the electronic expression of communications and education, they are a necessity. The Society's longest running such partnership is with WQED/Pittsburgh. Again in 1987, the 13th year of our association, we will jointly with the Chevron Corporation bring four new National Geographic Television Specials to PBS. The first, "Lions of the African Night," airs January 14. The others: "In the Shadow of Vesuvius," Feb-ruar>' 11; "The Grizzlies," March 11; and "Treasures from the Past," April IS. For the second year the Society will permit off-air taping of these programs by nonprofit educational institutions for use in classrooms. Also, with Chevron's generous support, we will provide to educators at no charge a Resource Guide to the Specials, a booklet that gives more information about the subject matter and suggests ways to incorporate program content into school courses. We are about to start our second year of partnership with Turner Broadcasting in bringing two hours of EXPLORER over SuperStation WTBS to a cable television audience of some two million homes each week. To celebrate, EXPLORER on March 22 will broadcast "Secrets of the Titanic,'^ a stunning hour-long documentary on finding and surveying the remains of the "unsink-able" luxury liner. "Secrets of the Titanic'^ is now also included in our home video series, in which Vestron Video is our partner in making many of the Society's classic mm PHOTOGRAPH BY CAROL HUGHES DAVID HUGHES AT WORK FILMING IN AFRICA. programs available for viewing on personal vidéocassette players. The Society has other new partners in Apple Computer, Inc., and Lucasfilm Ltd. Together we are researching optical technologies such as videodiscs and compact discs to explore how they might be effectively used in education. Both of these technologies permit storage on a single disc of vast amounts of information—the equivalent of a small library of still or moving images. There is further potential to integrate audio, text, and software, and—perhaps most important—to put students and teachers in control as they select and use information from all these media. It is the joint plan of the Society, Apple, and Lucasfilm not merely to study these optical technologies and make recommendations in a report. We also intend to bring them to the point where they can be evaluated—and used—in the very real and sticky-fingered world of curious children. Perhaps wildlife footage such as that by Carol and David Hughes (above), which we now marvel at in Geographic Specials, will someday be edited into "school papers"— electronic versions of today's cutting and pasting of photographs from National Geographic. We are on the way to that future with our solid partners and traveling companions. PRESIDENT, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY