![]() With mass media, however, there is a potential to reach millions.Īccording to Welch, for NSF to fund a media program it must meet rigorous criteria. NSF supports a wide range of informal STEM programming in museums, through after school programs and citizen science projects. "We know that children learn intuitively and that a lot of it happens in an informal setting," says Welch. It supports the agency's multi-decade effort to boost science learning beyond the classroom, where research has shown most learning takes place. ![]() Today, Welch is part of a division in NSF’s education directorate dedicated to providing funding for children's media programs that focus on STEM education. Frizzle helped inspire teachers to use the programming in their classrooms. "I was excited to see a teacher featured, and not just any teacher - was a delight!" "We were excited because it was the first fully animated science show," Welch says. Sandy Welch was the director of education at PBS when the network picked up "The Magic School Bus" as part of its portfolio of children's programming. Support from the National Science Foundation helped bring the celebrated book series to the airwaves and to young viewers like Peterson, sitting frog-legged on living room floors across the country. Twenty-five years ago, Scholastic's "The Magic School Bus" veered off the written page and into our television sets, bringing with it a credo that emphasized taking chances, making mistakes and getting messy. When asked about the effect "The Magic School Bus" had on her current career path in science, Peterson says, "It's absolutely why I'm a chemist." Finding a way to reduce biofilms could make treatments more effective. She's looking for a way to effectively break down the notoriously impenetrable substance, which can make it hard for medications to reach the infections they need to treat. In her university lab, Peterson studies the enzymes that form biofilm, a slimy buildup of microorganisms that can grow on all types of surfaces, from teeth and buildings to pacemakers and ponds. Frizzle with her cat dressed up as Liz for Halloween (right) Peterson in her lab (left) and dressed up as Ms. "I have a very vivid memory from third grade of looking at the schedule and counting down the time to science class because I just couldn't wait to do science in 'real life.'" Watching those air bubbles form, it just clicked for me that chemistry is what makes cakes, and I realized that this is what I wanted to do," says Peterson, now a doctoral student in biochemistry at the University of Maryland. Frizzle and her class escape from being baked inside a cake on the "Ready, Set, Dough" episode of "The Magic School Bus." Twenty years ago, four-year-old Alex Peterson was on the edge of her seat watching Ms. Frizzle’s students have once again used science to get them out of a jam - this time in the form of a cake. The mixing of the two substances causes an immediate chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide, inflating the balloon and lifting them to safety. ![]() They add baking soda to a vial of vinegar and top it with a balloon. A school bus full of third graders sits stranded, submerged in a dense, sticky substance with no way to escape. ![]()
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