NSF PR 97-4 - January 28, 1997
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone
numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current
contact information at media
contacts.
A Journey into the Jungles of Borneo: CD-ROM Engages
Children with 'Real Science'
Students are becoming 'scientific consultants' to
the Indonesian government, working together to help
track down rare plants that may hold a cure for cancer
or discover why a vital cash crop is refusing to produce
fruit.
Using Rainforest Researchers, a package of
educational software and teaching materials developed
with support from the National Science Foundation,
students actively investigate such problems, in contrast
to many other science-related software programs, which
encourage passive viewing.
"The science in Rainforest Researchers allows
students to act as scientists themselves in this adventure,"
said M. Patricia Morse, a marine biologist and director
of NSF's instructional materials development program.
In one scenario, students search for a rare plant
that may hold a cure for some cancers, closely mimicking
a real scientific inquiry in which researchers from
Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum attempted to
find an Indonesian plant proven to thwart the AIDS
virus.
Rainforest Researchers was developed jointly
by NSF, the Arnold Arboretum, and Tom Snyder Productions,
of Watertown, Mass. It casts students in four different
roles. They can choose to be chemists, who study the
basic composition of plants; taxonomists, who classify
plant and animal species; ethnobotanists, who study
how native people use plants as food, clothing, or
medicine; or ecologists, who observe the relationships
between species and their environments.
Each study team formed is given a mock budget of $40,000
to purchase the equipment it needs to conduct its
field study and to cover expenses. Students use the
CD-ROM, which contains professional video footage
shot on location, as well as accompanying printed
materials as resources to solve their problems.
Robert E. Cook, the arboretum's director, notes that
the problems presented in Rainforest Researchers
emphasize the importance of conserving biologically
diverse areas as well as the difficulties inherent
in predicting the practical value of discoveries made
through basic scientific research.
In Search for the Lost Compound, one of two
scenarios on the disk, students attempt to trace to
its source a fragment of dried plant with suspected
cancer-fighting properties that is being sold at an
Indonesian jamu, or open-air market.
Cook notes that the problem had its counterpart in
a search undertaken by arboretum scientists for a
plant that was discovered to combat HIV. Samples of
the plant were taken in Borneo in 1987 by an arboretum
field team working under a grant from the National
Cancer Institute. But when the plant's medicinal properties
were uncovered, and a team dispatched to find it again,
the researchers discovered that the original specimen
had been cut down several years previously.
The field team took samples of the surrounding plants,
but discovered they did not display the same anti-HIV
activity, leading them to question whether they had
sampled the proper plants. Only an expert's examination
of a carefully preserved sample taken in the field
in 1987, and related documentation, led them to understand
they should have been looking for a different, though
closely related, species.
Rainforest Researchers is aimed at students
in grades 5 through 8, but Cook added that the product
could easily be used in high schools. A hallmark of
this software is that it is designed to be used in
the "one-computer classroom," which is the norm in
U.S. schools.
Editor's Note: For a review copy of the software, members
of the media should contact Lisa Heaney at Tom Snyder
Productions at (617) 926-6000, Ext. 287.
|