A New Experiment at NOVA

Not a surprise, I love NOVA.  Wednesday nights are a huge highlight for me when episodes are on - I get a bit giddy and pull out my embroidery and sit and watch (and record) the latest episode.  And if it is History/Tech - OMG I go weak in the knees.   Most I watch more than once to catch all the details.  I have loved it since I can remember - which is about when they started the program.  You can put me in the bucket of being inspired as a little kid.  DUH.  What I have chosen to do is most often said to be a 'NOVA episode'.

So living in PBS land (that is what Bostonian's call it here - the birthplace of PBS), you stumble upon people involved here and there.  Can you imagine my excitement in 2013 moving to a new house and meeting my new next door neighbor, the mother of the child who comes in and out of here about 4 times a day (a robot boy), and I find out she has been working for NOVA since she graduated from MIT.  I about squealed.  Ok, I did.  Lauren is the Director of Digital Media at NOVA and has also been the producer on many amazing documentaries there as well as the really fun series "The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers" .  So if it is on the website - it is hers.  All those amazing and cool simulations and ways to teach kids more from each episode - all goes across her desk.

Lauren's husband laughs as he says I am her next "Secret Life" story (I'm not) and she knows that my life is another CSI History episode in progress next door.   But it is great fun getting the back story on episodes, David Pogue (crazy man), and sometimes an invite to watch a first cut as she is trying to figure out what type of inter-actives to make months ahead of time.  I am very impressed by the work they do now that I have seen the back end.  One of our older robot kids interned there to help on some robot simulations and I have been known to have my brain picked more than once on my weird assortment of knowledge bases (This morning, historic textiles).

So it was exciting to see the new announcement become public of a really great idea by NOVA to take a step to make some documentaries on basic chemistry and physics publicly funded by kickstarter in a way that gets into every classroom in a very interactive way (Virtual Reality with cell phones is an extension goal).  You might enjoy looking at the little film footage on the Kickstarter page and maybe think about getting involved.  Personally - I am getting in at least at the level that gets me a NOVA mug to put next to my Cabinet of Curiosities mug!  Seems fitting to me.

(And I keep telling her... you know that Making of the Plimoth Jacket thing...ha ha )

Tricia