Earth Trails

Blazing new trails is risky business with all the new technologies on the market. Its hard to believe that it was more than 10 years ago that I participated in the most amazing project to date. As a Web Developer for Iowa Public Television, the Earth Trails campaign was dedicated to educating youth about the Mississippi River culture, geography, music, food and history. I came later to the project than the majority of the team, but when they asked the question "what more can we do, to stretch technology for learning?" my brain went into overdrive. As a leader in digital television and a major consumer of the Iowa Communications Network (ICN), they had already planned to connect 10 classrooms around the state by video, with the studio. The general plan was to produce 4 live 2-hour broadcasts with 5 experts at satellite locations up and down the Mississippi River. These experts came from each of the subject areas from food and music, to geography and culture. How did we extend it? We built a web site where students nationwide send questions by filling out an online form, or send us a fax, or call into our phone bank and a panel of experts in the war room categorized them and then selected some of them to be sent to the studio where the MC read them to the experts out in the field. But that wasn't enough for me.

How would we make sure each and every question got an answer and the students across the country were ensured a response? Every question was recorded in a database and educators answered them, while the web automatically pushed the answers back out to the students. But what about the questions from the 10 video classrooms and from the field? All I had to do was search the storage closets in the building. A small black box provided the answer. I don't remember what it was called, but its function was to grab the closed captioning from the live broadcast and write it to a text file on the server. Technicians pulled the text questions and answers from the closed captioning, corrected any spelling errors, and pasted them into the same database. That way, if the student missed the answer on the broadcast, it was posted on the web site.

The experience was complete with high stress, high excitement and involved a highly creative group of professionals, including amazing educators. The requirements were simple and the solution was a huge collaborative effort with a wide variety of skilled people. From TV Producers, Directors, Educators, Technicians, and Creatives, no other project provided greater challenge or reward, demonstrated in the comments from teachers, students and parents.

Remember, this was 10 years ago. It was the first nationwide TV broadcast with 2 types of leading edge technologies (Internet and Video Conferencing over ICN) providing a high level of interactivity. I am so proud of the team to this day. And it was my first exposure to the role of Business Analyst. The web site played a small role, it was the symphony and coordination of the people that made it great.

For more information about Earth Trails, see this Iowa Public Television web site.

Yes, the program still lives!!! Perhaps the greatest honor of all... It has survived the test of time.