Summary: Divided into five targeted ten-minute segments, this engaging program uses microscopic imaging, time-lapse photography, cut-aways and dissections, laboratory experimentation and fieldwork, computer modeling, and graphing to shed light on the intricate lifecycles of anthophytes. Segments include "Photosynthesis and Respiration," "The Role of Flowers," "From Pollination to Fertilization,"...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This captivating program takes a close look at mosses, liverworts, and hornworts as they are found in natural and urban settings and how these hardy but sensitive plants are affected by environmental changes. Lichens, easily mistaken for bryophytes, are examined as well. Microscopic imaging combined with laboratory experimentation and fieldwork are used to illustrate the concepts and principles...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: At the height of its power and influence, the Etruscan civilization extended from the Po Valley to Campania, and its merchant fleet was the master of the Mediterranean. This program documents the salvaging of the first Etruscan ship ever found: a spectacular wreck off the coast of southern France with a perfectly preserved lower hull and laden with hundreds of amphorae. What artifacts are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Hidden beneath the modern city of Alexandria is the ancient one. How was that Alexandria laid out? Where are its legendary signature structures located? And how is renowned archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur to gather the information he needs when rapidly encroaching construction projects and a proposed breakwater in the harbor force him to do in months what rightly should be done over years?...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The construction of a high-speed train line in eastern France quickly turned into the start of a major archaeological dig when a Celtic necropolis was discovered. Who were the Celts, a people that dominated broad stretches of Europe for more than 500 years? In this program, archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, and other team members follow the migratory trail of the Celts across Europe,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When ground was broken for a luxury hotel in modern-day Hammamet, Tunisia, no one was expecting to find what has turned out to be the largest Roman necropolis in North Africa. In this program, necropolis expert Marc Griesheimer collaborates with archaeologist Aicha ben Abed and other specialists to piece together fragile clues to the history of the region. Painstaking analysis of the human...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1940, Hitler's archaeologists excavated sites in Poland to try to prove that Germans had lived there before the Poles-an anthropological justification for political aggression and military invasion. This program explores the use of archaeology as a tool for propaganda and diplomatic machination by focusing on the long-standing connections between Germany and Greece. The program also looks at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Archaeology was born of treasure-seeking, but it became the stimulus for rampant pillaging of antiquities in the 18th and 19th centuries. This program charts the escalation of archaeological acquisition from gentlemanly passion to national plunder, from Lord Elgin and the marble friezes of the Parthenon to Richard Lepsius and his Egyptian collection that took sixty barges to transport to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: What are the concerns of archaeology today? How will improved methods and scientific technology shift perspective on the past? The last episode of this series looks at the shift from excavating grand palaces to discovering and learning more about some of the earliest communities, such as at San Jose Magote in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico, where evidence has been found of human habitation dating...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: When explorers examined the remains of an advanced Mexican culture, they concluded that a superior race must have come from elsewhere to build the palaces and pyramids: the theory of diffusionism was born. This program charts the 150-year search for civilization's origins, which most 19th and early 20th century archaeologists believed to be a single source. Though questioned in the 1950s by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the last 250 years, archaeologists have changed the basic understanding of time and human existence. This program looks at the birth of modern archaeology, an event that stirred all of Europe's imagination: the unearthing of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 18th century, buried since Roman times under volcanic ash. It follows the early excavations of Pitt Rivers in Egypt and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Japan in the modern age: a people existing between the protection of the kami and the geological dangers of earthquake. This program covers the cataclysmic events of the 20th century-the devastating earthquake of 1923, the rise of militarism, the accession of Emperor Hirohito, the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, the Pacific War, Hiroshima, and the American occupation of Japan-but its...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The history of Japan past and present is the story of the kami, the supernatural, not quite godlike spirits who underlie the Japanese-ness of Japan-who created the Japanese islands at the beginning of time and remain today the ones responsible for health and luck, for success in childbirth and business, for the proper functioning of silicon chips and the uniqueness and unity of the Japanese....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The fine loess soil of the Yellow River basin quickly established that region as the home of China's earliest recorded dynasty. This program focuses primarily on Bronze Age China and the contributions of the Yin (or Shang) dynasty, with a tangential emphasis on the reign of the Qins. Commentary by Tang Jigen, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and other experts; archival film of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Beginning teachers often don't anticipate the challenges that high-needs students present. This video provides supportive strategies that boost the success of special needs learners. Exploring verbal and nonverbal communication through immediacy behaviors, the program shows how teachers can reduce the psychological distance between themselves and challenged students, with tangible benefits in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This hard-hitting documentary uses interviews with several girls, their boyfriends, parents, counselors, teachers, and other professionals to examine one of the most critical issues facing young Americans today. Exploring the reasons why so many teenagers get pregnant, the video looks at the facts on adolescent sexual behavior and attitudes toward birth control. Although the emphasis is focused...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Were Egypt's pyramids really built by slaves to be the tombs of the pharaohs? Most scholars believed so-until the excavation of a workers' village and the tomb of High Priest Kai led to some startling conclusions. In this program, Zahi Hawass, of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and renowned anthropologist Azza Saary el-Din provide support for the "public works" theory of the late...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: If diversity and special needs are prominent factors in a learning environment, teachers may have to juggle mandated standards with students' personal challenges. This video addresses that balancing act, demonstrating how experienced educators have mastered it. Focusing on multilevel instructional planning, the program explores the use of educational channels, individualized support, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When a baby is hospitalized with a life-or-death illness, parents place their trust in the doctors, nurses, and other specialists of the neonatal intensive care unit. This program blends the intimate and the informative to examine both the technological and the human aspects of infant critical care. Case studies featuring footage of the birth of the Faul twins, one of whom was diagnosed in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Born too soon and too small, premature newborns present doctors with some of the toughest medical and ethical challenges today. This program takes a deeply personal look at the emotional odysseys of two families, as specialized medical teams do all they can to save their babies. The emergency C-section to deliver Baby Jada, born twelve weeks early, and an operation to close a hole in Baby...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This was the age of the Tokugawa family, the era of Edo, a period of over two-and-a-half centuries during which Japan was hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world and only a few Dutch and Chinese-constantly watched and treated like pariahs-were allowed to live on Japanese soil and to trade with the Japanese. This program treats the history of Japan during this period: the established...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1540, Portuguese navigators and Jesuit priests landed in a Japan of shoguns and samurai, where the arts of warfare had been refined to hitherto unknown heights of cruelty. Although Westernisms quickly became the rage in Japan, the Japanese soon recognized the long arm of colonialism. Christian priests and converts were persecuted and martyred and, in 1650, Japan shut tight its doors to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Shrouded in mystery, the details of the Indus Valley civilization are slowly being extracted from the archaeological record. In this program, Richard Meadow, of Harvard University; R. S. Bisht, of the Archaeological Survey of India; linguist Asko H. S. Parpola; and other experts investigate the language, customs, and beliefs of the inhabitants of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The arrival of Commodore Perry in 1854 marked the stage for Japan's dramatic leap from the Middle Ages into modernity. The ports of Japan were forced open; the English, French, Russians, and Dutch promptly demanded-and got-the same privileges. In 1868, the last shogun gave way to a 15-year-old emperor, who dressed in Western-style clothes. Edo became Tokyo, education became a national passion,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005