Videoconferencing with the Museum of Television & Radio’s Education Department allows you, and your students or patrons, access to the Museum’s archive of over 120,000 television and radio programs. These programs span the history of television and radio, and are available to the public at the Museum’s locations in New York and Los Angeles and to classrooms throughout the country and the world via our videoconferencing program. Through original footage, reporting and dramatization, television programs can give us access material unavailable through other sources. These television and radio programs act as a window to the past and present, illuminating significant events in our nation's history and culture.

During each videoconference a Museum Educator will introduce clips from the Museum's collection, and then engage students in a question and answer session. In order to participate, school and public libraries should be able to connect to a bridge at 384kbps (have 3 ISDN lines), but the program is also available at 128 kbps (have 1 ISDN line). In the fall of 2002 pre-and-post activities and outlines for our classes will be available on the Museum of Television and Radio's website.

To schedule a videoconference program for your students or your staff, please contact Cid Pearlman at 310.786.1099 or cpearlman@mtr.org

Fractured Fairy Tales

In this class a humorous selection of Rocky and Bullwinkle clips from the Museum’s collection provide a way to examine story structure and the elements common to all fairy tales.

Grades K - 5^th

Muppets and Puppets

This class opens a window to the delightful world of Jim Henson’s Muppets, and other puppets on television, exploring many aspects of puppetry and character development.

Grades K - 3^rd

Tooned into Animation

Students learn about different techniques and styles of animation, and consider which stories are best told with this dynamic and creatively liberating process.

Grades K - 6^th

Around the World

Students learn about the many different ways people live, work, and compare their own experiences to those of children in communities all over the world.

Grades 1^st - 4^th

We Could Be Heroes

What makes someone a "hero?" Students use television as a tool to learn about extraordinary people of the past and present whose achievements have touched the lives of others.

Grades 2^nd - 5^th

The Final Frontier: Space on Television

Where were you when Apollo 11 made its moon landing or the Challenger met its terrible fate? By viewing news coverage, documentaries, dramas, and ads, students become familiar with television’s ongoing response to the public’s fascination with space exploration.

Grades 3^rd - 8^th

The Final Frontier: Space on Television

Where were you when Apollo 11 made its moon landing or the Challenger met its terrible fate? By viewing news coverage, documentaries, dramas, and ads, students become familiar with television’s ongoing response to the public’s fascination with space exploration.

Grades 3^rd - 8^th

The Civil Rights Movement on Television

Television played a vital role in the Civil Rights Movement, both as observer and participant. By watching a selection of significant television work from that era, students explore the role that television played in recording and shaping the struggle for equal rights in America.

Grades 5^th - 12^th

The Master of Suspense:Hitchcock on the Box

Alfred Hitchcock enlivened the suspense genre with tongue-in-cheek introductions, macabre humor, and twist endings. Students analyze Hitchcock’s use of the ordinary to create exciting, even frightening, television drama.

Grades 5^th - 12^th

The Television Documentary: America through the Lens

By examining, comparing and contrasting a variety of documentaries from the Museum’s collection, students learn how different techniques serve different visions and think about what types of stories are best suited to the documentary form.

Grades 6^th - 12^th

Animation: Not Just for Saturday Morning

By presenting rare and unusual examples of televised animation, this class encourages students to expand their definitions of this popular technique and to develop a critical vocabulary necessary to evaluate and discuss it.

Raising the Curtain on the Cold War

1950s America was consumed with fears of war and the atomic bomb. Through close examination of television programs from this pivotal period in modern history, students learn how television reflected and perpetuated the pervasive paranoia and hysteria.

Grades 9^th - 12^th