Panama's rainforest will come into United States classrooms this week, with live videoconferencing from a tropical forest research facility. The broadcasts will be converted to streaming video for Web site viewing and archiving.

Jacalyn Willis, director of PRISM (Professional Resources in Science and Mathematics) within the College of Science and Mathematics, and Gregory Willis will present five sessions in both English and Spanish to classes in New Jersey and Texas this week. The researchers have studied wildlife on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama for a month each year for the past 20 years, carrying out a long-term census of mammals to study how populations of different species on the island change from year to year.

Located in Gatun Lake, part of the Panama Canal waterway, BCI is a field station operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Students will be able to talk with the Willises and their associates directly from this forest location through live videoconferences. Researchers will talk about their experiences, their research projects and ecological principles, and will answer students' questions.

The Willises created the Rainforest Connection, an interactive e-mail project, seven years ago. The husband and wife team write regular journal entries for students in New Jersey, where they live most of the year, and students may correspond with the team in Panama. The Rainforest Connection is coordinated by PRISM, which provides services to school districts in the teaching of science and mathematics. The research team in Panama has posted regular journal entries on the Rainforest Connection Web site describing what they see and experience as they carry out their projects in the forest.

The Rainforest Connection is a useful source for background information on forests, how researchers study animals, basic ecological principles, animal ecology, photos, video clips, interviews with scientists and lesson plans. The Web site has a Spanish-language version as well, to include bilingual students in the United States and students in Latin American countries. Teachers used the Rainforest Connection materials to prepare students for this week's videoconference discussions.

"This is exciting, and a first for New Jersey educational institutions: to actually develop our own videoconference with classes from home, and live from a research site in an exotic location," said Jacalyn Willis. "It gives new meaning to the Rainforest Connection as an interactive teaching venue." If this pilot project succeeds, similar programming from Montclair State and from field sites will be made available to more schools partnered with PRISM.

New Jersey schools participating in the project include Passaic Valley Regional High School and schools in the districts of East Orange, Paterson, Park Ridge, Passaic, Garfield, Bayonne and Kearny. Several schools from the Temple, Texas Independent School District will also participate.

This new international K-12 project showcases the Verizon/ANJ Newark Portal and the growing partnerships between higher education and K-12 schools. Verizon has taken a leadership position in this project and NJEDge.net provided technical expertise. The live video connection was made possible by funding from the Verizon Corporation. Coordination of the video connection through the technology of satellite TV and Web videostreaming involve staff at Montclair State University, Verizon, NJEDge.net, the Tandberg Corporation, Princeton University and New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Jacalyn Willis holds a doctoral degree in biology from the City University of New York. Gregory Willis is a contractor who also hunts and is a naturalist. He has done field census work on mammals in tropical forests in several countries in Latin America. Anna Mazzaro, a PRISM staff member and elementary classroom teacher, also will appear in and assist in directing the broadcasts. Katrina Macht, a fifth grade teacher and award-winning environmental educator from Hillside Intermediate School in Bridgewater-Raritan, will join the project in Panama to provide an educator's commentary. (Click here to read about Macht, a Montclair State doctoral student, being named the Environmental Educator of the Year by the Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education.) Robert V. Horan, a field assistant and student at the University of Georgia with expertise in herpetology, will appear in the broadcasts. Ricardo Moreno, a Panamanian researcher who collaborates with the Willises in an ocelot study, and Bolivian biologist Enzo Aliaga-Rossel, who studies the ecology of agoutis on BCI, will appear in a Spanish-language session.

Logistics associated with broadcast from a rainforest are many, and the team has had to be inventive. The Panama field team is supported by technical expertise from Verizon, which operates the satellite dish and video conferencing equipment transported to Panama for this project. In New Jersey, the team includes representatives of NJEdge.Net, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University, VerizonVideo, the Park Ridge School district and Passaic Valley High School, as well as John O'Brien of Montclair State's Instructional Services and Jinan Jaber of the College of Science and Mathematics.

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