ABOUT THIS EFT NEWS | PARTNERS Welcome to the Electronic Field Trip "Turn Over A New Leaf. " This field trip is designed to support, educate and inspire sustainability and eco-friendly practices in everyday life. As an educator, you play a vital role in guiding your students through this field trip. On this site are all the resources you need: activities to use in the classroom, information on viewing the live broadcast, and even a discussion forum to talk with other teachers about how you're using these materials in your school. The links across the top of this page should supply you with all the information you need for the field trip. If you've never participated in the Electronic Field Trip program before, you might want to continue reading the section below to learn the basics of what an EFT is and what it can add to your existing curriculum. What is an EFT? Good question. Electronic Field Trips can be confusing things, because they involve a lot of different components — and because they're unlike any other educational program out there. So if this is the first time you and your students have taken an EFT, we thought we'd give a little crash-course right off the bat. (For more information, you can visit the main EFT web site: www.bsu.edu/eft/ .) Electronic Field Trips are the result of partnerships between Ball State University and museums across the country. Since most students are unable to take advantage of the immeasurable content in faraway museums, our program uses technology to make those resources available to a large, national audience. We do several EFTs a year, each with a unique topic geared toward different grade levels. So what is an EFT? In a nutshell: It's a live television broadcast. The broadcast is the culminating element of the EFT experience. After having spent time on the website and learning through teacher-led classroom activities, students watch a 60-minute, live broadcast from the Everglades National Park in Florida. The field trip will examine native and exotic plants in our national parks, part of the National Park Foundation’s First Bloom project, scheduled to launch in several pilot cities this year. Since the broadcast is live, it has the potential to be an interactive experience for your students — more than just a static television program. Students can call in with questions that will be answered or discussed by the onscreen experts. During the broadcast, the website will feature an online Bank of Experts who will answer questions in our discussion forum.