Manal Ansari, Kendra Carr, Andy Joe, Austin Quinn and Abe Underhill, from Muncie's Burris Laboratory School, will travel to Washington, D.C., to appear in "The Wright Start: Celebrating 100 Years of Flight." The live broadcast, which will recount Orville and Wilbur's achievement, will air at 10 a.m. EST and 1 p.m. EST Oct. 21.

This Electronic Field Trip is an interactive Internet and satellite broadcast that will be viewed by more than 15 million students in more than 40 states. The program is a result of a partnership between Ball State, the Best Buy Children's Foundation and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

"The broadcast will take students from that first toy to the development and historic flight of the 1903 Wright Flyer," said Mark Kornmann, Ball State Teachers College outreach director. "The museum has lowered the Flyer from its ceiling display for the first time in its history. So the students will be some of the first people to take a close-up look at the plane."

Accompanying the children during their study of the historic aircraft will be the world's leading experts on the Wright Brothers, Peter Jakab and Tom Crouch.

Jakab, chairman of the museum's aeronautics division, has put his studies in engineering and history to good use as a curator for the museum for the last 20 years.

Crouch, the museum's senior curator in the aeronautics division, has spent nearly 50 years studying the Wright Brothers and has written multiple books on their exploits.

Classes participating in the Electronic Field Trip will also have access to the Web site (www.bsu.edu/eft) which is an integral piece of the broadcast, Kornmann added. It provides related lesson plans for math, science, reading, writing, social studies, geography and more. As students learn more from the site, they will be able to e-mail or call in with in-depth questions for the show's producers.

"What makes the live broadcasts exciting is how interactive they are," Kornmann said. "The shows follow an outline rather than a set script, and students' questions change the direction of the show."

Topics covered by the broadcast and on the Web site include studying the letters exchanged between Orville and Wilbur Wright, visualizing the distance covered by their four flights at Kitty Hawk, N.C., understanding wing design terms such as "wing warping" and the "twisted box," and learning how the fabled first flight influenced culture at the turn of the century.

Each field trip costs $75 per school and includes the broadcast, Web-based learning materials and free access to previous programs. Scholarships are available. Any school interested in the broadcast can register by calling toll free (866) 279-8716, or logging on to www.bsu.edu/eft.

(Note to Editors: For more information, contact Kornmann at (765) 285-8106 or mkornmann@bsu.edu.