Our NIE history.....
In 1993, we produced our first NIE program: Ocean Challenge. In Ocean Challenge, we would try to break the 76 day 6 hour sailing record from San Francisco to Boston by way of Cape Horn set by the great clipper ship Northern Light in 1853 during the Gold Rush. The program linked the crew of Rich Wilson and Bill Biewenga to NIE classrooms. Journals and Logs were telexed from the boat to our Boston office, developed into a camera-ready 1/4 page broadsheet piece, and FedEx'ed to participating newspapers weekly for a 12 week series published in the full run of the paper. On the day of publication, classroom sets of newspapers were delivered to participating teachers. Each of 12 NIE programs (L.A. Times, New York Newday, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, etc.) was oversubscribed.

69 days, 20 hours out of San Francisco, GAII arrived in Boston, setting a new record. More importantly, we reached 2000 NIE classrooms, 13 million daily readers, and through an online feature on Prodigy, the first interactive online learning adventure, broke ground as well, reaching 200,000 participants among their subscribers.

During 1994-95, we produced our second NIE program: Class Afloat: Concordia Sails the World. This program linked 40 high school students circumnavigating the globe aboard the tall ship Concordia (while taking their regular classes) to participating NIE classrooms.   This program of 18 bi-weekly updates expanded from 12 newspapers to 21 participating newspapers over the full school year, reaching 2500 teachers.

During the winter/spring of 1995, we produced our third NIE program: Young America: Defending the America's Cup. This program linked scientists and engineers, from Boeing, Ford, MIT, etc., responsible for designing and building Young America, to participating NIE classrooms via In-Paper Updates. This program of 11 weekly updates expanded to 27 newspapers reaching 21 million daily readers and 3500 teachers and their students.

Our new NIE programs include:

Rainforest Live!
Australia
30 students on a 13 week semester
at the Center for Rainforest Studies
Class Afloat Live!
Concordia at sea
40 high school students
sailing the world
Oceans Live!
Turks & Caicos Islands
30 students on a 13 week semester
at the Center for Marine Studies
Wetlands Live!
Mexico
30 students on a 13 week semester
at the Center for Wetlands Studies
Girls at Sea Live!
Tall Ship Californian
12 girls at sea for 9 weeks
sailing from San Francisco to Acapulco
U.S. History Live!
Sailing Vessel Spirit of Massachusetts
20 students at sea for 9 weeks
sailing between Maine and the Caribbean