Particles and Prairies videodisc and software are a multimedia resource developed in 1992 for middle school students to learn about ecology, history, restoration and research on the restored prairie at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. They were developed for the Particles and Prairies Program at Fermilab. Students and teachers can access the videodisc with Macintosh Hypercard software, a barcode reader or remote control. The program included thirty-seven video clips, seven hundred slides, activities to learn birdcalls and a databases of plants and birds. Particles and Prairies won the NewMedia Invision 1993 Multimedia Award of Excellence and Gold Award for K-12 Education.

For schools in the Particles and Prairie program, a DVD with the original video from the videodisc is available from Fermilab. With the advent of the web, much of the content on the videodisc is now available online. Some other resources besides the video are:
Slides - Birds - Plants - Soil Research

The funding for Particles and Prairies was provided in part by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Research, Illinois State Board of Education's Science Literacy Program and Friends of Fermilab. It was a collaboration of the Education Office, Computing Division and Visual Media Services Department at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Thanks to the Visual Media Services Department, the video is now online in RealVideo. It requires the the RealMedia Player.

We are grateful to all the contributors and the organizations they represent.