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Safety Smart Science with Bill Nye the Science Guy: Fire Grade Levels: 4-8 / Price: $39.95 / Release Date: February 23, 2009 Director: Phillip Scarpaci / Producer: Pattie Kelly / Writer: Mark Scarpaci Cast: Bill Nye the Science Guy, Donna Pieroni (Cuisina), Michael Alexander, Tabitha Morella, Myia Hubbard, Keisha and Kellie Ramdhanie, Maura Barclay, Daniel Ermel, Brenna Revis, Preston Tate, Eleanor Yuhas

Bill Nye, the actor-comedian who became one of the two famous science personalities of 1990s children's television (the other being Paul Zaloom's Beakman), is still providing Disney with his brand of entertaining educational content. It's just a lot harder to discover on DEP DVDs than it was onpublic television. This second installment of Underwriters Laboratories-sponsored Safety Smart Science is titled Fire (26:22) and rightfully so.

Nye conveys the concept of fire as a triangle that needs all three sides (heat, fuel, and oxygen) to exist. In a UL safety lab, he demonstrates three methods you can use to put out a fire. He illustrates three types of heat transfer with hot dogs cooking in different kinds of ovens.

This program actually feels most like a TV series, one that would be very much at home on PBS. It is arranged like a variety show. Cooking show "Cooking with Cuisina" warns us of dangerous grease fires, a talk show host interviews a fireball, and twin girls perform a closing music video. Of course, Bill Nye remains the most prominent component and he has still very much got the same appeal he had 15 years ago, comfortably and authoritatively dispensing knowledge but with the humorous delivery of his subtly offbeat persona.

The only source of nuisance is the regular onscreen text reminding us that staged demonstrations are controlled; the notice at the beginning and a reiteration at the end would have been sufficient.

VIDEO and AUDIO

With the exception of Timon and Pumbaa... in the Water! and Bill Nye... Fire, each main program can be viewed in either 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen or cropped fullscreen. (Those two wisely forgo the fullscreen option.) The features are all presented in basic two-channel stereo sound. In light of the light content, compression is a non-issue and while these single-layered discs aren't ones you'd use to wow a class on DVD's amazing picture and sound abilities, there are no concerns more troubling than a slight and occasional odd hollow quality to the audio.

You haven't seen language selection screens like the ones on the Timon and Pumbaa shorts before. The cartoons can be viewed in an astonishing 15 different languages: English, Spanish, Castilian, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Marathi, Portuguese, and Tamil. Maybe I'm uncultured, but I had to look a few of these up to make sure Disney wasn't inventing languages here. Selecting a foreign language automatically activates a subtitle track that translates on-screen text, but not dialogue. Otherwise, the DVDs are not subtitled, but they are equipped with English closed captions. One minor disappointment: you can't toggle languages during playback.

Fewer soundtrack choices are found on the English-only Imagineering DVDs and the English & Spanish Bill Nye disc, neither of which holds any subtitles.

BONUS EDUCATIONAL FEATURES

Special features are called "educational features" here and each of these six DEP DVDs includes a few.

Each Science of Disney Imagineering volume delivers two main features through standard DVD playback -- a project and a quiz.

Titled "Try It Yourself", the projects are inspired by the disc's program but without retreading or repeating material. Each experiment consists of an instructional video hosted by Asa Kalama and a still page listing materials you'll need.

On Fluids (3:30), we learn how to turn over a large container of water without spilling it. A second experiment involves constructing a really big straw and then drinking from it. Less fun and more work, Design and Models' project (4:06) illustrates how to build a model bridge from straws. On Energy (4:25), Asa shows us how to make an energy transfer conservatron, i.e. a Newton's cradle, with golf balls, thumb tacks, fishing line, and two chairs. He proceeds to explain the principles behind it.

"Test Your Knowledge" is the heading given to the quizzes, which refer to concepts covered in the feature program. Each quiz consists of 15 multiple-choice questions. They're hard enough to make sure you grasp the concept, but easy enough not to frustrate or confuse. Wrong answers cue the relevant clips from the show and a second chance to get it right, but they still count against your final score, which is displayed at the end. These fun challenges seem apt for classroom use as a follow-up exercise.

On the DVD-ROM side, the Imagineering discs include an Educator's Guide & Web Link. The former is a 6-page PDF document that gives an overview of the content and the academic standards addressed. It also suggests some post-viewing questions and activities and provides an answer key to the quiz. The link merely takes you to the DEP website.

The Timon and Pumbaa discs each offer a Safety Smart sing-along for their closing songs. The one from Goes Green! (1:35) has the pals sing the praises of reducing, reusing, recycling, and other energy-conserving R words. In the Water! (1:26) dispenses tips to think of before you get wet. Lyrics can be printed out from the DVD-ROM materials (more on them in a second), but the bouncing ball and onscreen words make singing along far easier than that.

Both Timon and Pumbaa DVDs also supply "Who is UL?" (3:40), which answers that question with a brief, promotional history of Underwriters Laboratories and demonstrations of their product safety tests. The feature is offered in 8 different languages.

The most substantial supplemental inclusion on the Timon and Pumbaa discs are the DVD-ROM Educator's Guides. Customized to the disc, these exhaustive 20-21 page PDF files detail the program's objectives and provide everything you need for post-viewing discussions and classroom activities. Ranging from short answers and fill-in-the-blanks to a maze and a coloring page, the reproducible worksheets (11 on Green, 14 on Water) are also offered in 15 foreign languages, covering all your bases. Less important but present alongside the Adobe Reader documents are web links to the official UL and DEP sites.

The Bill Nye fire safety DVD supplies a 10-question quiz, which cues the appropriate clip even when your answer is correct. It's only easy because the effective program's lessons really stick with you.

The disc also holds the "Who is UL?" promo described above and the featurette "Fighting Fires" (7:23) which explains the training and duties of the profession with comments from those in the field. The Educator's Guide ranks somewhere in between the others. There's more to this 17-page PDF than the Imagineering ones, but the activities are less inspired and fun (which is perhaps true of most things as you go up the grade school scale). Still, there's an impressive collection of linked Internet resources and enough suggested activities and provided worksheets to fill the remainder of a class or serve as homework.

Finally, all six of the DVDs contains an "Also Available" section, holding one or two previews (ranging from 2 minutes to over 4) that show off the various titles available from Disney Educational Productions. Exhibiting restraint compared to the barrage of auto-play trailers on retail DVDs, these menu-accessible promos contain excerpts from various historical drama classroom editions and pay special attention to the newest releases.

MENUS and PACKAGING

All six of these DVDs are equipped with colorful, animated main menu screens. The ones on the Science of Disney Imagineering discs convey their program's concept with drawings of Disney park attractions (or models of them) coming to life. Timon and Pumbaa's modify the series' title logo with a montage in the center. Bill Nye merely changes the backdrop behind its host. There are even scene selection menus, something not always afforded Disney Movie Club exclusive discs.

The DVDs are housed in standard-sized white keepcases. No inserts are found inside, but there is full-color disc art.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The DVDs from Disney Educational Productions deliver a far lower ratio of content-to-price than what standard retail releases do. But it's a different kind of value and for teachers, a far greater and more exciting one at that. Anyone itching to bring a bit of Disney to their students without reducing their class to movie time would be wise to consider picking up one of these DVDs and seeing the response it and all its provided activities receive. If you're not in education but are a diehard fan of the parks, Timon and Pumbaa, and Bill Nye, these discs are also worth at least thinking about, especially since the fun, informative content isn't likely to be made available anywhere else anytime soon.

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