Alaska Work

Much of my recent work has been with Indigenous partners on projects in Alaska, focusing on literacy, STEM, and cultural curricula.

I worked on the Molly of Denali project since its inception; it debuted in 2019 and I led the project’s extensive web and app work for PBS KIDS. Molly was the first U.S. children’s show featuring an Alaska Native as the lead character. It won a George Foster Peabody Award in 2020. Molly has a literacy curriculum and is one of many literacy projects I’ve produced. Most of this work has been supported by evidence-based research, and shown to be very effective.

I was Principal Investigator (PI) on a National Science Foundation grant entitled “Exploring the potential of digital education frameworks to build understanding of socioecological impacts of Alaskan environmental change.” Partners for this included Amy Vinlove, Co-PI and Director of the School of Education at the University of Fairbanks Alaska and Raven’s Group.

I was the digital lead on an NSF ITEST grant, “Investigating environmental identity development among children in rural Alaska Native communities through intergenerational, culturally responsive community science programming.” This is a STEM project, and the app I produced supported kids’ journaling and reflections on their science observations.

Beyond Molly, I have been working with Indigenous partners at Channel Films and Raven’s Group on other projects, including episodes of Search It Up for PBS Kids, exploring Alaska Native kids’ relation to technology, and a new series in development. Filming for Search It Up has been taking place in Anchorage and Utqiavgik.

I am an advisory board member for the Cultural Connections to Alaska Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and I am an ad hoc member of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States.

Additional awards for my work with Molly include the “Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award” which is given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) to a digital media producer that has created “distinguished digital media for an early learning audience”

See also Shribman, Bill. "Molly of Denali Respectful and Inclusive Collaboration with Alaska Native Communities in a Dynamic Educational Project." AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. Vol. 2022. 2022.