FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Deborah A. Weingrad — 203-853-1740 deb@palacedigital.com

New Website www.youngamericanheroes.com Empowers Teachers & Students to Create Television Program & Educational Websites

Part of Young American Heroes Multi-platform Content Series Being Produced in Connecticut

Young American Heroes, LLC

NORWALK, CT, March 5, 2008:

It’s a TV show.

It’s a website.

It’s a paradigm shift.

It’s a whole new way of teaching American history to middle school students.

With the launch this month of a new website (www.youngamericanheroes.com) targeted to middle school social studies teachers and their students, Connecticut educators have an incredible opportunity to get in on the ground floor to develop breakthrough educational content and a public television program. The TV show and educational websites are being produced in Connecticut and will air on CPTV and come to an Internet near you this fall.

The television program (which is a half-hour drama) and its accompanying website are based on Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The new website invites middle school teachers and their students to give their creative input and suggestions on the television script, locations, casting and help in designing the activities and content of the 2.0 student website which is being built. The current website is accessible at www.youngamericanheroes.com or through a link on Connecticut Public Television’s website www.cptv.org (Connecticut Public Television is one of the major partners in the project).

The TV show and website are just two elements of the larger Young American Heroes multi-platform content project. Young American Heroes is the brainchild of two Connecticut film producers, Chris Campbell and Tim Smith. Besides the pilot on Douglass currently in production there will be four more programs after the pilot and eventually up to 52 programs. The multi-platform content elements include: 30-minute television program, classroom DVD, retail DVD, the student 2.0 website with games and links to historical archives, a teacher website and a graphic novel.

Palace Production Center and Docere Palace Studios, two award-winning Connecticut media companies, are teaming with eduweb.com, Connecticut Public Television, Fairfield University Graduate School of Education, and an advisory board of leading historians from Yale, Princeton and other universities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to create this breakthrough multi-platform educational project.

The project is one of only seven projects that won a prestigious grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American History & Civics Initiative. This CPB Initiative drew over 80 entries from leading public television stations and production companies. Young American Heroes will tell its compelling stories by taking an innovative peer approach — using primary documents and diaries about ordinary kids doing extraordinary things during seminal moments in American history. The pilot, which is targeted towards middle school students (and parents), is about the fascinating life and times of young Frederick Douglass and his escape from the horrors of slavery at the age of 20.

“It’s been scientifically demonstrated that tweens respond well to programming and content that makes them feel competent and important – programming in which young people make decisions and are in control of their own lives,” says Chris Campbell, managing partner of Young American Heroes and owner/creative director of Palace Production Center in South Norwalk. He adds, “Young American Heroes is all about young people making a difference – it shows students that young people matter.”

“We are setting up a new paradigm for education by breaking down the walls and going directly to teachers and their students to get their input,” says Tim Smith, a Rowayton resident and the project’s executive producer and president of Docere Studios. “Our ultimate goal is to find students where they live 24/7, on their I-Pods and cell phones, and speak to them in peer-based language.”

“Too often, teachers are the missing voices in curriculum design. Our bottom up approach to developing educational content is seen as revolutionary, according to teachers who have participated in focus groups about the initiative,” says Dr. Marsha Alibrandi, assistant professor of curriculum at Fairfield University’s Graduate School of Education. Prof. Alibrandi and her associate, assistant professor Elizabeth Langran, are overseeing the focus groups and the curriculum development. Alibrandi says that several Connecticut schools will participate in further testing of the “pilot program” materials in classrooms in June 2008 once the television program and websites are close to completion.

Young American Heroes — born and produced in Connecticut for a national launch — is one of many quality productions taking advantage of the Connecticut Tax Credits, which are attracting film projects to the state. The TV drama about Frederick Douglass is being shot on locations throughout Connecticut this spring by South Norwalk’s Palace Production Center/Palace Digital Studios. It will be edited by Palace Digital Studios at its South Norwalk television/film studio. After the premiere on CPTV, the plans call for the TV program to be broadcast nationally on public television stations in February 2009, in conjunction with a national rollout of Young American Heroes materials (including a graphic novel based on Frederick Douglass’s Narrative). This will all coincide with Black History Month 2009.

As part of the effort to get teachers involved in the project, in addition to the website at www.youngamericanheroes.com and the school focus groups, representatives of Young American Heroes will be discussing the project with teachers and educators at the New England Region Conference on the Social Studies, March 27-28 at the Omni New Haven Hotel.