Among those helping with the $900,000 webcast, confidence is high the show will educate and entertain as it touches on democracy, cultural diversity and the spirit of exploration.

"It's going to be perfect for the target age group," said Kaitlyn Adkins, a 17-year-old senior from Henrico County appearing in the webcast as one of six student reporters. "It's on a down-to-earth level. It's not overly complicated or overly simplified."

The webcast is being produced as one of about a dozen signature events in the ongoing commemoration of Jamestown's 400th anniversary as the first permanent English settlement in America.

Linked to a Web site, jamestownjourney.org, that provides lesson plans for teachers and projects for students, the show has registered at least 700,000 students in every state and a dozen foreign countries, officials said. The Web site provides a way for schools and homeschoolers to register.

Jamestown 2007, the state agency coordinating all the official Jamestown events, provided the financing and the expertise of its production consultant, Prosody Creative Services.

"What we wanted to do is, in a one-hour period, give a very clear message to students so they could capture the information and want to learn more," said Maris Segal, a partner in Prosody and lead producer of the webcast. "It has to be very fast-paced, there has to be some fun to it, and we want to engage students."

The webcast is conceived as a kids' news magazine, Segal said. Gwen Ifill, moderator of public television's "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for the nightly "News Hour with Jim Lehrer," will be the moderator.

Ifill will appear live in one of the bulwarks of the James Fort-style re-creation at the state-run Jamestown Settlement living history museum. With her will be an expert or two and an audience of about 200 students including student ambassadors from every state, Samoa, and U.S. military installations overseas, said Linda Stanier, a Jamestown 2007 spokeswoman. Officials said the ambassadors would also include representatives from Virginia's Indian tribes.

In about 20 minutes of live webcasting, Ifill will have experts answer questions e-mailed in by students, take questions from the audience and introduce other features, including segments taped at the original James Fort site.

She will also introduce scenes of about 400 students from the Peninsula who will be engaged in activities throughout Jamestown Settlement during the webcast, Stanier said. Other segments will include graphics and musical performances by Anniversary Voices, a troupe that composed songs for the Jamestown commemoration.

Some Richmond schools will be tuning in to the webcast and a Linwood Holton Elementary School fourth-grader and her social studies teacher will in Jamestown for the event, city schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby said.

Adkins, one of the student reporters, is a senior at J.R. Tucker High School in Henrico. She has already taped her interviews with a park ranger at Historic Jamestowne and with Bill Kelso, the archaeologist who discovered the remains of James Fort.

Adkins is a Virginia Indian by heritage, a member of the Chickahominy tribe, who auditioned for her role in the webcast.

She said both her questions and the experts' answers were scripted and carefully rehearsed to make the best use of the time. But the experience nonetheless got her interested in journalism, she said, and increased her interest in sharing her heritage and learning about others.

James Horn, a Williamsburg historian, was also interviewed in advance. The author of "A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America," said he welcomed the producers' help in paring down his answers to a length and style that would reach his young audience.

"I didn't want to come across as too, kind of, schoolmasterish," he said. "I think, for an hour's show, it should come across as pretty lively."