Royal Tyrrell Museum: Up Close & Palaeo

Posted on August 15, 2006 by Janine Lim

Still at the Broadband Summer Institute here in Canmore. Now I’m attending a session by Colin Regamey, their new Distance Learning Coordinator. 

The Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta is starting to offer videoconference programming this fall. They have just built a new Atco Tyrrell Learning Centre to support their education outreach programs.

All their programs are correlated to the Alberta Education curriculum. 

Some of their face to face programs include making molds, fossil casting, and digging to find fossils.

They started with pilot programming in 2002-2003. They presented from the ATCO office for this initial programming. Also they’ve piloted some programs this past spring since the new Learning Centre was built. The pilot sessions were the Up Close & Palaeo program. 

The programs include lots of interesting visuals: animations showing the process of fossilization, objects on the document camera, and other visuals.

They work really hard to make the program suit the teachers’ needs. Students submit questions in advance and teachers can request certain topics. 

The first program they are designing is for grade 4, Rockin’ Alberta Resources. The program covers geography, geology, and paleontology. The program will include pre and post materials, lessons, and resources. Included are also fun animated games, similar to those that Mote Marine Laboratory is doing.

New programs they will be adding soon are: 

PIQ: Test Your Palaeo Intelligence, a program to begin or end a classroom study on Palaeontology. The program will be K-12, with specific questions and topics included for each grade level. They are very committed to having their programming tailored to the teachers.

Dinosaurs in the Movies, a program focusing on the evolution of dinosaur science and movies for grades 3 through 12. 

The museum also sells resource books, videos, and other resources to assist teachers in their instruction. Some of the videos are the same ones that are played in the museum. Supplementary material is always good!

The programs are $125 each, and the Up Close and Palaeo program is $200 because it uses an expert from the museum. 

Programs will be available Tuesday to Friday at specific times, and the Up Close and Palaeo program will be available only on Wednesdays at 11:00. (They are on Mountain Time.)

It’s nice to see another content provider getting organized to offer programming for schools!

Filed under: Content Providers, International VCs, VC Community | 4 Comments »

Global Leap with Mike Griffiths

Posted on August 15, 2006 by Janine Lim

This morning Mike Griffiths is presenting to the Broadband Summer Institute here in Canmore, Alberta.

MIke started by showing us where he lives using Google Earth. He does this often in his video links to help students understand the geography of the connection. Paul Hieronymous has been doing this too with Google Earth with his I Spy Geography program. It’s a really good model and important to help students gain geographical knowledge along with the content for the program.

Mike talked a lot about the teacher support necessary for successful and effective videoconferences. These are some of the needs he mentioned:

  • Someone to connect to for the first time
  • An automated test site
  • Someone to practice your lesson with
  • Someone to help find partners
  • Someone to help take an idea through to a successful project

Mike had some great stories and examples to share too. Lots of great international videoconference examples, and ideas on how to work around time zone issues etc. My favorite example was of two 1st grade classes, I think it was one in the UK and one in Switzerland. They had Santa Claus come in at one site and show a monkey. And then Santa was leaving to go visit the other school. In a few minutes Santa appeared at the other site with the same monkey. (Well actually they’d mailed it ahead of time.) The Santa in Switzerland looked a bit different and the kids commented on it. But the teacher explained how Santa must appear in the costume of each culture. What a fun experience that would be!

And finally…. Mike emphasized that “VC is not the purpose, but the means to achieve our outcomes.” It’s nice to try out a few, but to really make an impact, how does VC support your outcomes/curriculum.

“Bringing the world into the classroom changes the world.”  Videoconferencing gives us an “opportunity to change the world.” When kids talk to kids in other locations, they begin to understand and appreciate other cultures & points of view.

Thanks Mike for another great presentation!

 

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