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!
I admire how you think of ways to further enrich and educate students. Learning is never ending and so are the processes of learning. Most museums just stop at being a repository of artifacts but yours went one step farther.
Thank you very much Janine for an excellent summary! I bumped into your page completely by accident, and I appreciate the complimentary PR. It was great to meet you at the conference as well, I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again in the future.
Oh well, it’s about time those museums are put to use. At least this time museums do something like educating learners rather than a building that caters old crafts and etc. I’m glad that finally the students will have something to enjoy and learn from this experience.
A brilliant idea! What better way to reach out to our children, and adults than with wonderful, fun Dinosaur knowledge! The integration of videoconferencing within the museum is ingenious. Dinosaur knowledge is a must for everyone. Thank you for all those involved at the Royal Tyrell Museum, for all your hard work on getting this project in full swing. And a special thank you to Colin Regamey! I know I will be putting this special addition to use within my classroom.