A team at the Royal Tyrrell Museum has received an Award of Excellence from Interpretation Canada for a distance learning program developed specifically for homeschool students.
The program “Experience Palaeontology” received the 2015 Gold award from the heritage interpretation organization, making it the ninth award the Tyrrell has been awarded by Interpretation Canada since 2002, and the first gold distinction in 10 years.
Experience Palaeontology is an interactive distance learning course specifically developed for smaller groups of homeschooled students, which makes it the first of its kind says Distance Learning Coordinator Megan McLauchlin.
“We wanted to use technology to reach out to a new audience and see if we could inspire additional students who would otherwise not be able to connect with us.”
Launching in 2015, Experience Palaeontology allows homeschooled students to connect via their personal computer to participate in interactive sessions with a distance learning instructor at the museum in an interactive, peer-to-peer “virtual field trip” with up to two other groups simultaneously.
Sessions have students, primarily ages 8 to 11, participate in interactive and cooperative games, such as working together as directors of a museum to develop fossil displays and exhibits.
The courses, offered three times a week, build upon concepts and prior knowledge and encourages students to work with each other.
“This is a way to have a field trip without even leaving the building. It reduces administration and costs for schools” says McLauchlin.
Experience Paleontology, now in its second season, as connected the Tyrrell with homeschoolers in Alberta, BC, Ontario, Quebec, and the Yukon, and the furthest reach being Trinidad and Tobago. Its distance learning program has reached 11 of 13 provinces/territories, 37 U.S. States, and has reached out to eight countries around the world.
“We want to be a global museum that has a far reach, and we’re in a unique position as Canada’s only strictly palaeontological museum,” says McLauchlin
“Whenever I talk to other content providers, other museums or zoos, they say, ‘you guys have all the fun, you have dinosaurs.’ It’s a real bonus that we have going for us. I think dinosaurs capture not just kids’ imagination but everyone’s imagination, because they used to live here on earth like us but are now extinct. We’ll never know everything about them, and I think kids get that mystery around fossils and dinosaurs.”
