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Hello! This topic was forwarded to me. I haven't found the list archives
yet so I may have missed a lot of the conversation before I joined, but I
hope this is of interest.
At UO MNCH the exhibits team designed our Field to Museum dig pit together
with our paleontologists, looking at the entire paleontological process and
not just fieldwork—very STEM friendly. Thus far we've been through two
iterations. We first designed it for PaleoLab, a temporary exhibition
series that ran in 2010-2011, and we currently have a rebooted version on
the floor for the prototyping phase of developing our new natural history
hall.
The physical space consists of an "Oregon Beach" dig pit, a long tabletop
lab space with referenc materials, tools and room to work, and drawers or
shelves for collections. From left to right, from the dig pit to the
collections, text panels invite visitors to take a fossil from field to
museum. The steps and stations on the panels mirror the process that
PaleoLab outlined for our own paleontologists. There are optional kid-sized
lab coats and safety glasses, of course!
The four stations are:
*Excavation* - finding something interesting "in the field."
*Preparation* - play cleaning, measurement, weighing, and close examination
and drawing of the specimen.
*Conservation* - using comparative collection and/or book to ID and label
the specimen, placing it in an archival box and recording information in a
fossil logbook.
*Curation* - finding a place in the right drawer/shelf and recording the
location in the logbook.
Our homemade dig pit unit is a corner unit about 4x4 feet wide, with about
3x3 feet of actual pit. It's made of a wooden frame with glued-on carved
home insulation rocks, coated in layers of tinted concrete and painted.
It's functional but has had some crumbling issues so the final version will
use different materials.
The matrix consists of washed 2" river rock from a local landscaping
supplier. The round rocks are easy to handle and don't make a mess if they
escape (though that hasn't been an issue), nonallergenic, not attractive to
bugs, and add to the realism of the beach site.
Mixed into the river rock are the following materials, all in pieces
roughly the same size as the river rock or slightly larger:
*Fossils*
- fossil bone chunks (broken pieces without context donated by our
paleontologists)
- fossil shells, mostly infilled clams
- chunks of fossil wood
- sedimentary rock nodules, some with shells visibly eroding out
*"Other"*
- modern shells
- large beach agates
Despite using real and pocketable fossils, shells and agates, we haven't
had any significant theft or destruction of the dig pit contents—or any at
all, that I know of. The tiniest kids will just sit by the dig pit and
enjoy making piles of objects by size or color. Older kids, families and
adults can take their objects though any or all of the listed steps. It's
an open-ended process that doesn't rely on getting every step just right,
so visitors can pick and choose what looks fun or interesting and still
have a full experience. However, we've learned that kids really get into
filling out the Collections Log. Go figure.
It's been such a success that visitors were upset when they came back to
find that the dig pit had gone away when our temporary PaleoLab exhibits
changed out—a sure sign that we had to bring the concept back for our new
hall.
We have a few photos of the original Field to Museum interactive in the
MNCH photo galleries on Facebook. Here it is in a rare empty
moment<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=345678626243&set=a.345678051243.161909.186158966243&type=3&theater>,
and some family<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=345678476243&set=a.345678051243.161909.186158966243&type=3&theater>
action<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=345678531243&set=a.345678051243.161909.186158966243&type=3&theater>
shots<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=345678516243&set=a.345678051243.161909.186158966243&type=3&theater>
.
Dorothy
--
Dorothy Bayern
Exhibitions Coordinator
Museum of Natural and Cultural History
1224 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1224
541 346-8020
http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/
~
*Explore Oregon in the Making* Come help us test material for our future
exhibit hall, *Explore Oregon*
*Out in Space, Back in Time: Images from the Hubble Space Telescope*
*Tidewaters* Platinum/Palladium Photography by Rich Bergeman
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Ann Craig <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Do you want to take this or I will...
> Ann S. Craig ****
> *_______________________________________*****
> Associate Director, Public Programs****
> Exhibitions and Education****
> Museum of Natural & Cultural History****
> University of Oregon****
> 541-346-3116 [log in to unmask]****
> *___________________________________________*****
> MailingAddress: 1224 University of Oregon****
> Street Address: 1680 East 15th Street****
> Eugene, OR 97403****
> http://natural-history.uoregon.edu****
> Explore Oregon in the Making****
> Open for your feedback beginning June 15
> ** **
> Chair, Museums of Springfield and Eugene
>
> North Eugene Representative, Lane County Cultural Coalition
> ** **
> Board Member, Oregon Museum Association
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *Andrea Hart <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject: **Re: Dig Pit Experience*
> *Date: *September 27, 2012 8:35:19 AM PDT
> *To: *[log in to unmask]
> *Reply-To: *Informal Science Education Network <
> [log in to unmask]>
>
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
>
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Hi Erich,
>
> We are looking for Paleontological the pits are in our dinosaur hall.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Andrea
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Informal Science Education Network
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Erich Rose
> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:24 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Dig Pit Experience
>
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
> Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
> ************************************************************************
>
>
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