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*****************************************************************************

Due to almost no budget and efforts to go green, we are nearly all 
electronic. We are developing an all encompassing field trip guide but 
it will be a pdf for  download off our website.  This will be emailed to 
all schools that we serve via their school curriculum coordinators, at 
the start of the year.

We still print, but we are very selective. We will print field trip/ed 
guides to hand out to teachers that attend our workshops. We will 
develop and print some one page marketing fliers for distribution at our 
Educator Open House and hand delivery (by UF student interns) to certain 
schools that aren't as electronically savvy yet... but even then, the 
fliers direct them to the website.

Online information/directions/forms need to be as simple and clear as 
possible. Some museums do a good job at this. We are overhauling our 
website to achieve that. And with regard to online registration, 
immediate follow-up is crucial - teachers need confirmation that their 
registration was accepted and processed.

If the website and related materials are done well, there is no need for 
hard copies that often get lost on a teacher's desk anyway.

Dianne


Dante Centuori wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> It is that time of year again-when institutions like ours are getting their big Field Trip guides off to the printers!  Thinking ahead, I was wanting to get an idea of how other places are starting to "go digital" with their school audience.  Here, we have found that our general public and family audiences are more responsive (camps registrations are almost all online, e-blasts and e-newsletters have high click-through rates, etc.) and we have cut back somewhat our reliance on print-brochures for those audiences.
>
> But for schools, rather than a shift, there seems to be a split community-there is a cluster of teachers and schools that are shifting electronically and another peak that still needs and wants brochures.  We don't want to lose audiences by "forcing them" to use e-mail and the internet.  Of course, eventually everyone will have to shift, but I see a few years ahead of us where there is still this grey zone of a split user habit in the school systems.   Yet I don't want to essentially double our efforts during this time.
>
> Are other regions seeing something like this?  Have you pushed more electronically on your schools audience?  I don't think the physical brochure will go away; we're just trying to figure out the balance.  With so many digital options and web pages getting more robust, the days of blanketing your region with a gazillion brochures to see what sticks are over (certainly with almost annual postage hikes!).
>
> Consider this a call to share best practices in field trip brochure distribution.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dante
>
>
> Dante Centuori
> Director of Creative Productions
> Great Lakes Science Center
> 601 Erieside Ave.
> Cleveland, OH  44114
> 216.696.2098 P
> 216.696.3472 F
> www.GreatScience.com<http://www.greatscience.com/>
>
>
>
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-- 
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Dianne Behringer
Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Florida
PO Box 112710
Powell Hall on Hull Road
Gainesville, FL 32611-2710
352.273.2036
www.flmnh.ufl.edu

***********************************************************************
For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
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To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
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