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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Hello New Mexico.

        Liberty Science Center offers distance learning programs using
video conferencing equipment.  We are located in Union City, New Jersey
and our programs is called Electronic Field Trip (EFTs).

Here are some answers to your questions:
We offer fully interactive programs which follow educational teaching
principals, such as inquiry based science and multiple intelligence
using these principal we can engage students during the lesson.  All our
programs are live and use hands-on activities to enhance the lessons. 
We don't offer canned programs because we like to work with the
teacher's current curriculum.  We contact the teacher to find out what
they are teaching and determine how we can be a resource for them. 

We have connected to multiple classrooms and the typical class size we
serve is 30 students per class.  The length of the programs is 45
minutes.

Our instructors are teachers, scientist, and science majors.  We also
follow a team teaching method.  All programs are available on our
website http://www.lsc.org/education/eft/eft.html as a PDF file.

- Is classroom technology and equipment a stumbling block to building
your customer base?  In order to minimize issues with the technology we
ask all sites that are participating in a lesson to do a test connection
with our bridging service.  There are times when technology is an issue
and therefore we can reschedule a program to a later date.

- How long have you been offering distance learning, and how many venues
do you serve annually? We have been up and running for 10 years and
every year we have been improving the programs by asking for feedback
and updating our technology.  

- One of the challenges we faced in the inital start of the program was
deciding what lessons we should create and when to stop customizing the
programs.  Although that is also a positive point because it enables us
to be versital as long as we don't over extend ourselves.  



Rosa Catala
Electronic Program Coordinator

201.866.8730
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