Greetings from Panama!

We arrived two days ago. I'm here with 11 educators from CA, FL and NM, Claudia Grant, and Gary Morgan.

Yesterday we went to Lake Alajuela and found some great Miocene fossils. One of our interns Evan Whiting found this beautiful Meg tooth.

Today we go to Gatun to collect Miocene invertebrates. Its all very exciting stuff. Sorry for the short blog, but I have to get ready to go into the field!

You can also follow my daily Tweets @brucemacfadden

A weekend in Maine?

Last Thursday we left for 5 days in Maine to be with friends for a mini vacation. We flew to LaGuardia in NY where the airport was pandemonium, there was no air conditioning, and it was crowded and stifling. That way no one had to go to a sauna because they got one right in the airport. To make things even worse, as we were going to our gate, we saw the following--

So our flight to Maine was cancelled, and they could not rebook us for two days! Bummer. We decided to go into NY and make a short holiday of it, even if we had rather been in Maine.

We stayed on the Upper West Side--near the American Museum of Natural History--where I was a student back in the 70s. On the 4th of July we first went to the New York Historical Society. It is a really cool museum with some innovative exhibition strategies for engaging lifelong learners.  That particular day it was the opening of the Madeline artwork exhibit, so the place was mobbed with family learning groups, some of whom were learning, others just being hypervocal and generally having too much uncontrolled fun.

The NYHS has a cool exhibit called open storage, where their museum artifacts are in the public exhibit area where people can see them as displays. It makes an impact about the size and diversity of their collections. It wasn't science, but it was innovative. We have done this to a limited degree with our butterfly collection--so that the public can look into it.  Here are some Tiffany lamps from the permanent collections at the NYHS. More natural history museums should be doing this so the people can see the collections behind the scenes.

And finally, as we learned from Darcie's talk about effective museum exhibits, they should be evocative, i.e., result in an emotional impact. This happened to me, with the display below of a gouged door from a NYFD fire truck from 911, with photos of 911 in the background.

But we made the best of it anyway. I like to see how other museums, regardless of the content (science, history, art, etc.) do their exhibits and displays.

On the second evening I wanted to show Jeannette Columbia University where I did my Ph.D. So here I am in front of the iconic Low Memorial Library on the main quad.

So if things had gone according to plans, I'd still be in Maine.  But we made the best of it anyway!

CPET teachers and horse evolution

Today we finished the horse evolution module. The teachers came up with some amazing lesson plans using fossil horses. They also are very interested in digitization.

Here we are at the end of the afternoon after finishing up working with the study set and a tour of the McPowell Hall exhibits.

Fossil horses: Down with orthogenesis!

Following up on my blog post from last night, and thanks to Richard Hulbert and Kristen McKenzie for pulling the relevant specimens from our collections, I am now excited and ready for this afternoon's session on fossil horse evolution with the teachers from UF's CPET (Center for Precollegiate Education and Training).

After a brief orientation, the 10 teachers will break into 2 groups to develop a lesson plan about evolution using the fossil horse study set (photo).  I will explain the pitfalls of developing a straight-line (orthogenetic) pattern of horse evolution so they don't go down that path!

Fossil horse study set.

CPET Evolution program

30 June 2014

Tomorrow afternoon I will host 10 Florida science teachers at the Florida Museum of Natural History research collections in vertebrate paleontology. We will tour the collections and then develop a lesson plan on horse evolution. We will then go over to the exhibits museum at Powell hall and tour the Fossil Hall.

This should be fun and I am looking forward to participating in the UF CPET (Center for Precollegiate Education and Training) program.

I will take photos of the activities tomorrow.

TV show and Fossil kits

19 June 2014

This past Monday evening I taped a TV show on the Panama Project with Ilene Silverman. Here is a photo after the shoot, when I could relax.

This morning I presented a talk to 45 summer campers at the FLMNH on Fossils and Paleontology. Lots of enthusiasm, energy, and questions. After a brief introduction I then had the students (1st through ?4th graders) break up in groups and identify fossils in a fossil kit that I assembled for them.  After  they had a time to try to ID the fossils we all went over each fossil one-by-one and compared them to picture I put on the board in a ppt.

They were able to ID some of the fossils easily, others were more difficult. Next time I'd add some plants, invertebrates, and possibly some microfossils in a vial.

Miscellaneous activities

16 June 2014

For my weekly blog----

I really enjoyed the class last week on Diversity, etc. The students were engaged and there was great discussion. Thanks! Wednesday's class on evaluation should be good to--it is a really important component of ISL. I went ahead and nominated someone for UF President. Not sure what will happen, but at least I felt that I tried to be part of the search process.

This evening I was interviewed on a TV show for the Gainesville market about the Panama Canal Project. When I get a picture and more details, I'll let you know. It was fun, and the host, Ilene Silverman, was very gracious.

On Thursday, I'm going to talk about fossils to Callum's summer classes at the FL Museum. This should be fun. About 45 enthusiastic fossil kids.

Then I'm off for a week's vacation and family reunion at a house on a lake in TN, north of Knoxville. I'm probably going to go through internet withdrawal because I heard the connection in the lake house is not so good, and this is one of the few places where Verizon is not so good. What will I do? If it is bad for me, it is likely worse for my three grandsons, so we will all be in the same boat together (as they say).

On July 1st I'm working with UF's CPET (Center for Precollegiate Education and Training)  to do a module on fossil horses, paleontology, and evolution. There will be 10 high-school teachers from Florida. I'm looking forward to working with them, and hope perhaps that we can develop a lesson plan that could be a model for studying horse evolution.

One of our graduate students, Claudia Grant, is organizing a pilot workshop for teacher PD for 3D scanning and printing of fossils. This, coupled with the recent article in the Gainesville Sun, makes 3D S&P all the more relevant. We also have partnered with iDigBio to develop a workshop on 3D S&P for "downstream users," including teachers and members of fossil clubs, to be held in 2015. All good stuff!

I will try to update this blog with photos as they are available.

A new world--3D scanning and printing of fossils

Over the past several months I've gotten hooked on the idea and potential of 3D technology applied to classroom learning, using fossils. The workflow here includes:
-scanning the real fossil;
-placing the image file in a cloud so other can access the image and the associated (meta-) data; and
-retrieving and downloading a fossil 3D scan, and the printing it out.
The scanning and printing technology has evolved rapidly in the past few years and now it is doable with a compact desktop application.

Here Dr. Aaron Wood of UF (Florida Museum of Natural History) is demonstrating a portable scanning set-up including a laptop and scanner (silver box to left in at the back of the table). The scanned image, which happens to be a megalodon shark tooth, is on the turntable, and the final scanned image is on the screen. This demonstration was done at the iDigBio-sponsored 3D Paleo-digitization Workshop held in Austin TX from April 29th until 1 May.

 

I've also seen several different kinds of 3D printers. Many public libraries have makers' labs, which include 3D printing, I'm told. The attached image is of a student demonstrating a small #d printer in a mobile science lab last year at the Cade Museum in Gainesville.

 

I'm told that these kinds of printers use a material like monofilament fishing line to fabricate the object from the image.

 

Right now the objects that are printed are primarily monochromatic, i.e., the color of the monofilament plastic. The new breakthroughs in the technology are being made in actually replicating the colors of the actual scanned object. This will be so cool for example, in museum displays.

 

I think that the application of this 3D workflow has the potential to revolutionize access to fossils in a cloud and science learning.

 

I have been talking with Professors in UF's College of Education and graduate students about developing a project that moves forward with this idea, with the intention of working with schools (e.g., in California and Florida, but perhaps elsewhere also) to implement this 3D project.

 

Anyone else interested? 

 

The Real Deal--Fossil horses

4 June 2014

This morning I received a bag of fossil horse teeth (see below) that are not needed in our research collections. These can be used for K12 learning modules. I am excited

because students can learn from the real fossils.

Bruce's trip to California

Monday, 2 June 2014

Last week I traveled to California to do pre-trip orientation (PD) with the 10 teachers who will be joining me in Panama in July. These teachers include four from Florida (Alachua and Hillsborough counties), two from new Mexico, and four from Santa Cruz County, California. I was also joined by my colleague Gary Morgan, a paleontology curator at the New  Mexico Museum of Natural History, as well as graduate students Catalina Pimiento and Claudia Grant.

We spent one day (Thursday) in orientation and the next (Friday) in classroom visits in the local schools.  I also met with superintendents and NGSS resource people to discuss other upcoming projects. There is lots to share here, but one of many highlights of the trip was a visit to a Fossil museum designed and built by middle schoolers at Cesar Chavez  MS. This was largely the inspiration of their teachers Jill Madden, who was a participant on the Panama trip in 2013.

 Classroom fossil museum entrance, Cesar Chavez MS.

Fossil display in museum, including Panama and California marine fossils, and ID chart produced 

by the UF iDigBio project.

UF biology PH.D. student Catalina Pimiento (center, first row, red dress) with Laura Beach's (white blouse, to left of Catalina) AP Biology class, Soquel High School, California

CAVEAT: All photos are for my blog. They are NOT to be forwarded or reproduced without my permission.

PS. I forget to mention in my initial post above then when we arrived (bleary eyed) on Wednesday evening in Santa Cruz, California our first stop was to attend a Science cafe led by a UCSC professor who works on endangered raptor birds.  It was a nice way to break the ice with the new teachers. The local IPA was also good!

Bruce's Blog

21 May 2014

Tomorrow I leave for a fossil festival in Aurora NC. This should be fun.  I'll update my blog on my journey.

26 May 2014
This past weekend I attended the Aurora NC Fossil festival. About 10,000 people converged on this tiny town in eastern NC for things paleontological. The reason for this festival is because one of the richest fossil localities in the world is from the phosphate mines just NW of Aurora.  This Lee Creek Mine yields beautiful  teeth of the giant extinct shark Megalodon. I collected 20-million-year-old fossils from a mine on Friday, participated in a 3.1 K fun run on Saturday, gave a talk on Sat afternoon, and generally enjoyed the festivities. This included a visit to the local Aurora fossil museum, exhibitors displays, not to mention the parade and "Little Miss Fossil" contest. This was the epitome of a free-choice, informal learning environment.

 Rob, President of Aurora Fossil Club, showing his fossil teeth collected from Belgrade mine.

 Aurora Fossil Museum, mainstreet Aurora.

 Exhibiting personal fossil collection during festival.

 Meg reconstruction at entrance of exhibit.

Meg "float" at parade.