{"id":1845,"date":"2019-07-18T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T07:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2019-07-18T08:29:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T07:29:46","slug":"raising-the-game-evolutionary-education-in-a-virtual-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/raising-the-game-evolutionary-education-in-a-virtual-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising the game – evolutionary education in a virtual museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Palaeontology \u2013 the study of past life \u2013 is a key element of understanding biology, changes in life over time and responses to large scale environmental changes. Despite this, the extent to which schools can teach their students about the subject is often limited by access to teaching materials, in terms of both funding to buy physical resources and space to store them. Looking at digital collections of specimens residing in museums around the world could be a way round this, but then schools run into the problem that such collections tend to be research-oriented and not constructed or presented to facilitate public or educational use. Even if they are able to look at these databases online, complex structures and specialist language are unlikely to be accessible or engaging for school students (or their teachers and families who may be supporting them to complete their work) to explore. Trips to visit physical museums, while undoubtedly of great value, can bring their own difficulties, with aspects such as cost, logistics and time out of school to consider and aren\u2019t an experience or learning resource that can be offered regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In an effort to find a solution, the Virtual Natural History\nMuseum<\/a> is a novel engagement project that aims\nto consolidate\npalaeontological multimedia into a single educational resource. The website takes the form of a giant\ncomputer game museum which visitors can explore, just as they would a physical\nmuseum, viewing digital versions of fossils and other items you\u2019d find in a\nmuseum as they go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The virtual museum will be free to\nuse and will run within website browsers, so no additional software will be\nrequired. This way, anyone with an internet connection will be able access world-class\nnatural history collections and learn about fossils and past environments, from\nwherever they are. The website will mainly rely on the online research catalogues\nthat museums produce for academics, bringing them together in one place and\nmaking them accessible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The project is ripe for development\nfor use in schools, as a resource for teachers to set homework projects and\nclass-based tasks to explore the world of fossils, dinosaurs and more. In order\nto understand how the team behind the museum can continue to create this\nexciting new resource in a way that will best suit schools and teachers, we are\nengaging with teachers from primary and secondary schools, as well as science\ncommunicators, in research to find out where they should go next. The V-NHM\nproject is hosted by<\/a> the University\nof Bristol, with UWE Bristol leading this pilot research to inform its future\ndevelopment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re doing this by running an online\nsurvey<\/a> which allows educators to try out the museum and give\ntheir thoughts, conducting focused interviews with teachers to further explore\ntheir perspective on the virtual natural history museum concept, and giving\nprimary and secondary schools students the opportunity to test the museum\nconcept and give their feedback. Their insights will be invaluable in directing\nthe future of the virtual museum, and school students participating in the\nstudy are enjoying the opportunity to be involved with and contribute to real\nlife research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about this research, please\ncontact Dr Laura Hobbs<\/a>;\nto find out more about the Virtual Natural History Museum please contact the\nproject lead, Dave Marshall<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Palaeontology \u2013 the study of past life \u2013 is a key element of understanding biology, changes in life over time and responses to large scale environmental changes. Despite this, the extent to which schools can teach their students about the subject is often limited by access to teaching materials, in terms of both funding to … Continue reading “Raising the game – evolutionary education in a virtual museum”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[425,418,423,243,421,420,424,419,422],"class_list":["post-1845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-communication-unit","tag-dave-marshall","tag-evolution","tag-fossils","tag-laura-hobbs","tag-natural-history-museum","tag-palaeontology","tag-v-nhm","tag-virtual-museum","tag-virtual-natural-history-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1856,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions\/1856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/science-communication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}