Bill from the Field Museum showing a large fossil archival area
Today was the first substantive day of the I Dig Tanzania field trip to Chicago, since yesterday was really just the New York folks arriving and heading to Wrigley Field. Today was totally action-packed, with in-depth tours of the Field Museum’s incredible fossil holdings, discussions about the fossil collection and preservation process, presentations by the kids to the public, and lots of group bonding between the New Yorkers and the Chicagoans.
I’m so proud of our teens for putting together such great presentations of their work in a very short period of time. The audience of Field Museum staff, researchers, supporters, parents and related educational institutions in Chicago all seemed really into the kids’ presentations and the I Dig Tanzania project in general, which bodes well for this kind of approach to virtual world education.
Tomorrow we go more in-depth into the evolution of the earth as an ecosystem, do some drumming with Tanzanian musicians, watch a video of the Tanzanian research team’s trip, and chat in-person with several of the paleontologists in person.