Madison Project Winds Up In Chicago Museum
May 14, 2019 at 1:38 a.m.
By David [email protected]
The subject was enormous – the prehistoric megalodon shark.
It started over a year ago when Erryn Blake, media specialist at Madison, was asked to become an ambassador for the Field Museum.
The museum’s ambassador program “is a community outreach for the Field Museum to give resources to schools and allow students access to the museum where they wouldn’t have it before,” Blake said.
She and her family are members of the museum. When they were at a special members-only event, Blake was asked to become an ambassador, and that’s how the project started.
Blake said the megalodon was chosen for their project because “we wanted to do something fun, and something museum-related since it’s a museum of natural history. I thought, instead of just doing a dinosaur, the kids would really resonate to do a big, giant prehistoric shark.”
The movie “The Meg” – about a group of scientists who encounter a 75-foot-long megalodon shark on the floor of the Pacific Ocean – came out in 2018, when Blake began her Field Museum project. While the project took one year for Blake to complete, the Madison students participated for six weeks.
To graduate in the ambassadors program, Blake had to complete an action-based research inquiry, which is a research study with her students on a problem in her classroom and how to solve it.
“So, since I’m digital learning, the biggest problem I see with our students is device addiction and how do we get them away from their device long enough to really get authenticate learning,” she said.
The megalodon project was based on marrying technology and hands-on projects to see how students prefer to learn – digitally or hands-on – and if the students have greater retention with either way.
“So we set out to prove if we could marry both, if they would be successful, and we did. At the beginning of the research inquiry, most of the class, about 90%, preferred to use devices. By the end of the project, which was six weeks, about 80% of them preferred to do hands-on. They put their devices down and really wanted to be working with their hands,” she said.
Fourth-grader Zack Reneker, 10, said, “We got to 3D print and we did a lot of research on some websites about shark factors and stuff like that. We looked up megalodons and we found some cool stuff about them.”
Ten-year-old Olivia Sommer said they looked up how long the megalodon was, what it ate and other facts.
Reneker said the prehistoric shark was 60 feet long. “So our principal (Ben Barkey) is 6 foot. That would be 10 of our principals,” he said.
Blake’s daughters, Winnie, 11, and Gwen, 10, are both in the fourth grade and got to help with the project.
“I was super duper excited because I’m really interested in prehistoric animals, so I got really excited during the megalodon project. I also liked the fossils, but I also liked writing down our surveys to the Field Museum staff,” Winnie said.
Gwen said, “The most favorite thing I learned about is how much the megalodon could eat in one day and how old it could live to be.”
She said it could eat “maybe 10 or six Mr. Barkeys. ... It could eat the whole fourth grade basically.”
Blake said the students had access to actual megalodon fossiled teeth that were 23 million years old. They had worksheets to help determine how big the megalodon was, its age and where it would have lived.
“I built a 60-foot great white shark in the hall for the kids so that we could actually use it as a comparison of measurement. We got in to see how many of us would fit in the megalodon, would it be full, how many people, how long it was, how wide it was. They loved that,” Blake said.
A vinyl tape outline of a megalodon was put in the hallway, which became a “school-wide phenomenon” and all the students learned about the megalodon, she said.
Students got to dive with great white sharks using virtual reality. The great white shark is considered a cousin of the megalodon.
“So we really tried to marry technology and hands-on to get that personal connection with (students), which we did. It created a pride of ownership and this was theirs, and we were able to prove our theory,” Blake said.
Reneker said the project was “really fun,” and Sommer agreed.
“We got to learn what it did and what it ate and other stuff,” Sommer said.
“And before this, I never knew that much about megalodons, but now I really do,” said Reneker.
He said the megalodon tooth was “pretty big. It was the size of my hand and it was really bony.”
Besides 3D printing shark teeth, Reneker said some students helped print some stuff so Blake could take it to the museum to present.
Blake graduated May 2 as a full ambassador of the Field Museum with all the rights and privileges that come with it.
“So I get to work at the museum and bring resources here to Madison,” she said.
Recently she brought back cases of a bug collection from the museum for the second-grade classes’ bug unit. The students got to see different insects that they were researching. And then she brought in a display of bats because bats eat the insects.
“We can actually bring things like that to Madison to show them. There are different opportunities. Like this summer, I’ll be taking Madison students up there with the botany department and they’ll be sorting specimens and relabeling them for research going on at the museum,” Blake said.
She said she showed that despite being in the digital age, “we still really need to keep doing those hands-on projects because they need it, they love it. Just sticking an iPad in front of them isn’t always going to get the job done as far as learning because they don’t connect with it.”
The subject was enormous – the prehistoric megalodon shark.
It started over a year ago when Erryn Blake, media specialist at Madison, was asked to become an ambassador for the Field Museum.
The museum’s ambassador program “is a community outreach for the Field Museum to give resources to schools and allow students access to the museum where they wouldn’t have it before,” Blake said.
She and her family are members of the museum. When they were at a special members-only event, Blake was asked to become an ambassador, and that’s how the project started.
Blake said the megalodon was chosen for their project because “we wanted to do something fun, and something museum-related since it’s a museum of natural history. I thought, instead of just doing a dinosaur, the kids would really resonate to do a big, giant prehistoric shark.”
The movie “The Meg” – about a group of scientists who encounter a 75-foot-long megalodon shark on the floor of the Pacific Ocean – came out in 2018, when Blake began her Field Museum project. While the project took one year for Blake to complete, the Madison students participated for six weeks.
To graduate in the ambassadors program, Blake had to complete an action-based research inquiry, which is a research study with her students on a problem in her classroom and how to solve it.
“So, since I’m digital learning, the biggest problem I see with our students is device addiction and how do we get them away from their device long enough to really get authenticate learning,” she said.
The megalodon project was based on marrying technology and hands-on projects to see how students prefer to learn – digitally or hands-on – and if the students have greater retention with either way.
“So we set out to prove if we could marry both, if they would be successful, and we did. At the beginning of the research inquiry, most of the class, about 90%, preferred to use devices. By the end of the project, which was six weeks, about 80% of them preferred to do hands-on. They put their devices down and really wanted to be working with their hands,” she said.
Fourth-grader Zack Reneker, 10, said, “We got to 3D print and we did a lot of research on some websites about shark factors and stuff like that. We looked up megalodons and we found some cool stuff about them.”
Ten-year-old Olivia Sommer said they looked up how long the megalodon was, what it ate and other facts.
Reneker said the prehistoric shark was 60 feet long. “So our principal (Ben Barkey) is 6 foot. That would be 10 of our principals,” he said.
Blake’s daughters, Winnie, 11, and Gwen, 10, are both in the fourth grade and got to help with the project.
“I was super duper excited because I’m really interested in prehistoric animals, so I got really excited during the megalodon project. I also liked the fossils, but I also liked writing down our surveys to the Field Museum staff,” Winnie said.
Gwen said, “The most favorite thing I learned about is how much the megalodon could eat in one day and how old it could live to be.”
She said it could eat “maybe 10 or six Mr. Barkeys. ... It could eat the whole fourth grade basically.”
Blake said the students had access to actual megalodon fossiled teeth that were 23 million years old. They had worksheets to help determine how big the megalodon was, its age and where it would have lived.
“I built a 60-foot great white shark in the hall for the kids so that we could actually use it as a comparison of measurement. We got in to see how many of us would fit in the megalodon, would it be full, how many people, how long it was, how wide it was. They loved that,” Blake said.
A vinyl tape outline of a megalodon was put in the hallway, which became a “school-wide phenomenon” and all the students learned about the megalodon, she said.
Students got to dive with great white sharks using virtual reality. The great white shark is considered a cousin of the megalodon.
“So we really tried to marry technology and hands-on to get that personal connection with (students), which we did. It created a pride of ownership and this was theirs, and we were able to prove our theory,” Blake said.
Reneker said the project was “really fun,” and Sommer agreed.
“We got to learn what it did and what it ate and other stuff,” Sommer said.
“And before this, I never knew that much about megalodons, but now I really do,” said Reneker.
He said the megalodon tooth was “pretty big. It was the size of my hand and it was really bony.”
Besides 3D printing shark teeth, Reneker said some students helped print some stuff so Blake could take it to the museum to present.
Blake graduated May 2 as a full ambassador of the Field Museum with all the rights and privileges that come with it.
“So I get to work at the museum and bring resources here to Madison,” she said.
Recently she brought back cases of a bug collection from the museum for the second-grade classes’ bug unit. The students got to see different insects that they were researching. And then she brought in a display of bats because bats eat the insects.
“We can actually bring things like that to Madison to show them. There are different opportunities. Like this summer, I’ll be taking Madison students up there with the botany department and they’ll be sorting specimens and relabeling them for research going on at the museum,” Blake said.
She said she showed that despite being in the digital age, “we still really need to keep doing those hands-on projects because they need it, they love it. Just sticking an iPad in front of them isn’t always going to get the job done as far as learning because they don’t connect with it.”
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