Museo Galileo

This museum is located in Florence, Italy. The virtual museum is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. There is a map and categories that you can click for more information and pictures. The different categories include: objects, videos by thematic area, rooms, biographies, glossary, and the Museo Galileo catalogue. There are 18 rooms in the library. When you click on one room, it gives you the options of watching a video, listening to audio, and shows you the objects that are located in that room. In the museum there are over 1,000 objects that you can see with a description. There are 16 thematic areas that contain videos relating to the theme. There are sooooo many videos and there are numerous science and math related themes. There is biographical information on all of the people whose contributions have something to do with that museum, whether they are the inventor of the object or people who have quoted data within explanations. The glossary contains in depth entries in alphabetical order. Teachers of science or mathematics can use this information to supplement their lessons. The video I watched had to with angles and how they are measured.
Along with the museum, there is a library that you can access. The library contains the following:

Library

• Collective database
• Library catalogue
• Electronic journals
• Archive
• Italian bibliography of the history of science
• International Galilean bibliography
• Galileo's library
• Bibliography of E. Garin
• Name archive
• Publications

You can search the libraries and archives and you can see what journals they subscribe to, but you can't actually access their database to read the journals.

American Museum of Natural History

This museum, located in New York, has a website that is not nearly as interactive as the LOC. They do, however, have a science tab that has lots to explore. There is an 9 minute video using google earth and photographs that documents the museum's scientists as they travel the globe and look at different animals, dig up fossils and artifacts. There is a section about digging and looking for dinosaur specimens. I know this would be fun for the students to see when learning about dinosaurs. There is also an interesting tidbit of coral reefs. There is another video on that page that has to do with the ecology of climate change. The video highlights experiments done in Alaska to help predict climate change. Alaska is used because of the extreme changes that have occurred there. There are over 45 other science bulletins with topics such as space, humans, earth and bio. These could be great supplements when studying any of these topics in class.
Under the education link, you can find a field trip to the moon. It is primarily meant for before and after your visit to the planetarium there at AMNH, but it looks as though some of the resources listed could be adapted and used in the classroom when talking about the moon.
There is an interactive floorplan so you can see what is in the museum and where it's located. This would be especially helpful when planning a trip there to make sure you see what you really set out to see if your time is limited. Unless you are in the New York area and planning a trip to the museum, the videos, bulletins & podcasts are really the only things you could use in the classroom. In isn't as spectacular as the interactive LOC website.

A few virtual stops

Last week I downloaded and activated a Second Life account. I didn't get an opportunity to play with it last week, so this morning I decided to take my avatar and go visit a few places. Maybe because I am new to Second Life, but I find it difficult to figure out where to go. I had the Second Life website open and could search for places to go easily here. I was disappointed to find no Library of Congress site, but I did locate ALA's library. So, when I clicked 'go here,' my computer asked me what application to use. I got frustrated with this as I couldn't seem to find the Second Life application. When I am in the actual downloaded version of Second Life, I can't find a search bar anywhere within the destinations. So, I'm left to go through each destination category to look through. This is painstakingly slow - probably because my video card in my computer can't handle the 3D graphics efficiently. I finally made it to the Alamo, but it took me so long to get inside, I was too frustrated by that point to go any further. Possibly with more time and a faster computer, I would be able to familiarize myself enough to where I would feel comfortable navigating and instructing a class of students to navigate through it also. I can see the benefits in class after doing a study about the Alamo to being able to visit it virtually in class. Second Life is different than any other 'virtual tour' I have seen or been to. Although it is cartoonish, the characteristics of the different sites have a sense of "realness" to them.

Following my Second Life experience, I visited the Library of Congress's website. I was excited to learn about myLOC - a way to virtually visit the exhibits, look through books, listen to sound bites and see lots of interactive tools. How cool!!! I can envision this to be a great resource for lots of subjects. I went through and looked at the Thomas Jefferson's Library exhibition. The first thing that came to mind when looking at all of these fun things was to set up a scavenger hunt for the students within the Thomas Jefferson exhibit online. The kids would have a lot of fun with that and they would pick up some interesting tidbits along the way! Another exhibition that would be awesome to use in the classroom would be The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection. This shows photographs of the uniforms and weapons of the Union & Confederate soldiers of the civil war. What I noticed, too, when selecting what exhibition I wanted to view, it seems that even if the exhibitions are no longer at the LOC, they remain online to visit virtually. That makes using this site all the better because there's never that deadline of having to visit it before it's gone! In addition to the exhibitions, there is a virtual tour of the LOC. Also, there is a tab for students & teachers. This tab gives teachers lesson planning ideas and the students online activities within the LOC website. Currently, the featured online activity is Thomas Jefferson's Building: Secret Messages. Students explore the Library's historic Thomas Jefferson building to discover some of the unusual objects in and around the building, and to think about what messages these objects might send about the Library's purpose. There are more activities and there is also a list of books for young readers. I may have to check this list out to see if it gives me any ideas for my reading assignment! :)

BUMMED!!

OK, so we're leaving tomorrow to go to Austin for the day. I was putting our itinerary together and double checking addresses and directions. I went back to the website for the Austin Planetarium and was dumbfounded that I couldn't locate the address. After a good 30 minutes of looking, I finally realized that there isn't an Austin planetarium YET! I believe that they are in the fundraising stage. There is a calendar of events that makes it hard to determine if there is or isn't an actual planetarium, but it looks like all of the events on the calendar take place somewhere else. So, I guess we will be visiting the planetarium in Killeen sometime next week.

Almost ready

I'm just about ready to write my proposal. I have been doing some more online research finalizing the list of places to go. Since my topic is planets, I originally thought a trip to NASA in Houston would be a lot of fun. However, looking at the calendar and trying to squeeze in a trip to Houston does not seem viable, so I'm going to settle for visiting the planetarium in Austin. Lauren went on a field trip to the planetarium in Killeen last month and loved it. Ethan & I have been dying to visit, but when I figured out there was a planetarium in Austin, I decided that would be better since that would be a new experience for Lauren also. I'm really looking forward to that stop!!

The State Capitol seems like a no brainer, so that's a definite stop. I went on a field trip there when I was in elementary school, but haven't been there since, so I know it will be almost like my first trip there, too. This stop should also feed Ethan's hunger to know more about Texas history.

The last stop I've planned in Austin is the Bob Bullock Museum. I have done a small amount of research online, but honestly I have heard so many positive things about the museum that I feel we need to go. I was disappointed to learn that the IMAX theater was not going to be showing the movie about planets and the Hubble, but I'm sure we can find something to watch. The kids have not been to a movie in the IMAX theather, so I'm looking forward to seeing their reaction to that.

More planning

After looking through UT's long list of libraries, I found the Kuehne Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy library. This is perfect since it is physics for Charles and astronomy for me (I chose planets as my topic). Although, I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to use any information from this library in my multimedia project, maybe there will be some further suggestions about where to get information or possibly some exhibits on astronomy. Charles will be able to peruse the different physics books, so that will keep him happy! :)

After reading a few positive thoughts about the State Cemetery, I think we'll try to schedule a trip there. That should really please Ethan and we've never been there before. I was a little disappointed to see online that in order to reserve a tour guide, the party had to be 10 or more. According to a student in my class, the tour guides were great in the fact that they described some of the gruesome deaths of the buried folks in the cemetery - my kids would have gotten a kick out of that. I did notice that they do have an audio tour of the cemetery and one of the people buried there is Stephen F. Austin, so that should be enough to make up for the lack of a guided tour (Ethan is a big SFA fan).

I looked online for the address of Austin's Public Library and was saddened that I did not see one big library but several small branches of APL. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place, but since I can't seem to find one large library, I think I will reserve the public library requirement for Temple. I know that Temple is rather small compared to Austin, but it is a nice sized library and it is nearby. This is important since a public library is one where my kids can check out books. This way they can be occupied looking for books while I can hopefully get a chance to speak to one of the many librarians.

Beginning the adventure

I have started thinking about where I would like to visit. I will have my family with me - my husband, Charles and my two kids, Ethan (10) and Lauren (7) - so, I know that I need to keep that in mind as I plan. Ethan just completed 4th grade and loved learning about Texas history, so most places should excite him. Lauren goes with the flow, so I think she will be enthusiastic about any place I decide to go. Charles is a high school physics teacher, so I know that he will want me to keep that in mind in case we are able to pick up tidbits here and there for him to take back to the classroom. Since we are only an hour away from Austin, and short on time due to a summer school schedule and lots of extra-curricular activity obligations, I know that's where most of our travel will take place. Since a university library is one of the requirements, I know we'll be heading to UT. Also, Charles loves art museums, so I'm sure that the Austin Museum of Art will be on the list. I need to do some more online searching before I can add to the list.