LSU VIRTUAL MUSEUM: TECHNOLOGICALLY ENHANCED TEACHER WORKSHOPS FOR LOUISIANA K-8 EDUCATORS

The Virtual Museum, a Louisiana Board of Regents sponsored SELECT program, is a collaborative project between the Museum of Natural Science and the French Education project at Louisiana State University. It offers Louisiana science and French teachers a professional development program via six videoconferences. This teacher population was selected because in Louisiana, there are two types of K-8 science teachers: teachers in ‘traditional' classroom settings and teachers in immersion programs. In the Foreign language Immersion programs, the target language (French or Spanish) is the language of instruction and communication in the classroom.

For each videoconference, teachers are provided classroom-ready activities, content material, information on available loan material and on-line resources, including pre-made PowerPoint presentations and virtual museum photos, in French and in English. These videoconferences are broadcast from LSU to six distance-learning sites across the state of Louisiana.

Three of the videoconferences emphasize regional and statewide earth science topics including Louisiana fossils, rocks and minerals, and field techniques used to interpret Louisiana's rich Native American history. The activities provided for teachers are hands-on, inquiry based classroom exercises that focus on the availability of local materials. These activities can also be scaled for use in a variety of grade-levels and teachers will be encouraged to use them in their classrooms. In addition, the program should foster new collaboration between science teachers in regular programs and immersion schools while boosting the interest statewide for natural science topics.