USING MUSEUM SPECIMENS TO TEACH FLORIDA FOSSILS AND GEOLOGY ACROSS MULTIPLE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Educational resources that currently exist in the Invertebrate Paleontology Division at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) are either aimed toward providing resources to educators (e.g., creating fossil giveaways or teacher kits) or supporting academic activities (e.g., Academic Decathlon). And, while these activities have great benefits, they often do not support local communities in the city of Gainesville.

Resources and opportunities for students are not equally distributed in the Alachua County school district and students in some communities do not have access to some education programs which are offered by the FLMNH and the University of Florida. Geographic segregation of communities contributes to the inequity of resource availability and disparity of opportunities amongst schools. Our goal is to create resources that can be used in alternative educational settings, such as summer camps, after-school activities, or other informal situations, that will benefit students in local schools, especially in underserved communities. To accomplish this, we have developed activities that utilize museum specimens to teach basic concepts of Florida geology and paleontology using the Eocene Ocala Limestone, fossil and modern echinoderms, and basic elements of mineral formation and the rock cycle. For development of our educational activities, we are targeting 7th grade students in Alachua County Middle Schools to teach various activities fulfilling state standards. The activities will provide an opportunity for students to access museum specimens in an educational setting. Due to restrictions from COVID-19, we had to modify our original course of action and pivot where we were able to do so. Despite restrictions, these activities were implemented in several and in-school and after-school events. The activities were also used to develop the foundation for a Museums in the Parks Activity which was conducted in collaboration with educators at the FLMNH.

Our future directions for this set of educational activities involve creating standalone curricula, a long-term sustainability timeline for educational resources generated, and, eventually, other teaching activities using fossil fauna from the Cenozoic (both regionally and internationally).