Students were huddled on the floor in a dimly lit classroom, all peering toward the front of the class. A laptop screen with a video camera was perched on a desk, and a bubbly voice welcomed students to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
The trip from St. Paul to Drumheller typically takes close to five hours by car, but on Nov. 13, students at St. Paul Elementary School were able to take a virtual field trip to the renowned dinosaur museum, learn about fossils, and ask questions, in just 45 minutes.
The session on Thursday morning was the third one attended by this specific Grade 4 class. All Grade 4 students in the school were given the same opportunity to attend sessions of the course of two weeks.
Presentations done by science educators at the museum helped fulfill an objective requirement in the Grade 4 social students curriculum, explained Terra-Lee Gratton, a Grade 4 teacher at St. Paul Elementary. The virtual field trip is also “a great way to connect with the experts,” she says, adding, sometimes teachers simply don’t have the answers to all students’ questions.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology Distance Learning program is in its ninth season, and has so far delivered over 1,800 programs to over 50,000 students in around the world. Just last week, the museum presented to students in Australia.
After a real-time half-hour presentation by Megan McLauchlin, the distance learning coordinator at the museum, the floor was opened up to students who had questions about fossils and dinosaurs. Students eagerly fired off questions about meteors hitting the earth, the process of uncovering fossils, and evolution.
“Alberta is one of the best places in all of the world to find fossils,” said McLauchlin, as she showed students photos of fossils, and also handled real-life fossils on-screen. In a quick game of “guess who,” students got to guess what they thought the specific fossils were, including a dinosaur jawbone and fossilized coral.
The third “guess who” took a little more time, but with a few extra hints from McLauchlin, students giggled as they discovered they were looking at a fossilized chunk of coprolite, or as it is better known – dinosaur dung.
McLauchlin then brought up a photo of a special item in the museum’s collection. Measuring 35 cm in length, a large, oddly shaped coprolite fossil was brought up on the screen. Scientists believe the 66-million-year-old coprolite is from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“You never know where you’re going to find fossils,” McLauchlin told the kids.
Just days before the presentation at St. Paul Elementary, news broke that fishermen in the Castle River area found a unique fossil in a boulder earlier this year. Students watched a video showing the 2,500 lb. boulder being removed from the river and airlifted to Drumheller where it’s being researched. The fossils in the rock are believed to be that of a new type of duck-billed dinosaur.
It is believed that the boulder was dislodged during the floods in southern Alberta in 2013.
Following the presentation, students were happy to share their thoughts on the virtual field trip. Gabriel Boyd said he had never been to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in person, and that he didn’t know too much about dinosaurs before the sessions.
When asked what his favourite part was, Boyd said he liked seeing all the pictures, but also enjoyed “asking questions.”
Triton Hughes said he had already seen some of the material covered when he visited the museum previously, but liked learning about Ornithomimus, a dinosaur that is believed to have had feathers.
Gratton said this was the first time she did a virtual field trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The response from students confirmed that this is something Gratton will likely do again in future years.
