Format
1. In classroom lab work needs to be completed. so students have data for the VFT to be effective learning.
2. Virtual Field Trip Format
• Students join our Museum Educator with their data information and the locked breakout box before them in their classroom
• Students will use their devices to reference the class Google Doc and Kahoot! Jumble learning game throughout the VFT.
• The Museum Educator will lead students through opening six locks on a breakout box over the course of the program.
• The students must actively use the evidence collected from their in-class lab to unlock each lock. They will be timed!!
• Inside the breakout box, students discover Ashfall Fossil Beds and the five horse genera that were found in the ash, living at the same place and time 12 million years ago. This final piece of evidence supports the explanation of evolution as a branching tree of life, with multiple genera co-existing, rather than a linear progression through time.
Objectives
Participants will:
• Actively engage with evidence gathered from fossil pollen, fossil teeth and fossil horse feet to explain how natural selection leads to adaptations in horse populations;
• Practice using scientific tools and multiple lines of evidence to explain concepts;
• Learn to record data, develop an explanation, and reinforce scientific concepts;
• Recognize that evolution is not a linear process;
• Be introduced to vertebrate paleontologists and the University of Nebraska State Museum collections.