Category: Learning

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Look out Oxford…

GTT

There’s a flurry of last minute activity around here at the moment. Display cases are being collected; a funny proto-human ape creature model is being cleaned and prepared for the limelight; and logo-adorned lab coats are being freshly starched and pressed. We are preparing to go to town.

Mobile site
The smartphone-friendly Goes to Town website

You may have seen our teaser trailer a few weeks back. If not, you can check it out here. It didn’t give much away, but regular readers of this blog deserve a proper heads-up: Next week we will be installing twelve specimens in venues all around Oxford city centre, creating the Goes to Town trail, accompanied by a specially-designed mobile website.

You can see what the goestotown.com website will look like on the right here. It features lots of extra info about each specimen on the trail, along with audio recordings about each exhibit made by Museum staff and Oxford University scientists. The site will go fully live after the specimens are all safely in their new homes next week.

Goes to Town will remain in the twelve Oxford venues for six months. During that time residents and visitors to the city can complete the trail and enter our competition. Every specimen display has two Top Trumps-style ratings, one for Danger and one for Rarity. If you tell us which has the highest rating in each category we’ll enter you into a draw for prizes to be awarded when the Museum reopens in February 2014.

There will be another little film to follow too, so watch out for that. In the meantime we need to get back to preparing our crate-clad displays. As you can see below, the workshop chaps are beavering away at this right now…

See you in town!

Crate
Preparing the displays

Scott Billings – Communications coordinator

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Red rug to a dodo

Red carpet OxTalent
Enjoying our moment on the red carpet

Wow, we have an award-winning blog! I’m pleased to say that Darkened not Dormant was announced as a runner up for an OxTALENT award this evening. The awards “recognise and reward excellence in teaching and learning supported by ICT” within Oxford University.

Communications Officer Scott Billings and I attended the celebrations and we were genuinely flattered to have been nominated, let alone get a prize.

OxTalent celebrations
Celebrations after the awards

The blog was recognised in the Use of Technology for Outreach and Engagement category, and there was also a mention of the Museum’s Twitter account @morethanadodo. It turns out that the Dodo has quite a following around Oxford!

Rachel Parle, Education Officer

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Fascinating Plants

Girl with bee

As part of the annual Fascination of Plants day, the Education Team headed off to Harcourt Arboretum for what promised to be a fun day in the great outdoors, inspiring visitors with the amazing things plants do for us.

General Gazebo shot
Our gazebo pops up again!

Our stall, ‘Bees, Seeds and Dinosaur Feed!’ offered three activities to entertain visitors. For one, we were lucky enough to have been lent some beautiful fossils from the Geology department. Armed with ‘wow’ examples of prehistoric ferns, horsetails and clubmosses, we certainly impressed passers-by with the fossilised ancestors of many plants they could see in the Arboretum today.

 

Fossil handling
Simone shows off a beautiful fossilised specimen

Man with microscopeAlso, our ‘Science Saturdays’ family activities came out of closure-hibernation. We took out our Entomology activity, which allowed visitors to see some bee specimens up close and discover how important they are for pollination. And the day saw the maiden voyage of our brand new activity ‘Plant Power’, designed especially for the day. Families identified some of the pressed specimens on display in the Museum, tried out a microscope and learned about the amazing properties plants have. 

Throughout the day there were hands-on activities and displays, guided walks and trials from many other organisations. The University of Oxford Plant Sciences Department, Plant Life, and Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust to name a few.

peacockWith a steady flow of people all day, Janet, Sarah, our intrepid volunteers and myself were kept busy with questions and interested visitors. Entertained every now and then with the occasional peacock display of course!

Huge thanks to the Harcourt Arboretum and Botanic Garden teams for organising such a great day, and the volunteers who came along to give us a hand!

Simone Dogherty, Education Assistant

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Meet Professor Dodo

Professor Dodo

A couple of weeks ago we opened Natural Histories, our temporary exhibition developed in collaboration with, and hosted at, the Museum of the History of Science. If you’re in Oxford and haven’t been to see it, pop in to the MHS on Broad Street; the exhibition’s in the basement.

There’s a host of interesting things to look at, including the jaw of the first scientifically described dinosaur, the Megalosaurus; a gigantic ammonite fossil which you can touch; and specimens collected by Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on board The Beagle.

Monstrosities
This ‘Monstrosities’ drawer features specimens collected by John Obadiah Westwood (1805–1893), each exhibiting some kind of deformity.

We were keen to put something specifically for families and children into the exhibition too. So our education officer Rachel Parle coaxed our primary education officer Chris Jarvis, who is also a splendid cartoonist, to create the Professor Dodo character you see above.

Prof D narrates and guides younger visitors through the exhibition, pointing out interesting things and raising a few questions along the way. So if you have children, bring them along too.

Finally, if you can’t make it to the exhibition, or would like to read about some of its themes and specimens at your leisure, then check out the dedicated Natural Histories website, which contains a selection of images and text from the gallery displays.

As ever, let us know what you think, either in the comments below or via Twitter @morethanadodo.

Scott Billings, Communications coordinator

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Cornbury and Cockroaches

Cornbury 5

A year of closure in the Museum is a great excuse to get out and about in our van. A glorious sunny spell is even more of an incentive!

Summertown

What better way to start the bank holiday weekend than standing in a busy street dressed as a cockroach? Here I am (on the right) with Education Trainee Liz, as a butterfly, and Education Officer Chris, in his fantastic dung beetle outfit. This was all in aid of the Oxfordshire Art Weeks event – the Summertown Street Parade. Our live cockroach handling and pinned insect displays fitted perfectly with this year’s minibeast theme and the costumes grabbed plenty of attention. I learnt a lot about life with enormous antennae – it certainly makes getting in and out of a gazebo pretty hard work!

Other attractions at the popular event included felt making, decorating tea towels and a minibeast costume parade, which was judged by our very own dung beetle!

Cornbury 4On Tuesday, we took a few of our most dramatic specimens out to Cornbury Park for a warm up event for the Wilderness Festival. We’re excited to be taking part in the festival this August, so it was great to be able to visit the beautiful site and meet some of the people involved. 

Here our famous cheetah, who usually greets museum visitors with a ‘Please Touch’ sign, is being unpacked for an afternoon in the sunshine. As you can see from the photo below, he looks quite at home in this stately setting!Cornbury 3

Cornbury 2Other specimens we took with us included this impressive cast of a T rex jaw. Chris is clearly very pleased to have an excuse to show it off!

Look out for us back at Cornbury Park for Wilderness 8th – 11th August. Of course, we’ll have plenty of stunning specimens to handle, along with family crafts to make… and wear!

Rachel Parle, Education Officer