Mote Marine Laboratory

Digital Docents

By: John Francis

“Truth or Tale? Sharks have an endless supply of teeth,” the bubbly host asks from a giant TV screen.

“Truth!” people in the audience shout back.

“True,” confirms Kasey Gaylord. “Great job, you guys.”

Live from the distance learning studio at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., it’s “Sea Monsters.” The show is the first in Mote’s series of interactive videoconferencing programs and exhibits funded by a national grant to spread the word about ocean science to museum visitors across the nation.

The “Digital Docents” program links 10 partnering organizations to Mote by combining hands-on traveling exhibits with live videoconferences in which museum-goers can interact in real time with Mote science educators like Gaylord. The fun factor helps get across the educational message.

“The goal is to break down barriers to learning about science,” said Elizabeth Metz, director of Mote’s Center for Distance Learning. “We try to make it accessible.”

The program’s innovative approach to connecting remote audience members with educators in Florida earned Mote a $688,446 National Leadership grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The funded projects are designed to be replicable national models that enable museums and libraries to advance innovation and promote the idea of learning for a lifetime, according to the institute.

“Digital Docents” already is making waves since “Sea Monsters” debuted in September 2006 at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., then aired in Mote Aquarium’s Immersion Cinema. Attendance in Michigan during the three-week premiere was up from the same time the previous year, according to John Zawiskie, a geologist at the institute.

“It was awesome,” he said. “Our visitors were very engaged by the exhibit and the fantastic dovetailing with the interactive videoconferencing.”

Although the technology is not new, it’s a new attraction for the everyday museum visitor. This unique model represents the first traveling exhibit to incorporate live interaction with experts hundreds of miles away. Monitors and microphones connect them via the Internet.

“This technology is not really in the museum world with live and spontaneous programming,” Zawiskie said.

The programs also are tailored to spotlight  related resources in partner institutions’ collections.

“It provided us with a way to bring in oceanic studies and link it to the earth history that we have in the Great Lakes region,” Zawiskie said.

That’s all part of the plan.

“Anything our partners want to feature can be integrated into the live programs,” Mote’s Metz said. “It’s dynamic. It can be tailored within seconds.”

Mote educators featured in the live teleconference prompt audience members and react to their questions with quick answers and even videotape cued on the spot. They’re well-versed in biology and environmental education — they’re not just the scientific answer to Alex Trebek.

The “Sea Monster” moniker — chosen because of the broad public appeal of extreme nature — grabs the audience’s attention before introducing information about whale sharks and giant squid and such.

The hands-on portion of the program features the jaws of a tiger shark, a model of a squid beak and other tangible signs of ocean life.

Inside a theater, the videoconference begins: “Beneath the waves ... lies an unseen world, hidden from both scientists and sailors ... sea monsters,” says a narrator.

“These animals really aren’t monsters,” host Gaylord tells the audience at a recent presentation. “But they evolved with adaptations that allowed them to survive in extreme circumstances.”

The fun-plus-fact model stirs the imagination and encourages viewers to learn more about ocean science and wildlife.

After the presentation at Mote Aquarium, visitors Suzi and Bill Schmidt and daughter Sophie, 4, of Venice, Fla., marveled at the amount of information conveyed in the 25-minute presentation.

“There were a lot of facts,” Suzi Schmidt said. “It was very interesting.”

Over the next three years, “Sea Monsters” and other “Digital Docents” programs dealing with coral reefs and wildlife rehabilitation will make their way to these partner institutions around the country in addition to Cranbrook: Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward; Anderson, Ind., Public Library; Center of Science and Industry-Toledo in Ohio; Discovery Center in Springfield, Mo.; Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown, Va.; Imaginarium Hands-On Museum in Fort Myers, Fla.; Indianapolis Zoo; Discovery World (Pier Wisconsin) in Milwaukee, Wis.; Queens Public Library in New York.

Development of the “Digital Docents” videoconferences and traveling exhibits is supported by the National Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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