Fossil Friday Chat

Jen & Adriane here – 

Not long ago we were invited to talk about Time Scavengers with our friends Gabe and Brittney who are staff at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology and the Western Science Center, respectively. Every Friday for the past few months Gabe and Brittney host two chats with folks about their research and educational projects! These discussions start with a brief presentation explaining science or projects or ideas to the audience as it is streamed live on Facebook. Then Brittney collects audience questions and we have a discussion at the end of the talk!

We talked about different aspects of Time Scavengers, most importantly the three foundations for which our site is built upon: Science Literacy, Science Identity, and IDEA+J (inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and justice). We also discussed briefly what we have done so far and what we would like to accomplish in the future! If you are interested in learning more please check out our slides by clicking here or watch the full presentation as it is still available on Facebook by clicking here

It can be tricky giving a talk with two people, but we made it work! We met a few times before our presentation date with Gabe and Brittney. The first few meetings were to outline the talk and decide on what information we wanted to share and how to structure that information. Then, we began to build the slides. This is always the fun part, as we get to look through our data and pick out fun graphics and images of ourselves and our team. Lastly, we went through and decided who would present which sections of the talk. Jen did the introduction, we both talked about our backgrounds, then Jen continued to discuss the more in-depth introduction slides and overview of Time Scavengers. Adriane then talked through the Science Literacy section, Jen the Science Identity section, then Adriane presented the IDEA+J section and our future goals slide. Lastly, Jen wrapped up the talk with our acknowledgements slide. We think this worked quite well, as we both were able to split the talking time. The questions our audience members asked were excellent, and really made us stop and think! We had a ton of fun throughout the entire process, and very much appreciate the opportunity Gabe and Brittney gave us to talk about Time Scavengers and share our love of science communication!

Gabe and Brittney have decided to keep doing these chats for the foreseeable future so please follow the Western Science Center and Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology on Facebook (names are linked) to get notifications!

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