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JANUARY 2008

Museum Educators Enjoy Evening At American Museum Of Natural History

By Jan Aaron

It would be impossible for the estimated 500  educators who attended the recent Educator’s  Evening at the American Museum of Natural  History (AMNH) to come away without feeling  excitement for classroom possibilities of the new  exhibition Water: H²O=Life. To start the evening,  they walked through a row of activity/resource  tables collecting information and materials helpful  to teaching about water.
  “My sixth grade science teacher inspired  me,” said Eleanor Sterling, the exhibit’s curator  and director of the Center of Biodiversity and  Conservation at the museum, greeting the guests.  “We hope educators will bring their classrooms  here to inspire and engage them,” she added.  Running slide highlights of the exhibit, Ms.  Sterling explained that its objective is to provide  information about a precious resource, the environmental  concerns formed by its degradation  and actions people can take to help preserve it.

Museum packets given to participants included  Educator’s Guides to help teachers prepare  their students for their field trips to get  the most of their visits and initiate follow-up  activities. The museum is also seeking Living  Environment Teachers for a pilot test involving  workshops and case studies (for information  jhong@aamnh.org).

Educators toured the exhibit (running through  May 26 2008) with its dramatic entry of a fog  screen resembling a waterfall, stunning installations  and riveting wall texts offering startling  facts. A salient example is that water is not a  renewal resource and what exists on earth is all  we will ever have, and less than 1 percent of it  is available for human use. In 27 countries, most  in Africa and Asia, water is not easily accessible  to half the population and many rivers there are  highly polluted. The show includes international  exhibits such as a meteorite from Australia containing  15 per cent water and display devoted to  mammoth Three Gorges Dam in China. There is  also much here to engage the younger students,  who may not relate to the sophisticated world of  the water story.

For more information or to get an Educator’s  Guide go to: Amnh.org/education/water. (AMNH,  Central Park West at 79th St. amnh.org Tel. 212-  769-5100.)#

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