I am looking for Museum-L subscribers that would be interested in becoming
part of a cooperative, international Museum/School Paleontology project.

I am the Museum Education Coordinator at the University Museum, Southern
Illinois University, Carbondale, currently working on a paleontology project
with a group of 7th and 8th grade students from Lincoln Middle School in
Carbondale, Illinois. Cooperating instructors in the project are Harvey
Henson, University Museum Adjunct Curator of Geology, and Marilyn Hughes,
Supervisor of the Lincoln Middle School Academically Talented (AT) program.

In the project, AT students are working as paleontologists, using fossil
specimens from the Museum's collections to begin understanding the geologic
history of southern Illinois. To deepen their understanding of the geologic
history of the area, the students will collect additional specimens on a
southern Illinois field study in April. It is also planned that AT students
will serve as mentors for younger students on an additional fossil field
study with a group of 100 3rd graders from Carruthers and McElvain
Elementary Schools in nearby Murphysboro, Illinois.

Research and documentation done by the students will become a WebPage on our
website.

As part of this project, those in the project are seeking e-mail input from:

        1. Museums with programs in which students are involved in fossil
collection and paleontogical investigation.
        2. Museums working in cooperation with schools in projects in which
students are involved in fossil collection and paleontogical investigation.
        3. Schools with projects in which students are involved in fossil
collection and paleontogical investigation.

We realize that a variety of different models may be involved in the way
these projects are undertaken. What we would like to achieve is a
cooperative effort in fossil collecting by students from the United States,
North America, and around the world -- a worldwide community of cooperating
young scientists. This cooperation would involve the creation of the
following information, which could be summarized at the our website:

        1. Short descriptions of the fossil collecting projects and the objectives
of the fossil collecting.
        2. Descriptions of the landscape in which the fossil collecting is being
done. Photographs could certainly be a part of this.
        3. What fossils are being found by students? Photographs of fossils would
be important, but narrative descriptions would be fine.
        4. A description of the fossil collecting process from preparation through
analysis.

Links could also be created to cooperating museum and school sites where
information created by individual schools and museums could be found. I am
open to input and advice on undertaking this effort -- I cannot predict what
the interest level will be -- we are limited in the amount of time we can
devote to the effort. Linking to other project sites will likely be an
alternative method of working with other projects if interest is extremely
high. This is the sort of problem we would happily live with, however.

We would like to collect input from other projects from May 1998 through May
1999. Summaries of information from museums and schools will become part of
an electronic yearbook of information, as will discussion between Lincoln
Middle School AT students and these museums and schools. Hard copy of this
yearbook will be made available in the University Museum's Fraunfelter
Fossil Gallery, which will be completed in the Fall of 1998.

Thanks,
Robert DeHoet