Lexi Bolger 00:00
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Paleo Podcast. My name is Lexi and I'll be your host today. First off, a little bit about me before we introduce our guests. I was trained as a paleontologist and a marine scientist who looked at dead plankton under a microscope for hours upon hours every day. Eventually, I realized that I wasn't as passionate about lab work as I was about science education. I loved going into classrooms with fossils and nurturing students' interest in science through paleontology. This led me to eventually go back to pursue my master's in agricultural and natural resource communication at the University of Florida. And this podcast is actually the result of my master's thesis research. I created the Paleo Podcast from a compilation of interviews that youth recorded during a 4-H summer camp about paleontology and science podcasting that I designed, implemented and researched. I created the camp with Luis Torres, a graduate student from the Florida Museum of Natural History, and my advisor, Dr. Jamie Loizzo. The camp had four paleo-focused lessons about dinosaurs, vertebrates, invertebrates, and careers in paleontology. Then, I also gave a lesson to the campers about what a science podcast is, my journey from the lab to the microphone, and how to record good audio for their podcast. In pairs, the campers used iPads to record their podcasts with some prompting questions from yours truly about what they learned from the day's camp. This camp was produced with funding from The Paleontological Society and in partnership with The Streaming Science Project and Clay County 4-H. Now to introduce the campers! So all y'all listening have heard of Jacksonville, Florida, right? Well, all eight campers are from a county in the Jacksonville metropolitan area called Clay County. First off, we have three upcoming seventh graders named Alan, Sarah and Zia. Then we have two upcoming sixth graders, Tim and Robert. Rounding that off, we have one upcoming eighth grader, Ellie, one upcoming ninth grader, Ian, and finally, one upcoming fifth grader, Henry. These are not their real names but pseudonyms that I gave them taken from characters in the Jurassic Park movies. Now here we go on to the themes. So I analyzed the podcasts that campers created in pairs with qualitative research methods, and I found three themes. So theme one was about paleontology. So the first theme was about their perceptions and definitions of paleontology. Every camper related their definitions and perceptions of paleontology to Luis, the camp's paleontologist, and his experiences, career paths and research. Some examples included descriptions of lab work and fieldwork. And now I'm going to play the audio from the campers. This section includes quotes from the following pairs, Ian and Alan, then Henry and Sarah, and then finally Zia and Ellie
Ian 03:10
What is a paleontologist?
Alan 03:13
A paleontologist is a person who researches paleontology. They often will look for fossils and repair them afterwards. Also, they have to write research papers and other articles to talk about their findings.
Henry 03:37
What does a day in a paleontologist life look like?
Sarah 03:42
Well obviously there's digging the stuff on the ground and finding the fossils and then there's also taking it back to the lab to like put it together or to like research it and study it.
Henry 03:59
Yeah, so like basically just like the person who told us what broadcasting was, some paleontologists just look into a microscope for eight hours straight. Like looking at different shapes of the fossils to see which one they were
04:18
anyways
Zia 04:18
Anyways, I dig up my fossils and then I go, 'Hmm, that looks interesting. Better clean it off with my patented Heelys.' And then I scrape away the dust and sand and dirt with my Heelys.
Lexi Bolger 04:31
Moving on to the second theme, fossils. Building off their definitions of paleontology, the second theme was about fossils. All the campers clearly defined what a fossil is and what kinds of fossils there are in the fossil record. Everyone described fossils as the remains of a dead organism, but some of them described fossils as preserved bones, where others described them as dead plants.
Ian 04:57
I have another question for you. What are fossils?
Alan 04:59
Fossils are molds of bone from long ago filled with minerals and turned to rock. They teach how earth once one was and often are of creatures and other life that have died.
Ian 05:18
That's very interesting. What are some invertebrates that you know of?
Alan 05:23
Invertebrates are creatures without a spinal cord. There's many shapes like insects, other are arthropods, crustaceans, and several others.
Ian 05:34
How long? How long does it take until it is recognized that it is a fossil, not a bone?
Alan 05:44
Most institutions recognize these things like that as fossils when they are over, when they are 10,000 years old or older,
05:57
vertebrate
Robert 05:57
Vertebrates are animals that have backbones, if you did not know that.
Henry 06:01
What are fossils and what do they tell us?
Sarah 06:05
Fossils are the remains of old bones or teeth or something inside a rock.
Henry 06:16
But we learned today that there's a lot of different types of snails that could do different stuff. I didn't really remember what an invertebrate and a vertebrate was from third grade. So yeah.
Ellie 06:32
What are fossils, and what do they tell us? Fossils to me personally, are... They are dead animals and plants that are embedded into rock and other materials, like limestone, sand, rock, and metamorphic rock. Well, the next thing I want to cover are invertebrates and vertebrates. Invertebrates are animals without a backbone. And vertebrates are animals with backbones, which I find really impressed. Interesting, because invertebrates are like scorpions and lizard people, and that type of stuff. Vertebrates are like you and me.
Zia 07:12
Yeah, I can give a couple examples of vertebrates. Some vertebrates include humans, cats, dogs, and squirrels.
Lexi Bolger 07:24
And finally, onto the last theme, dinosaurs. Although my goal in creating the camp was to get the kids to move away from only thinking about dinosaurs with relation to paleontology, their fascination with dinosaurs remained. However, in their discussions about dinosaurs, they still related dinosaurs back to important concepts in paleontology that were discussed in the camp such as evolution and extinction. Some campers directly mentioned Jurassic Park, and debated about what reviving the dinosaurs could tell paleontologists about their lifestyle and interactions with other species.
Ian 08:02
Do you reckon there is a way that we could do a Jurassic Park and bring back the dinosaurs?
Alan 08:07
Well, it is possible. Eventually, we have to get the right technology. And after all, we do have six movies telling us that that's not a very good idea. Do you think we should listen to the movies that say that's a terrible idea? Or should we just throw that away and do it anyway?
Ian 08:36
I say we should listen to the movies.
Alan 08:38
Yeah, I think that's a good decision. Honestly, it would be pretty crazy if dinosaurs were roaming everywhere.
Ian 08:46
What do you think about Elon Musk trying to bring back the t-rex?
08:49
stretch?
Alan 08:51
I think that's some far fetched madness. That would be absolutely awful. It would make fossils of species, mass extinctions like like because animals on earth today just aren't, aren't capable of defending themselves in such a large and powerful predator.
Henry 09:16
I hope that someday, they could, like bring back the dinosaurs, but put them in complete isolation so that there is an actual Jurassic Park again. Yeah. And they could study further about their lifestyle. And they could find out that like, what if there was actually Triceratops species that didn't just eat veggies.
Lexi Bolger 09:41
Alan also talked about different dinosaurs and describe the extinction of the dinosaurs, which you can hear in the following quote.
Ian 09:50
So do we know that sectoid that the dinosaurs went extinct?
Alan 09:55
No, it is not known exactly how, how the dinosaurs went extinct, but we know we do know that it did start from the meteor hitting the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Lexi Bolger 10:09
Finally we have Sarah and Henry talking about what they learned from the day's camp.
Henry 10:15
Discuss what you learned from the from today's camp.
Sarah 10:21
I learned that Paleontology is not just dinosaurs, which is what I thought since I knew what a dinosaur was. And I think it's really cool that I need to tell my dad this.
Lexi Bolger 10:40
This quote from Sarah was especially heartwarming to me as it demonstrated how the camp changed Sarah's perception of paleontology, and I thought it was sweet how she immediately wanted to share it with her dad. For any of you listening who are informal educators, or even paleontologists with a passion for youth science outreach, here are a few things I learned from the camp and that I would do slightly differently. Number one, I think the campers should have had time to edit their podcasts. Zia and Ellie even tried to edit their podcasts on their own and accidentally erased their entire podcast. So then they had to scramble to rerecord everything at the end. So I think you should dedicate a good chunk of time for campers to edit their podcasts because they were clearly curious enough about it to start it on their own. So, set aside some time for that. And then, secondly, from analyzing the podcast, and also the survey data, I learned the campers established a strong connection with Luis, and they loved hearing about his journey as a paleontologist, and this in turn, deepened their learning from the camp. So make sure you have a charismatic scientist to collaborate with and keep the kids engaged. And that's all for now. Thank you so much for listening to the Paleo Podcast, and I hope you all learned a lot about paleontology. Just a final shoutout to the Paleontological Society for providing the funding to give the kids food and some paleo goodies for participating in the camp. Thank you also to Elaine, the Clay County 4-H STEM agent for giving me free rein to teach the kids about paleontology and podcasts.