Electronic Field Trips

I spent nearly three years working at my old job at Ball State, the Electronic Field Trip program. It's a great program for educating kids and allowing them to see places they might not normally get to see on a real field trip. It's also a pretty good tool for giving parks, museums, and other points of interest some exposure to people outside their normal demographic. In the past few years, the program developed a solid relationship with the National Park Foundation, leading them to do many EFTs with parks, including well-knowns like Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and Hawai'i Volcanoes, and some lesser-knowns like Manzanar National Historic Site.

It was interesting to work with these different parks and see how they related to us, how efficiently they worked, and who really pulled the strings. It was also quite rewarding to see the reactions of the staff when things were over. I feel that we exposed kids to some wonderful places and things; hopefully things they will remember, and parlay into actual visits to some of these places if they ever get the chance. After the recent Manzanar show, I read a blog post at Park Remark about the show. It was always great for us to get some PR from our shows, so I'm sure everyone was happy to see this. The post plugs many of the major parts of the show, including the video podcast "webisodes," which deserve to be exposed more than they have been so far.

It's too bad the author challenges the restricted access of some of the materials. It's hard to tell if he's unhappy about it or just looking for the answer. The answer is: public dollars don't go far. The program is funded by private dollars, but with the help of public servants (rangers, education staff, and many behind-the-scenes people). By restricting access, the program is able to keep a much better list of who is accessing the materials, and is in turn able to use that information to try to get more private money. More money = better product = happier, smarter kids.