Tools for Education
Fishy Playing Cards
When I was growing up and before everything was on the internet, I learned a lot from my home encyclopedia set. The special treats were the multi-spread color pages depicting the diversity of living things: birds, fish, plants. Before teaching for I FISH NY, even I, devotee of all things aquatic, did not realize how many hundreds of fish live around NYC. To recreate that same child-like wonder and not just for fish named humuhumunukunukuāpuaa, my coworker, Sarah Bruner, and I developed these Go Fish! cards to introduce people to their local finned friends. These cards have been a huge success, and I can’t seem to hold on to more than a single set for myself. This has inspired me to develop similar card games, one of which I’m working on now and should be released as a product sometime in ‘09!
Backup Plans
Unlike the museum environment where everything stays very, very still, working for an outreach program where you’re never in the same location represents different challenges for creating exhibit materials. Solution: bring the diorama with you. I developed these diorama boxes (one fresh and one salt water) to bring along at clinics. If the fish just weren’t biting, it might be the only fish people saw all day.
Do I Even Need the Gauge?
It’s not the number, but the size of the fish you catch that really seems to matter. That’s part of what inspired me to make this “How Tall are You?” poster. Fish get pretty big, though they used to get bigger, but that’s another story (check out Cedric here). Passersby measure themselves against record-holding fish of New York State. To the left of the poster, people can read about the life history of the featured fish.
Remember Clue?
I developed this game, Invasive Investigators, with Sarah Bruner. Modeled after the game Clue, students are introduced to invasive species. When they play the game, participants must figure out the who, how, and where of real case studies.