Pilot Projects by Kelly Gwynn
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2017 Annual Meeting session on educational programming.
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Pilot Projects by Kelly Gwynn
- 1. Pilot Projects Kelly Gwynn Alaska Aviation Museum
- 2. Pilot Programs Aviation Adventure Saturday Program Field Trips and Summer Camp Outreach Efforts- • Science Festivals • Community Events • Traveling Kits
- 3. Date Program Attendance* 15-Oct-16Airplane Alley 200 19-Nov-16 Airplane Ornaments 170 17-Dec-16 Open craft with Hoot from Bird TLC 60 21-Jan-16 Design our new space! 65 18-Feb-16 Space! The Final Frontier! 200 18-Mar-16 Women in Aviation! 185 15-Apr-16 Kids Day w/Drones 76 20-May-16Fly Your Ride! 70 TOTAL 1026 Pilot Programs— Aviation Adventures
- 4. Pilot Programs—Field Trips Program Highlights*: 899 students 36 school visits 2 all-new guided experiences Guaranteed tour guide Saw grades pre-K-12th *= information from 2016-17 school year
- 5. Pilot Programs—Summer Camp Program Highlights: Two week-long summer camps Week 1: o Partnered with FAA o Hosted at our museum o 7 students o SUPER COOL field trips Week 2: o Partnered with PNA o Brought kids to museum o Taught guided activities at PNA
- 6. Pilot Programs—Outreach Annie the Aviatrix Science Festival
- 7. Exhibits and Interactives Scavenger Hunt Make Your Own Scavenger Hunt Gallery Guide for Art of the Airport Tower Reeve Workshop
- 8. This is your opportunity to create your very own scavenger hunt! Step 1: Find a partner Step 2: Explore the museum. Use the boxes below to draw and describe objects you think are important. Step 3: Trade with your partner and try to complete each other’s scavenger hunts. If you are by yourself, feel free to leave your scavenger hunt for the next visitor. Exhibits and Interactives— Make Your Own Scavenger Hunt
- 9. Exhibits and Interactives—Reeve Workshop Inside the Reeve Workshop Outside of the Reeve Workshop
- 10. Upcoming Plans 75th Anniversary of the Bombing of Attu o Morse Code Interactive o Lend-Lease Mapping Interactive More Interactive opportunities throughout the museum
- 11. Nitty Gritty Details How Did it Happen? Grants and Donations Volunteers Active, Supportive, and Dedicated Board Members
- 13. Nov 2015 Adults Child Sr/Vet/ AAA Group Total 140 62 69 29 300 Nov 2016 Adults Child Sr/Vet/ AAA Group Total 443 470 56 0 969 DIFFER- ENCE +303 +408 -13 -29 +666 +216% +65% -19% -100% +220% Oct 2015 Adults Child Sr/Vet/ AAA Group Total 308 102 90 82 582 Oct 2016 Adults Child Sr/Vet/ AAA Group Total 421 190 96 75 782 DIFFER- ENCE +113 +88 +6 -7 +200 +36.7% +86.3% +7.3% -8.5% +34.4% Year over Year Admissions
- 14. The museum is was super awesome my 2 and 4 year were super stoked!! We had a blast it's worth a millions bucks. A must !!! Great place to learn about regional Alaskan flying history. It's a small museum so it won't take all day to visit. Children and adult will enjoy this museum all the same. Reviews and Comments
- 15. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- The Alaska Aviation Museum is a small museum, seeing approximately 12,000 visitors annually. In October 2016, the museum made some bold new changes it had been discussing for quite a long time. They hired me as the educator, and a curator, Darian LaTocha. These may seem like obvious moves to a larger museum, but prior to 2016, the Alaska Aviation Museum staff consisted of a director, a tour group coordinator, an events coordinator, and a development specialist. So, the 2016-17 school year was a time for bold new ideas. They fall basically into two categories: programs or exhibits and interactives.
- First up are the various programs we tried out. We implemented a three-pronged approach when it came to educational programming. We had free public programs; we formalized our field trip offerings and tried out two different models for summer camp; worked on outreach, and designed ways for people to visit the museum even if they couldn’t physically be there.
- We started a monthly family day during the school year (October thru May). This program includes free admission all day, with family programming (usually different activities) taking place from noon until 4 pm, and sometimes a food truck. You can see the numbers of participants we had each month on this chart. The activities were all less than $200 for all of the materials. Marketing was through word of mouth and facebook. As a result of these numbers and other annual events taking place in Anchorage, we have modified our schedule this year and will be keeping close tabs in order to make comparisons and plan for next year.
- For the first time, the museum offered structured field trip opportunities, with activities aligned to the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, as adopted by the Anchorage School District. We offer programs for pre-K-12th grade. We received a grant from BP that allowed us to offer all of our educational activities for free during the 2016-17 school year, so that was helpful. I reached out to the ASD curriculum coordinators and their newsletter editor, who were all instrumental in helping to spread the word.
- Our first week of summer camp was a week-long day camp at the museum. The FAA sent over aerospace engineers to act as camp assistants, which was VERY generous of them. We had 7 students sign up. We went on field trips to the NOAA weather station where they got to send off the afternoon’s weather balloon. We went to Medallion Foundation and got to try out several of their simulators. One of our volunteers offered to teach kite building, so we did that. We went to the airport fire station. The students got to ride in a fire truck and the fire fighter used the water canon. It was pretty spectacular. And we worked with the Experimental Aviation Association to make sure all of the students got a plane ride. And, finally, because it’s a museum camp, I made them do an exhibit about their week at camp. All of the field trips were donated, so the cost was fairly minimal (outside of staff time) and we charged $200 per student, so we came out ahead. Some of the students’ parents turn up to museum events and tell us about how their children are STILL talking about the camp. So, while this is something we would like to continue and expand on, it’s going to require hiring an actual camp director and finding some dedicated space, which is going to require money. So I wrote a grant. Hopefully, we get it. The second week of camp was in partnership with Pacific Northern Academy. They are a local private school that runs a 10 week summer camp and I’ve worked with their camp director before. We charged PNA $35 per student, and again, aside from staff time, costs were minimal, so we came out ahead financially. The advantages of this were that all of the admin costs and work were done by PNA. They also have a dedicated facility because they’re already a school, so that made things easier logistically. However, PNA doesn’t have a van, so I ended up transporting 59 students between PNA and the museum in one 9 passenger van over the course of two days. And they have pre-K kids, so we also had to deal with carseats. So, that was an adventure. But, the kids loved it and logistics aside, it was a fun week and helped to expand our outreach. We are considering both of these a success and have plans to build on that success, again, pending funding.
- And no educational program is complete without outreach efforts. These serve two purposes: the first is to support community events, and help to create opportunities for families to learn new things together; the second is to help get the word out that the Alaska Aviation Museum does actually exist and is a fun place to go. So, we participated in several of these at various schools and community events around town over the course of the 2016-17 school year. And finally, we recognize that not everyone can make it to the museum. So, we have a Beam robot, who we’ve named Annie the Aviatrix. She comes in handy for virtual tours. These work anywhere there is internet. Additionally, we are continuing to pilot new programs and working on a traveling kit—a box containing objects and lesson plans for K-12 students. Once it is ready, we will be able to send it out to any school that is unable to make the trip in to the museum. Ideally, it will be used in combination with Annie the Aviatrix so that students can have the experience of seeing semi-first-hand what the museum looks like, and having a lesson with real objects that lines up with what they’ve seen at the museum. We saw over 3,000 students through out outreach efforts last year. The start-up costs for these programs can be high, but once you invest in them, they continue to be useful without much in the way of maintenance costs. And, while we had a grant to cover our educational programs, organizations usually charge about $150/hr for science festival.
- In addition to our programming initiatives, we have also been working on the museum itself. I created two self-guided activities for use by museum visitors—the scavenger hunt and the Make Your Own Scavenger Hunt. We have also been working on updating existing exhibits, as well as creating new ones, and working with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to get the Art of the Airport Tower exhibit on loan. And finally, and my favorite, we repurposed a theatre space to make it into an interactive learning space designed for children. You’ll see pictures later.
- So, everyone knows what a scavenger hunt is. (BE SURE TO BRING COPIES OF THE SCAVENGER HUNT!!!!! AND THE MAKE YER OWN!!!) The scavenger hunt is really just asking visitors to make sure they see the things that I think are interesting. The Make Your Own Scavenger Hunt is instead asking visitors what they find interesting and to share it with others, either in their group, or to leave for the next visitors, so it both encourages them to look more closely at the exhibit, and to share their thoughts with either others in their group or with other visitors to the museum.
- The Reeve Workshop is a repurposed theatre. We worked with volunteers, and generous board members to create an interactive learning space for children. This space is STEM-focused and (of course) aviation themed. We are still working to create more spaces for children to learn both throughout rest of the museum and to make this a space where children have more opportunities for active play. While we are still working on tracking hard data associated with this space, we have received positive reviews and the space is frequently busy. In fact, on its inaugural weekend, I kept trying to get in there to straighten up, but every time I went in it was packed, which I took as a positive sign.
- And, finally, since we have had such a positive response from the community, we are expanding on our efforts with the upcoming 75th Anniversary of the Bombing of Attu exhibit. We are working with ASD social studies teachers to ensure that we cover aspects of World War II in Alaska that are covered in the curriculum. With this exhibit, we’re making sure to include interactive aspects, and social studies teachers have specifically asked for Lend-Lease, so that will be featured, as it was an important part of the war in Alaska, and it will give us an opportunity include more women, as they participated in that programs, as well.
- So, our year-over-year admissions have increased rather dramatically, as you can see. These are just two months of data, but the data for the rest of the year continue this trend. With our changing exhibits people are visiting more often, and (we think) purchasing more memberships, however we are still working on that data.
- In addition to numbers, we also track what’s being said about us in our own visitor log book, as well as online on our facebook page, on trip advisor, and yelp. These all indicate that we are on the right track with our educational programs, and incorporating more hands-on learning opportunities into the museum. One of the key ways that this is possible is through a collaboration between education and exhibits, as well as a supportive director and board.
- And so, as you can see, the various programs we’ve started this year—new exhibits, new educational programs, as well as public programs and community outreach—have been overwhelmingly successful, so we’re going to keep at it. Thank you all for your time. Does anyone have any questions?