EDUCATION PROGRAMS McCLUNG MUSEUM OUTREACH PROGRAM

  MISSION

To bring into the community the rich archaeological resources of the Museum's collections and the expertise of its personnel for the purpose of enriching the educational experience of high school students whose academic scheduling restricts their ability to visit the Museum on a field trip basis.

  DEVELOPMENT

A four-course curriculum has been developed over the past year and a half as a result of the collaboration between the McClung Museum Education Department, Knox County Schools Central Office, and many interested high school teachers.

From January to May 1998 a pilot program was conducted in five Knox County high schools. We feel that the process of planning, development, classroom testing, and student-teacher feedback has given us the opportunity to offer high school students a relevant, interesting, and absorbing educational experience.

  SELECTING THE APPROPRIATE COURSE

We have found that these courses were quite successful as enrichment programs; all students have benefitted from the opportunity to learn about regional resources, handle real artifacts, and participate in challenging and involving exercises which test their ability to think creatively. In terms of subject content and the correspondence of course content between the Museum's materials and the subjects in the high school class, we suggest the following guidelines:

• COURSE I - We recommend that most classes start with Course I to obtain a basic overview of terms, techniques, and local resources. While it is not absolutely necessary that Course I be taken first, the material presented in Courses II-IV will be more readily absorbed after a good introduction.



• COURSE II - Science classes



• COURSE III - Geography, History, Humanities, Psychology, Sociology



• COURSE IV - Biology, Home Economics, Lifetime Wellness, Nutrition

  COURSE LENGTH

Each course is designed for a 90-minute period.

  AUDIO-VISUAL REQUIREMENTS

You may be asked to supply a slide projector, VCR and TV, and/or overhead projector.

  SCHEDULING AN OUTREACH PROGRAM

To arrange for a program for your class, or for more information about the McClung Museum Outreach Program, please contact Debbie Woodiel, the Museum Educator, at 865-974-2144, Monday-Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., or by e-mail to: woodield@utk.edu.

  CURRICULUM

COURSE I:  Archaeology - Is It In Your Future?

• OVERVIEW

An introduction to the wide scope of archaeology. Designed to give students a strong grounding in the terminology and diverse applications of archaeology as a profession.

• LECTURE

How to become an archaeologist, what an archaeologist does, archaeological resources all around us here in East Tennessee, and how to get involved and stay informed.

• AUDIO-VISUAL

"How They Lived," a 20-minute video produced by the University of Tennessee.

• HANDS-ON

Cultural Identification and Archaeological Periods of East Tennessee. Students handle artifacts representative of the five cultural periods here in East Tennessee and go through the process of inference and deduction to make cultural identifications on the basis of material remains.

COURSE II:  Archaeology and Science -- Using the Cutting Edge to Dig Up the Past

• OVERVIEW

A look at the many ways in which state-of-the-art technology and scientific techniques are being used to piece together our knowledge of the human past.

• LECTURE

Issues in science -- peopling of the New World, an on-going debate, the latest in dating techniques.

• AUDIO-VISUAL

Slide presentation illustrating many of the most interesting applications of state-of-the-art science.

• HANDS-ON

Artifact Identification. Actual artifacts, some thousands of years old, are featured in an exercise designed to test the students' ability to observe, infer, hypothesize, test, and conclude the original form and purpose of materials based on the same kind of incomplete information archaeologists are forced to deal with.

COURSE III:  Archaeology and the Not So Rich and Famous

• OVERVIEW

How archaeology can be used to discover facts about the everyday lives of average people, and how that helps us learn more about ourselves.

• LECTURE

How the Alpine Iceman and the Bog People of northern Europe shed light on ancient lifeways, and how archaeology can fill in missing human details around known "monumental" events, such as the Egyptian pyramids and Custer's Last Stand.

• AUDIO-VISUAL

Slide presentation.

• HANDS-ON

It's in the Trash. Students sift through actual (but sanitized) contemporary trash to learn the process of observation, inference, and conclusion in determining cultural mores from material by-products.

COURSE IV:  Harvesting the Past -- Did Ancient People Eat Better than We Do?

• OVERVIEW

A look at the ancient people of East Tennessee, the foods available to them, seasonality, and processing techniques.

• LECTURE

Presentation of food sources available to the early people living in this area and how they might have created a balanced diet.

• WHAT REMAINS

Students examine bones, artifacts, and plant remains for clues to foods of the past.

• HANDS-ON

Using nutritional guides prepared as part of a detailed museum exhibition, students will be asked to create a daily recommended diet for people living here 1000 years ago.

  PROGRAM SPONSOR

The McClung Museum Outreach Program is sponsored by .

This sponsorship allows the Museum to present the Outreach Program free of charge.

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