{"id":884,"date":"2017-03-07T23:54:41","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T23:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/?p=884"},"modified":"2017-03-07T23:54:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T23:54:41","slug":"site-visit-la-brea-tar-pits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/2017\/03\/07\/site-visit-la-brea-tar-pits\/","title":{"rendered":"Site Visit: La Brea Tar Pits"},"content":{"rendered":"

I visited the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum on a class field trip in high school, but they since opened a new 3D theater so I decided to go back and see how this new digital addition to the exhibit has changed the visitor experience. The 3D theater experience was separate from the museum admission, so visitors could pay slightly more to see the film. It was called “Titans of the Ice Age” and ran every half hour and was about 20 minutes long. The film gave a pretty comprehensive backstory on how the tar pits caused fossils to form, and highlighted the discovery and excavation of Zed, the mammoth fossil which serves as the centerpiece of the museum. <\/span><\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the film, I thought it was visually impressive and gave a much better explanation of the process of fossil formation than you could ever get from just reading a traditional museum caption. Most of the other visitors seemed engaged in the experience, and even the class of young children who were there were enthralled by the 3D technology and stayed interested throughout the entire movie, which I remember was not the case when I visited a few years ago and they only had a 2D educational film. It was clear the museum was using this technology to impress visitors and coax them into the theater, however, it certainly worked.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the film I ventured out into the rest of the museum, which didn’t integrate much technology, but I felt like seeing the 3D movie beforehand did enhance my experience of seeing the artifacts, fossils, and models of the prehistoric animals, and I noticed that other visitors who also watched it seemed to be more engaged as well. Many people went straight to the mammoth fossil to get more information. It also seemed like people who watched the film tended to read the text about the objects more than those who didn’t. In this way, I think the 3D technology not only educated guests but also made them more eager to learn about the exhibit’s pieces.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite part of the museum was the fossil lab, which let visitors watch real paleontologists at work in a glass-paneled room. There were several microscopes and various excavation tools and two paleontologists who were at work. People usually think of archaeology as a somewhat dead field of study, so it was really cool to be able to observe archeological work being done in action. Although the visitors couldn’t really interact with the technology physically, being able to watch the professionals use those specialized tools definitely gave a sense of involvement in the excavation process and connected visitors more deeply with the artifacts they were seeing in the museum.<\/span>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I visited the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum on a class field trip in high school, but they since<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}