Bring a Museum to your Classroom

We invite our history education colleagues to bring our museum into their classrooms this winter with our new King for a Day program. We have developed this new live, interactive webcast program using Skype to highlight the monuments, buildings, and symbols associated with royal power in Maya and Aztec civilizations. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is one of the oldest and largest anthropology museums in the country with 100+ years of experience in Mesoamerica. We collaborated with Vermont 6th grade classrooms to fine tune the program and invite teachers across the country to check out the webpage to see if the experience supports their classroom work on the Maya and Aztec civilizations.

Through the Skype webcast, students learn to read the built landscape to understand the responsibilities and benefits of leadership. A museum educator brings a video camera into the exhibition to show examples of a codex, architectural models, rare stele, altars, and an obsidian sword as he asks and answers student's questions in real time. A companion PowerPoint slide show provides maps and photographic support to put the artifacts in context. The program brings Harvard exhibits, artifacts and staff to your classroom for a fraction of the time and cost of a face-to-face field trip.

For more information, costs and FAQ visit http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/969 or contact Reservations by phone at 617-495-3216 or email at pmae-ed@hmsc.harvard.edu.