Unknown Speaker 29:47 Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this virtual event. My name is Karla Mallow your event, technical support, a few notes before you get started. So we are recording this event, please use the chat to report technical issues. To me, if you are having audio or video issues most often the best solution is to accidentally join the event. If you get this connector you can just log back in. And you can also use, put your questions in the q&a part also closed caption is available, so to activate click Live transcript, and select Show subtitle from your meeting control bar. You can also use the chat to send some comments directly to the panelists as well, but please try to keep your questions in the q&a. Now I'm going to hand it over to Melissa Carmen, to kick off Unknown Speaker 30:50 the program. Morning, everyone. My name is Melissa Carmen, and I am the director of the Sutliff Museum located in Warren, Ohio, and a trustee at large on the Ohio local history Alliance board. This morning session is titled A digitally camping. We will go and we are joined by Nicole Tabet from the Dawes Arboretum and Kyle Yoho from the castle historic house museum, they will discuss their experiences, pivoting their traditional youth summer camp experiences into virtual camps and explore the reasons for going virtual. They'll also share with us format considerations equipment checklists and making a digital class interactive and discuss why some of these aspects of virtual camps may stick around post pandemic. Kyle has served as the education director or the castle since 2015 and is an adjunct professor of museum studies from Marietta College. He received his bachelor of arts and history from Marietta college and Masters of Arts in Public History from Wright State University. Kyle has planned museum public programs for all ages for 15 years. And additionally, he is representative for region 10 for of all hot and serves as co chair of the Education Committee. Nicole Tabet has been the youth and adult programs educator and the does at the Dawes Arboretum, since 2019. After receiving a Bachelor in science, in environmental education from The Ohio State University. So I present to you, Nicole and Kyle. Unknown Speaker 32:42 Thank you so much, Melissa, and good morning everyone, hopefully you're having a good morning so far. I'm going ahead and start to share our slides. So as I do that, take another sip of coffee or something like that and get cozy. So we are going to go through and our experiences with doing digital camping, it's going to be, we'll be discussing it in different parts where the dogs are breeding we discussed theirs and the castle will discuss ours but first to start us off, is going to be, Nicole. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 33:16 Good morning everyone. Nice to be here virtually as rather as our camps have been for the past two summers in a row. So I wanted to start off by going over kind of how our camps had gone back in the day. And while we may not have had a, you know history based camps we do you know we did have this issue of turning something that's generally more of a hands on Camp into something that you can do virtually and from far away and not in groups of children, you know, as most camps are. So how we used to do our camps was we had seven weeks of in person camp every day for basically the full day. And there were two sessions run each week as well. So we were doing, we did 1416 camps this summer, and we were obviously able to charge a little bit more and then we had a maximum of 30 kids per camp. So every group had like 30 kids running around it was a lot, it was a lot different than our usual for them this this year's, you know, having one kid everywhere, you know, via camera. And then we also have got one to two speakers or external presenters to come in, per week in this picture we have met adventure week of the Ohio Nature Center, and she has an owl she brought an Allen and that was really cool for the kids, and our staff, we had a camp director, who was our education director, we had year round staff who would help with the facilitation so all of the educators at the Dawes Arboretum. And then we hired several seasonal employees to help us with our 15 sessions of camp every summer, so four of those would be camp counselors and every week, an extra one would be a camp administrator and they would kind of rotate through so the administrator was in charge of purchasing organizing making sure everyone was okay, and then the camp counselors would all take their groups of kids. So that's how it was back in the day, a little chaotic, but, um, you know, once you get into the flow of it, you know it's it's it's good fun. So that's the, that's the end of our back in the day Kyle if you want to move on. Sure. Unknown Speaker 35:25 So, um, historically, was a one week camp was held on site at the castle. Yes for students entering third through sixth grades, each year's camp progresses to decades and time previous camp. So this far, we've covered 1800s all the way up to the 1950s next year's camp, we're going to cover 1900 to 1920. Our focus is balanced between local, state and national national history as well as international events, mainly looking at cultural movements and societal shifts in playing those topics are taught to our campers through experiential classes hands on activities, or through engaging presenters so very much a similar format to true to the arboretum, we have six sessions per day with 30 sessions for the full week. And then we have a maximum of 30 Campers as well. However, our activity providers are a little bit different we can go one presenter per session so if that's the case and we will have up to 30 buyers for the camp. And I end quote unquote camp director because I'm the Education Director. We do have year round stuff that helps, and we have, we hire for senior camp counselors usually camp, kids that have come up through camp and are experienced and looking forward to facilitating the camp for their for their campers. And also, we have four to five Junior counselors as well. Over to unikl Unknown Speaker 37:07 Yeah, so the title of this side, slide sums up our early 2020 Pretty well you know, but we had to adapt and then we spent months and months just absolutely planning and planning and planning and planning and planning. So first we had to take a look at what everyone else was doing and there were lots of good resources out there for us, and there still are actually so there's a lot of virtual groups. The APGA web pages have a lot of good resources for this, we got a lot of our ideas off of, you know, like education virtual camp Facebook groups you know of educators going okay what are we going to do this summer, anyone have any ideas we can borrow. And then, you know local educator groups and collectives really helped us benchmark. What might be the easiest way or the best way to get kids to get a as good of a camp experience as they can from behind a screen. So once we've benchmarked that we ended up being able to consider what staffing we would need how we're going to incorporate our mission into that, what our audience was. So again, kids but you know what, you know, where can we find kids to do this virtually, and even adjusting the cost of our camps because, again, as I said, we really had to change it considering the experience is completely different. Then we made our decision so we decided to go virtual at a lower cost with the online component and self guided activities. The we got no additional staff so the first year of camp was run completely by the education team at the arboretum, which at the time was four, and then this year we ended up meeting we had five so that was really nice. And then we kept our costs low to charge so we could charge less than regular camp so we had some creative Amazon and internet purchasing and we made sure all of our sessions fit our mission. So we started planning, and we used Google Sheets to collaborate and align our ideas before paring down the schedule pile if you could go forward one. This is our Google Sheet. It's one of 14 that we had, because we did several weeks of camp that first year so every week we would have a spreadsheet with Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday two activities per day. So everything in the colored areas is our final schedule and all the stuff around it, it's like the extra ideas we were throwing out there you know like, Oh, what if we did this, what if we did this, what if we did this. Eventually we figure out the exact activities, put them in the right times. So, I'm really organized right. As you can see. So we spent a really long time planning the activities that we thought would go best with each session, we tested all the activities you know as if we were somebody who was doing it, as if we were a six year old doing this activity you know by themselves or perhaps with the help of a parent, you know, is this something I can go out and do by myself. And we had to make sure that it would all work for the age group. So we wanted more than a kit. So we also incorporated the Zoom sessions which you can see in the sheet as well we had a Tuesday or we had Monday Wednesday Friday morning and afternoon zoom calls for each age group. So that's kind of represented there. Thank you. That's it, that's it for that one. Unknown Speaker 40:24 So for us, in early 2020 We surveyed past campers and to get an idea of what they would really want from a virtual experience just to ensure that we would be headed in the right direction with our plans. We kind of wanted to just take what we did for our regular history camp, and just pivot that to being a virtual experience, but we want to make sure that is what they would want, so hence the survey. So, we wanted to just kind of look into maintain the same level of engagement that was very important to us, and in the educational experiences as well. And we want to make sure it was a high quality digital experience, but we realized we would need to reach out to more technologically experienced individuals to assist with our hosting or CO hosting or filming our sessions. So that's really came into a big part of the consideration there. For us, we knew that in making this decision and factoring in the input we received. We need to maintain a high energy, hands on experience for our campers to ensure that they would be engaged and not just idly sitting in front of a screen. When we realized that we need to seek out a new, new sort of helpers, as I mentioned, ones that were comfortable with being in front of a camera, or using the technology that we could, would have to be putting it in front of them. And lastly, much of our decision making, making backward around keeping the cost low. That was mainly for our campers because what we ended up offering them was sort of a reduced experience than if they were attending the in person camp so we had less activities, we had more space throughout the day where they could kind of fill out their own, but also institutionally, you know 2020 And 21 has been hard years on authorizations so if we kind of keep the bottom line a little bit low, and try to get through our camp without a lot of expenditure, that was a factor in our decision making, as well. And just one last part of the process is starting in terms of are starting to wrap our head around what we went to Bruce and how we're going to plan it. So I, as the education director Museum, I'm the one that worked out the scheduled activities based on availability of our presenters, given the campus virtual we reached out to speakers from across the nation. We kind of wanted to do a big reach since we knew we had to to kind of promote the camp a little bit more, grab some more people who are not, not only from Ohio but beyond. And so we ended up our final schedule became for 45 minutes to one hour classes per day with one hour breaks in between. And these I put on the screen for you are just some tips I provide a tissue based on my experience with the planning process. So organizing is scheduled activity that works for everyone that works for campers that works for the staff that works for the presenters, create a detailed promotional material to sell the experience digital is becoming harder and harder to sell in some instances, just because burnout and everything so making sure that it is something that people really want to engage with, is becoming more and more important, and establishing clear expectations clear communication is always an important thing with planning, providing campers with the concise instructions that was one big thing we wanted to make sure that there wasn't a lot of questions leading up to the classes we wanted to make sure everyone felt comfortable from the beginning, and there wasn't a big rush at the end to try to figure things out. And we ended up holding practice sessions with presenters moons mostly so we could test connections make sure that lighting was good for their rooms. I hopefully better than lighting I have, and that sort of thing. Willing to plan logins with presenters 15 to 30 minutes prior just to make sure everything was good to go and have helpers available who were professional with the tech. So having more than just us in the room that could help out campers if there was cash questions. And I think one important thing that I think Nicole and I both experienced was giving yourself time in between sessions to address issues, whether that's setting up for another program that's coming up or if a camper is unable to log in being sure that you can provide time to address that issue and kind of get them what they need. Unknown Speaker 45:04 And this is just kind of comparison by comparison. This is our in person versus our versus our virtual so instead of six classes per day, we had four instead of three per week we had 20 That's why we had the cost difference. And with in person, we only have 30 Campers on site, if you've ever been through the cast Museum is most like historic house museums are the rooms aren't that big and that's where most of our activities took place with Zoom we can afford to have up to 100 campers. We didn't need counselors, we didn't need tech helpers though. We had about 20 presenters from around the country, and with our last camp in 2021, we decided that yeah we're going to structure our activities for third to sixth grade level, but if they if people who choose to zoom in from that are age 18 and younger that wasn't going to be a problem for us we just made it very clear that the activities are kind of a third grade, or to sixth grade level. And our supplies are usually provided during camp or in person but instead we made them available to be sent to the campers wherever they were, and you're gonna hear a lot more about that little bit later. All right, Nicole. Unknown Speaker 46:18 Yeah, so for our virtual meetings we decided to go with that Google Classroom platform. So we had a couple positives and a couple of negatives for this. The positives are that it is a free platform. So we ended up using Google meat. If any of you have ever used that it's a pretty self explanatory platform. Similar, you know, similar to zoom, and then a lot of kids are familiar with Google so if you're using a computer in school. It's likely you know, you're using a Google Suite account. And again it's really user friendly and then they also we were also able to have security with our class codes, so only a few authorized users could, who was the education team at the does arboretum could make the make the meeting start the meetings let people in. And only the kids with the codes could get on so that was really nice because back in the early days we were really worried about that Zoom bombing, if we all remember that you know all the people jumping in with the random calls, so it and then we had easy communication, outside of. Oh, gosh. Alright, so I wrote easy communication outside of zoom calls and I definitely meant to write easy communication, outside of Google, because of the classroom setting. So outside of the Google calls, sorry about that. But that made it really easy to like make everything in one place. And then we had an easy break down a file so that kids could find what was necessary to look at and supplemental materials in a couple of slides I'll show you what our Google classroom looked like and how we organized it which I really liked and I think was very helpful for the kids. But the negatives are you must have a Google account. So at this point if you don't, you had to make one, not as many students were familiar with the classroom side of things just the Google meet a hard to get buy in, as well for what was viewed as additional so these Google sessions that we had were attended at varying rates depending on what the topic was or, you know, perhaps the time of day, because again these are additional activities you've already gotten your kids and your activities. So what we were doing was definitely viewed as additional in some ways, and then another barrier that we had was the social socio economic barriers to computer and internet access. We partnered with a local groups of Buckeye community Hope Foundation for signing up a bunch of kids, they had been coming to the in person camp dogs for a couple of years. So we decided to partner with them and get them all their kids for the summer camp. And that made up a large amount of our of our group of children but there was a lot less involvement from that group just based on the, you know internet access in the area. So what we did for our sessions was one hour sessions we didn't want to increase the burnout for the kids, but we also wanted to give you know, a parent, time to sit and do something else for an hour, you know, you can put your kid in front of the computer and we'll do it, or some parents ended up having to be on the calls with their kids because some kids weren't able to figure out the computer or some parents wanted to be there with their kids, so we didn't want to make it too long to interrupt the day. And then as for our presenters. We would occasionally get a outside speaker to do a presentation so we got Ohio nature connection to come back and did a virtual owl show until we had a scientist, you know come in and she was talking about microbiology, for a small, we were doing a focus on small things one week, but usually it was less usually it was just the education department and there were two of us on each video so we really had to coordinate our time again so that's why we really stuck with that one hour session, and we only did it once, three times a week so that Monday Wednesday Friday session. Go to the next one, please. Unknown Speaker 50:14 Thank you. And this is what our Google Classroom look like so this is a view of like the Monday and Tuesday so we could create a basic assignment and this was actually the part that I really liked. We could include some links so what you see here is Van Gogh meats oil pastel craft. So we did indeed type out and print out and make little tiny instruction booklets for all of the activities. And there's, you know, those are really nice that you know in case you've lost it or you're more of a virtual learner in the end, you can click on the links you can watch a video about Vango we have you know some educational videos that you can watch you know, Crash Course style, PBS you know all sorts of safe websites that kids can use to increase the learning that they get, instead of just reading the instruction booklets that we put together. So we have you know Monday morning activity Vincent van Gogh Monday afternoon was our video call, and then Tuesday we had two different activities so they got to read about an artist every day. This is from our art adventures week, in case you didn't get that. So you know they read about an artist, and then in the afternoon they would have an activity for that with all the steps listed. So that was what I really liked about this Google setup, and they can use all the links to continue their learning if they'd like to which again is that additional activity and some people really bought in. Alright, Unknown Speaker 51:42 so we chose to use Zoom, who doesn't know how to use Zoom at this point, right. So, but I think actually, going, going forward I think using a platform like Google classroom might actually be good because it gives a explain that a little bit with the negatives. But zoo would be most of our camper families, at least from the schools around here we're using zoom so we knew that there is some familiarity with it. You also offered security with registration password waiting room controls the negatives, what I mentioned, if y went to make sure that the campers had a recipe for a something we were making the next day I would email that out and have to cross my fingers and hope that the campers adult would open that up print that out for them, and have that information ready for them for the activity with something like Google Classroom, seemingly, you could put that information there and it was more accessible than hoping that they open their email changes, I found between 2020 and 2021 in the zoo meeting platform. MIT's had a little bit of problems with registration and onboarding Zoomers into our classes so that's something to always keep in mind in mind is that technology changes, especially with things like Google and zoom. So making sure that you can't use a cookie cutter mold all the time. And plus, creating 20 different zoom meetings for each class we did that mostly for security purposes, we could have made it easier on ourselves, but for reasons of security but also, We want our campers be able to purchase individual classes. So, you know, making sure that they would just be accessing the one that they purchased instead of kind of getting more than their their the money they spent was also a factor in why we create all 20 classes individually. And all these they were were located, as well as probably is true of doors in Appalachia, it's not a great a lot. Not great bandwidth around here, and not all homes have access to internet, so that was one accessibility issue that we did deal with. Unknown Speaker 54:04 Yeah, we definitely also had a little bit of issues with you know not all of them having internet so this year we changed it. You wouldn't think that 21 would be 2021 would be so different from 2020 But it was, um, so last year we wait so we readapted, so last year we did six weeks two camps, you know, several video sessions. So we did you know our printed instructions. And whenever we didn't need them, we wouldn't make them. So this year, what we did was our eight camps, we increased it by one week we did two to three camps a week for different age groups. We didn't do any virtual video sessions this summer, what we did instead was every Wednesday we had dog camp visit family day. So, we had one three hour long drop in session every Wednesday, related to the weeks camps. So we would make instruction booklets for everything. Everything was printed out, we made sure ahead of time that all of the activities were doable by each child, for sure, you know, if you don't have adult help you can definitely get this done. Um, and then we also chose themes that we knew would work from home. Last year, in 2020, we kept the schedule we had already set for in person classes so we had you know, a couple of themes like splish splash or water adventures, a little harder to do from home than something like an art camp so this year we really focused on making camps that we knew would work. And then the other really nice thing is that we had a team of five working from the office. And so one person was able to be a virtual camp counselor, and by that we mean that we had one person being able to focus on that Wednesday, Wednesday session, and other people from the team would focus on assembling and someone else would focus on making the instruction sheets. So if you could go to the next slide. So this is a picture of one of our camp family visit days, depending on the week, the in the weather. The success was very generally, it was way well received. We are not on a day that wasn't thunder storming we had much more participation than we ever did for our videos for the previous year of camp so there was a lot more buy in part of the camp experience that we provided this year was each box that we sent out. Also got a free family admission for the week. So you could use that past to come and visit on Kamli family camp, visit days. And if you weren't able to make it that day, you know, we were letting them use them other days through the rest of the end of the year. But that way, the cost of admission wouldn't be a barrier for families to come in to enjoy these wonderful activities, and then established a more complex field with in depth activities. It's more interacting with other children so it's really closer to a traditional summer camp, than we were able to do two years ago, and it was nice for the parents to get out with their family, so we have some kids around here looking at some fossils with Hannah, who is one of our seasonal, and she was our camp helper this year, an engagement instructor so they're looking at some fossils because we did a dinosaur themed camp. Unknown Speaker 57:24 Kyle could pick. Unknown Speaker 57:29 And then I just added some other pictures because it was a really cute visit day we looked at fossils and then we had a scavenger hunt with all the different types of dinosaurs and each one had a stamp so you can find the dinosaur stamp your sheet and we had a prize bucket at the end, and we had it in our Dawn Redwood collection which we call our living fossil trail so we thought it was a really appropriate day, but I just wanted to show off some cute pictures from from the visit. Unknown Speaker 58:01 So we had some issues, repeat from year to year, or recurring issues were purchasing issues are ordering on time and not having orders cancel on us was a issue from year to year, so we tried to order from as many bookstores as we could and we want tried to get things overnighted as much as we could and we would always look at the status of the camp, a week in advance order that many and add five more so sometimes we would need to find you know one extra something is six kids ended up signing up or sometimes we'd end up with five extras, which is fine because we always ended up buying things that we could utilize for another camp, or that we can utilize for another program. So for the most part that ended up working out really well this year so if you can, I would suggest setting a firm cutoff date if you're going to go with a virtual camp next year for signups. If your organization style allows for it, set the date as early as you can without limiting the number of people who sign up and that'll make that ordering issue, really, a lot more easy to easy to figure out, and then again I suggest buying generic materials so we used a tree cookie, which is just a slice of a tree works for many camps. And then the last issue we had was parental communication so there were tech barriers for some lack of communication for some and as Carl was saying. You had to hope that the parents would click on all the Zoom links for Google all the stuff is there but you had to hope that the parent would click on the Google link that we emailed out so again, sometimes that was a bit of an issue. And then we also had some parents not realize you know the pickup date because he had to come pick up your kids from the Dawes arboretum so we have, you know, some delayed pickups, and again, everything was self guided so they didn't miss any virtuals, but that was something to consider as well. Okay, that's the end. Another one sorry I put all my slides together, I guess. And so if you're going to do a virtual session. We always had two people we suggest that that works really well, so you can have a text troubleshooter and then the program leader. So sometimes we would also use our phone, if we were going to do something out in the field, we would use a microphone if we were out in the field doing something we did fort building one day, I did fort building with my phone in the woods I had a microphone on I was holding my phone, you know, up in front of my face I was like alright this is how you build a fort, and then it helps if you're going to do a craft if you have a tripod and you can call it the craft cam or a special name. And then you can kind of angle your phone down to look at whatever you're doing on the desk, so that was really easy. And then my only other suggestion for if you're going to do a virtual camp session is to make sure you have a really good Wi Fi connection or unlimited data on your phone, because that was a big issue is we would take our laptops occasionally out on different spots on ground where the Wi Fi wasn't that great and it was tricky. It was tricky in the end, so just make sure that you're planning your sessions for a place that has really good Wi Fi. Unknown Speaker 1:01:15 I just wanted to add to call the saying we you basically all the same equipment and stuff. This is an image of kind of our behind the scenes image of one of the craft the hands on classes that we ran so you can see the tripod there, the webcam, we got a large screen computer monitor screen to use so that the people that were doing the activity could look up at the screen and see if the campers were following along with them. We also have our tech helper there, who is back there with the time signs and also watching the campers and see if there's any questions or any troubleshooting that needs done. So yeah, two laptops tripod webcam, large screen, and then a whole lot of hope that your internet's gonna hold off on you I don't want to tell you how much I had to pay in my data plan. Because I was used that as my backup just in case. So, but yeah very similar format, you can find a lot of listings about digital experiences and what technology to use online. All right, so the good for us was, it's one of the great opportunities that virtual for us was being able to reach campers that normally wouldn't be traveling to attend our camp so we had campers from Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Oklahoma, and even British Columbia, so that was a really cool experience for us, as well as from Ohio, from Columbus and other parts of Ohio Cincinnati Cleveland, as well as just across the river in West Virginia. We were able to get expert presenters from around the country as well. So we were able to work with Reconstruction Era National Park and South Carolina, the Eric Sloan Museum and Connecticut Genesee country village in New York, just to name a few. so it was really, that's something we normally wouldn't be able to do right, trying to get those people to fly in or drive in and then paying travel expenses is not always something that small organizations can do zoom, don't have to worry about travel. Also one of the great bonuses was being able to sign up for classes, our campers were interested in, they were able to just pick and choose and menu of items that they, they were interested in instead of having to sign up for a full day or having to sign up for a full camp. They can pick and choose which was a good thing for many of our campers. And of course, the great thing is we held the camp safely. Alright, that is, we did see reduced attendance. So if we think about in person camp between 19 We had 31 Campers are virtual in 2020 we had 14 and 2021 we had 11. So, even though there's there's decreases there. The silver lining on that was, I would say that when our presenters were doing their activities when I was doing work with our campers online. These all were campers that were very much had bought into the process, no pun intended. They were invested in it they were excited to be there and they were ready to be engaged, and they were very much enthusiastic about the process throughout. So yeah, that is kind of, is one of the good things you know, if you have a whole bunch of campers in the room, maybe not all of them are going to be as excited as the next do an activity, if you're in person but with these campers, this kind of was the good thing to come out of that although we do see smaller attendance this week is a bit sad, behind the scenes to really maintain a quality experience host universal camp was a lot more work than getting in person. Some of it was self inflicted because we wanted to heavily promote the camp more than we usually do. While this meant Unknown Speaker 1:05:21 some. And so what this also meant was we also did a whole practice week of camp so it's like we're doing two camps in a row, we were practicing just to make sure our presenters were familiar with everything that we had all of our tech and stuff figured out how we're going to film things, how we're going to move from one activity to the next. We want to make sure we had all that figured out, and down pat, by time, it came to doing boot camp the actual week so I we all honestly estimate was about three times the amount of work as doing the regular in person camp. And one last point of continued concern that we have, kind of going forward is after two years of virtual camps, we have been, we've been selling out our history camp through 2017 2018 and 2019 Mostly through word of mouth. Now that we had stopped doing in person camp, went to virtual, there's, there's a concern there that it might be a bit of an uphill battle to recruit counselors, and hope to see that we get a full camp, again, hopefully, in 2022. And just for those who think about doing virtual experiences, these are the activities that we really saw work really well with us. MUSIC activities, GaIn and engaged, one of our presenters had been playing spoons along, along with the music, dance activities. We had some so show them some Civil War era dance moves and it'd be you'd be surprised how many campers actually kind of got up away from their their screen and brought in an adult, or whether they're siblings and kind of, after you've practiced the dance along with them. Critical Thinking activities also work really well we got the campers talking to each other online, and kind of building on on their ideas to plan an event or, which is what come one of the activities that we saw a lot of really good feedback from craft activities are always great and cooking programs work really well for us and I think I have a couple pictures here. These are, these are their my pictures from sitting at the screen. We, our dance activity or our soldiers life activity for summer camp to be in 2020 with the Civil War era. And then, this is one of our campers who shared pictures with us. So playing the spoons in the bottom left, making hard tech Civil War hard tag biscuits in that middle section, and we made a coffee cake together too so we made sure that they were not only their mind was active, but their hands could be active, as well their body could be active, that was always something that we saw, was it was a great bonus, and always engaging. Okay, Nicole. Unknown Speaker 1:08:09 Yeah, so a lot of the good and the bad aligns with what Kyle saw at the castle, and a lot of the suggestions that we ended up coming up with were very similar in the end. So yeah if you choose to go virtual what works best for us are all the video calls with a special guest where you know really, they drew in the most participation, and then choose interactive activities so something that's not just showing the water life that you might see in a pond or something that's not just showing off, you know, a historical or historical theme but like really make it relevant to the kids with an activity or, you know, some critical thinking. So, what worked really well was choosing activities to do not during the virtual sessions that directly asked for audience participation during the sessions so one of our biggest ones was our art show for art camp was we said alright we're going to have on Friday, big art show it's going to be both camps all together we're going to have a virtual art show pick your best three you know do all of them as the week goes along and the kids were really excited about putting that one together. They participated in it. Based on the more than three artworks we saw, they did all the activities during the week and then they were really involved in that, in all the virtual sessions, and then what else worked was trivia, you know, make it fun for the kids, you know, make it a game show, have a lot of fun incorporate that learning. The nice thing about zoom or Google is you can make those questions with the buttons you can have full feature, whatever, so that kind of makes it a little, a little interactive for them. So if you don't sit on a video call with everyone, make sure your instructions are really clear, because again, you might get kids who join you might get kids who don't. Um, but yeah so there was such varied involvement throughout the week but make sure that your videos are super engaging if you're going to try and do virtual virtual sessions. So don't just talk about making a shelter, go out there with your phone and put together sticks in the woods and go sit in it, you know, something like that. So, if you want to go to the next slide I have boxing up. So if you go with a box. This is a picture of our Discovery Center at the Arboretum in full box and chaos. We've ordered boxes to box in, we ordered all of the supplies to pack up we had to get bags and string and tape to put everything together. So this is the before. We have stations worked out we're unpacking boxes in the back you can see all the empty boxes, and then if you'll go to the next one. Oh, maybe the next one, I think I doubled in. There we go. The after we had all of them stacked up so we did a special partnership with the Ohio Valley service center Educational Service Center. This summer, and they got 300 boxes for campers to distribute to school kids out in Cambridge area of Ohio, and Guernsey County and the surrounding area. So we had to do all of that in one go. So this is the after the first round of camp and then after that we had another eight weeks of camp that looked like the first picture. So just making sure you're really organized is important Kyle if you'll go to the next slide. Unknown Speaker 1:11:38 Our best tips were, you know if you can shut down the building that you're working in that was really helpful to us I know that's not a possibility for everyone. We haven't opened up our Discovery Center yet, so it's been really nice to have that area to kind of assemble everything and so hopefully by next year we'll have in person camp, we can have that open Discovery Center and we don't need this setup system anymore, but we had two tables for each themed activity, or for each week. You know, so one camp was here one camp was on the other table and then we had stations at each table so pre camp we would assemble alright here's activity one activity to activity three and then those go in the thing. And then we had an assembly line going just for for eight weeks straight you know we're putting everything together in the box so we tried to do it on one day started at one and end at the other and then we included all sorts of paper materials for the arboretum so you know the free admission pass all the camp information that they would need. And then, you know, a couple other fun activities for the kids to do that didn't. But that just worked with the camp. So, if you'll go to the next one I have my packing up. Yeah, so that's, this is the station's it's organized chaos. But we had the instruction sheets printed out you can kind of see so that marked out each one we had make a bug, you know, we included a book in each in each kit so the kids could have reading activity related to the book, and then activities related to the camp. So we kind of went went down the line, and she'd see both tables and a huge pile of empty boxes in the back. So all I can say is if you're gonna if you're going to do boxes which is nice because you can again mail them and reach out to other people who may not be able to make it to you for a regular summer camp, whether that's out of state or just don't have access to the transportation, this is a really good way to put everything together and keep it organized, and we are considering next year perhaps, you know, continuing doing like a week of box themed camps, you know, on top of our hopefully returned to regular programming. That's the end of the, that's the end of the box madness, you can move on. Unknown Speaker 1:13:54 Okay, thank you. So, obviously, as Nicole mentioned, both of us hope to go back in person camps in 2022, from a survey that we sent out at the end of this year. There is still a strong interest in maintaining a virtual component, mainly of course by the people who are living several states away such as Tennessee and Kentucky, and there's other ones I mentioned. So they still want their campers to attend our history camp so we, we still are going to try to figure out how, How do they kind of create a virtual experience for our campers, as we as we move into in person camping so doing a kind of a hybrid group or something like that. So it's in the works. So, and one thing I will mention that might be of interest to those of you who are attending. In addition to doing our camp for our kids. We have always gotten a lot of feedback from adults who kind of learned about the activities we were doing with camp or learned about the presenters we had for camp and we'd always get. Hey, when you I do a camp for adults and being the person that puts all the camps together for the museum like, oh god, how are we ever going to do an adult camp I don't know if we have the time. However, we have the time, then 2021 And we did end up kind of just transferring what we did for the kids into an adult and all ages, camp which was, was very successful. And so we put that out there in February of this year we basically just took the camp that we did in July of 2020 and did that in February of 2021 however, we reduced the number of activities we did it in February, consciously because it's, it was cold, you don't really want to go out so hopefully we have, you know, in a way a captive audience for that. And so we held 10 classes premieres on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the month of February, a few bonus classes, threw in for those who have paid for the full camp experience, but it was really a good enjoyable camp. We got a lot of people to attend and it was cool to see was. We had a lot of locals attend virtually as well as having a lot of people who attended from from far away as well. So I think that's something that was not expected that it would go that well, but it did so we're happy it did. It's something that maybe you guys want to consider whenever you think about doing good job camps, not just doing it for kids but making it a fun camp experience for all ages for adults as well. Unknown Speaker 1:16:41 Yeah, as, as with probably everyone we do hope to go back to in person next year, but likely what we're going to do is stick with a few half weeks or a few, you know, sort of smaller camp weeks that operate more like our camp family days, you know, because for some, it can be challenging to get out to the arboretum to drop your kid off at nine and pick your kid up at three, or you know organize that carpool so if we weren't we might, we might, we're considering keeping you know one day where we'll be out there all day so like those drop by days we had that you can come and do it and as I said earlier, we are considering, you know, a box option so we can keep doing these kids, and no virtual component but it does make camp, more accessible, we can mail it, it's not quite as expensive as, and it's a more accessible option for the time and the price so all in all the past two years have been a really valuable learning experience in what works, what doesn't work, what kids you know are able to do on their own, you know, and the, the learning that they're able to get out of, out of the engagement that they do. You know from what they get out of the printed instructions and a few virtual sessions. It's been really fun to watch them especially over the whole entire summer as we had a lot of returning kids you know from week to week. It was it was nice to see them like every week they get more comfortable being around the other kids who had come to the family days. So all in all it was a really nice experience however I would really like to go back to regular camp and 2022. So that's the end of it for me. Unknown Speaker 1:18:22 Actually, that's the end of it for, for both of us. So, we've got about 10 minutes for questions, hopefully you all have been good campers and putting your questions into the chat feature. So we would love to answer some questions, discuss ideas, and it and see what you all thought about going digital. Unknown Speaker 1:18:49 Right now there's no questions in but I do have a question, did you guys do some kind of survey for the kids, see what they liked what they didn't like. Unknown Speaker 1:19:01 Yeah, the castle at least did a survey, each year, you know, mostly it's going out to the adult who signed up the camper. Will the hope is that they're asking their camper what they enjoy what they like, but we did kind of get the feedback so that one slide where I kind of talked about what went well for us. Then music activities the cooking activities, that's kind of based on their feedback is mostly any activity that really related to being active in some way, is what we found the parent, the adult, or the camper enjoyed the most. Unknown Speaker 1:19:44 And we did, we did surveys as well, they were. We ask the questions the same way you know as we were hoping the parents would talk to their kid about their experience and fill it out like that. And we also got the same feedback you know that they really enjoyed the, in, in person, or not the in person but well the in person activities but the activities that really got them going, or the ones that had a speaker. And there were a couple comments for you know, if the kid is really into whatever topic, be it bugs or dinosaurs that, you know, oh my kid loved this one because you know, kids like they're, they have their specified interest. So we did get that and I'm not sure if you had this problem Kyle but we're not getting, you know, we just don't get a lot of survey responses back so we got maybe three last year and maybe for two or three this year. So again it's limited feedback but it is nice to hear what people thought about camps. Unknown Speaker 1:20:43 Yeah I'd say we probably get about 20% The back of the, the total. Unknown Speaker 1:20:47 Oh, that's pretty good. I'm better, better, better, but it is nice to hear the feedback so we do provide that. Unknown Speaker 1:20:58 We have one come in, um, Mary says thank you very helpful. I did a conference this year with another outside organization and some of your ideas and comments will help us as we move forward, probably with a hybrid conference next year for the same reasons in personal and virtual. Great presentation. Thank you. thanks. Any questions from our attendees. I am not seeing any questions. Unknown Speaker 1:21:55 We're really good camp counselors Kyle, Unknown Speaker 1:21:57 yeah right. I mean, Unknown Speaker 1:22:00 you gave us a lot of information and I think it hit like everything that we're all looking for. Unknown Speaker 1:22:09 I know, I see a haze threat hand from Mary Louise belly merrily with you cannot hear you, or because you don't have the capability of unmute yourself, but if you have any comments or a question if you could put on the chat, or on the q&a That would be great. Unknown Speaker 1:22:28 We did have a question come in from John Have you thought of using any of these techniques for classroom field trips. Unknown Speaker 1:22:35 We, Unknown Speaker 1:22:38 yes and no. Unknown Speaker 1:22:41 We did, we tried to do some virtual field trips this year, we came up with a couple different ideas, you know, something like, make your own wormery, and then it comes with all the things are out pellet dissection and we put together some videos, and then you we could mail you all the things that you needed you know tell us you need, you have 25 students will mail you 2525 Our pellets in the mail right your way, and we did get a lot of interest in that, the barrier we have there was in the end funding approval for field trips over the past couple of years has been often tricky in the school districts near us. So we did have interest and I think we're gonna continue to offer those going forward because it's something you can really easily keep, you know, in the back in the back, you know have everything ready to go, oh, you get a request, email them the video mail them they're worms. You know all the teacher needs to do is stop by the gas station or the bait store pick up a thing of worms, you can make your own wormery will mail everything to you. So in, I think it's a good idea in practice as long as there's buy in from the teachers in the area. Unknown Speaker 1:23:54 Yeah, and when we have had that kind of on our listings since about mid 2020 saying, we do have virtual experiences available we can do a virtual field trip of the castle the house, in your virtual field trip of mountain cemetery. So those options are out there and available. I think for us in our region here locally I think teacher just, they're just so inundated. And so busy right now that you know, they, they are maybe looking for this field trip experiences, but I would very much encourage you if you do know a teacher that you mentioned it to him that if you have the capability to do digital format digital programming. This doing a tour of your site or something like that offer it to him cuz that maybe is something that they need right now maybe something they need help with. But I think, more, more or less one to one, interactions we can have an offering digital formatting to two classrooms would be very helpful. Unknown Speaker 1:25:08 Yeah, we have about five minutes left. And I believe that the slides will be shared, after the conference, because there's a lot of information on those slides that I would love. Unknown Speaker 1:25:25 Okay, yeah, yeah. Are there any final tips you'd like to share that you want to touch on a little bit more or Unknown Speaker 1:25:44 I would just say, you know, going forward, looking to the future I think more of the thinking that Nicole and I are going to have to do and and for your organizations that are going to be picking up summer camps, or, or doing this programming in general is figuring out how to do hybrid programs. So how can you have a group in a room doing activity but also be inclusive of people who are online with you. So try and figure out how to do that and do that well, is going to be our major focus for next year's camp. So I think, yeah we covered a great deal about doing digital camping but now the big next hurdle to face is winning the hybrid camping. Unknown Speaker 1:26:32 I agree. We haven't seen the last of, we haven't seen the last of zoom camp, whether it's completely or hybrid. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 1:26:46 All right. Well, with that I like to thank Kyle and Nicole for all the information that they gave us. Thank you to our attendees who joined us today. I hope you enjoy the rest of your conference day, and we look forward to seeing you all in person next year. Fingers crossed. Unknown Speaker 1:27:15 Thank you, Melissa, thank you, Nicole, and thank you all for attending and hope you enjoy. Unknown Speaker 1:27:22 Thank you have a great day. Transcribed by https://otter.ai