Franklin Remixed

A. Assembling the Team
Bill Adair, Director of Education at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and Dana Devon, Director of Educational Programming for Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, set out to create an immersive educational program, based on the themes and content contained in the two Franklin-related exhibitions, that would strengthen and enhance students’ understanding of Benjamin Franklin and his role in shaping the American character. Once we determined that the project would center on the design and development of an online exhibition, we invited Matthew Fisher, President of Night Kitchen Interactive, to join in the collaboration. Beth Twiss-Garrity, Director for Museum Communication, University of the Arts, then joined the team, both for her expertise as a museum educator and to evaluate the impact of the exhibitions and the mini-course on student learning. Ms. Twiss-Garrity was assisted by three of her student: Anna Cataldo, Margaux DelCollo and Whitney Jeffers.

The final two members of the team were Emily Marston, co-principal at The Philadelphia School and Rick Jacobsen, art teacher, technology assistant at The Philadelphia School, both of whom participated in each and every class session and many of the preparatory meetings.

B. Visiting the Exhibition
Approximately 90 middle school students (broken up into three groups of thirty students) from The Philadelphia School (TPS) visited two Philadelphia-based exhibitions launched in honor of Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthday celebration. The Tercentenary’s exhibition, Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World, (www.benfranklin300.org), is an 8000-square-foot international traveling exhibition comprised of immersive environments, hands-on interactives and a rich array of rare documents, artifacts and original works of art. This exhibition launched in Philadelphia, and will tour in St. Louis, Houston, Denver and Atlanta before closing in Paris in 2008. The Rosenbach Museum and Library exhibition, Poor Richards’: Anatomy of an Almanac,” (www.rosenbach.org), featured a selection of Poor Richard almanacs (1737-1758), many annotated by statesman Isaac Norris.

C. Student’s Pre-Visit Knowledge of Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was the subject of TPS’ year-long theme, so students had some level of familiarity with Franklin prior to visiting the exhibitions. There was, however, no special effort to prepare the students for their exhibition visits. The group visits occurred within a three-week period in January 2006.

D. Mini-Course
In February 2006, TPS offered a selection of three-week mini-courses to the entire middle school body of 90 students, one of which was an interactive multimedia project involving Benjamin Franklin. Fifteen students elected to take the Franklin multimedia mini-course, understanding that the project would focus on creating an online exhibition.

The Franklin mini-course was structured similarly to the other courses: ten 80-minute classes conducted over a three-week period.

Prior to our first meeting with the students, the teaching team met to flesh out the curriculum for the entire course. We also assembled a database of images of artifacts and paintings, culled from the two exhibitions, that students would have access to later in the course.