KSHS Traveling Trunks AASLH[1]

School Outreach Programs: Transforming the Field Trip 2008 AASLH Annual Meeting - Rochester, NY

Traveling Trunk Development

Presenter: Lois Herr, Kansas Historical Society, [email protected] Summary of the Kansas Historical Society Traveling Trunk Program: The Kansas Historical Society’s (KSHS) trunk program is over 25 years old. Borrowers can select from eleven trunks titles. With three to seven copies of each title, a total of 53 physical trunks are available to loan out. Borrowers choose to either pick up their trunk in Topeka or have it shipped to them. Trunks are borrowed by a variety of organizations including public, private, home and pre schools; retirement and assisted living centers; youth groups; museums; libraries; colleges; churches; and civic groups. Approximately 58% of trunk reservations go to public schools. Trunks are developed with lesson plans for classroom use. Due to the makeup of our trunk audience, trunks are also designed so that information is easily accessed without teaching with the lesson plans. The long history of the KSHS trunk program allows the program to be viewed in relationship to changes in educational philosophy and policy over time. The eleven trunks the KSHS currently loans were developed over a span of approximately 20 years. These trunks provide snapshots in time of the museum education philosophy of the KSHS from the late 1980s to 2008. The materials in the trunks are comparable except for the lessons. Early trunks contained information to help teachers create their own lessons. Through the years trunk manuals were designed with lesson plans that gradually evolved from content-based lessons to lessons that balance content and skills. The trunk program also represents a transition in public education as it moved from local control to statewide standards. Early trunks included a wide range of sub-topics and targeted a wider age range. With over 300 school districts the goal was to provide enough so that everyone could find something that applied to their curriculum. With the adoption of state standards, the thematic and age range of new trunks became more targeted. The number of people interacting with our trunks today is comparable with the number of youth and adult groups that visit the Kansas Museum of History. The amount of time spent interacting with interpretive materials varied. Trunk borrowers reported longer periods of time spent using interpretive materials than tour groups. Trunks with standard based lesson plans have a higher percentage of use with schools than older trunks, and classroom teachers prefer lessons with scripted formats that balance content and skills. More information on the KSHS traveling resource trunks can be found at http://www.kshs.org/teachers/trunks/ “Indian Homes in Kansas” is the newest of the KSHS trunks.


Advice on Developing a Traveling Trunk When you are choosing the items you will include in your trunk remember: � Size - Each piece, and its packing material, has to fit in the trunk. Keep the outer

container as small as possible! � Weight –Consider the individual weight of items but also the accumulative weight of

items, photos, paper, laminating film, packing materials, etc. Keep the trunk as light as possible!

� Inventory – Everything in the trunk should be inventoried by the borrower and your staff each time the trunk is loaned. Keep it simple!

� Maintenance - Choose pieces that are durable, won’t need to be laundered a lot, and can be easily replaced five years from now. Remember, the trunk is going to be used by a lot of people in a lot of different settings, both indoor and outdoor.

� Bugs - Natural materials get infested. Even if you don’t have infestation problems the trunk will be in areas where it could easily get infested and then returned to you. Consider this when choosing materials to put in the trunk and the location you will store the trunks.

When you pack the trunk remember: � Pack it tight - Make sure the contents fill the trunk so they won’t shift, especially if you

will ship your trunk. Use plenty of padding when necessary. � Make it durable - Use outer containers that won’t wear out quickly when dragged over

concrete or collapse when someone sits on them. � Avoid confusion – Make finding materials in the trunk and repacking it as easy as

possible. Pack by size and not by lesson. Use the fewest number of packing containers possible to make repacking less confusing.

� Label Everything - Label packing containers so the borrower and your staff know exactly what should be inside each packing container or bag. Number photos and primary sources to make them quick and easy to identify. Place the number in the same corner on the back of each. Put your name and the trunk’s name on everything you can including photos, worksheets, manual pages, objects (if it isn’t obtrusive), interactives, CDs and DVDs.

� Create an inventory sheet - Design an inventory sheet that is simple to use and organized by packing containers. Complicated inventory sheets are often counter productive as they don’t get used.

When you are designing a trunk program consider: � The importance of inventorying your trunks – Try to inventory trunks no later than one

week after their return. It is easier to get missing pieces returned if you ask about them in a timely manner. Borrowers should inventory trunks when they open them and repack them.

� Having extra items on hand – If possible keep extra objects, photos, manuals, etc. on hand to avoid delays in getting a trunk with missing pieces out to the next borrower while you work on getting missing or broken pieces returned or replaced.

� Scheduling a dead week between reservations – Having a week between bookings gives you a cushion for late returns, time to recover missing pieces, and time to inventory trunks.


� Scheduling an annual maintenance time for trunks – Plan a maintenance week for trunks during a slow period. Use this time to make sure manual pages are not torn or missing, check that worksheets in the manuals are the originals, do laundry, make minor repairs left undone during busy months, etc.

� How the materials will be used – Two examples are photos and worksheets. Borrowers like to hang up photos so leave extra laminate at the top of each photo to punch holes in. These holes can be used for hanging photos and hopefully stop borrowers from making their own holes with thumbtacks or sticking adhesives on the back that often end up on the front of other photos when they’re repacked. Copy worksheets onto cardstock and place them in plastic sleeves located in the appropriate lesson. Using cardstock helps insure the 1st generation gets returned to the trunk. Placing them in labeled plastic sleeves helps the borrower get them returned to the right spot and helps staff know what should be in each sleeve as they inventory returned trunks.

Sources � Most of the objects, photos and primary sources included in KSHS trunks are similar to

those used in other museum programs. � Two non-clothing sources the KSHS relies heavily on are:

o Cumberland General Store; http://www.cumberlandgeneral.com/ o Lehman’s; http://www.lehmans.com/index.jsp

� Trunk (container) – Orbis FliPak ordered from C&H Distributors; 1-800-273-0984; http://www.chdist.com/storage-products/bin-container-storage/d-284-458-990

� Packing materials o Foam – Foam Factory Inc. www.foambymail.com 586-627-3626 Ask for

recommendations on what foam to use for your specific needs. Foam can be easily cut with an electric knife or covered with fabric.

o Purchased bags for photos and books – Library or school supply stores and catalogs are good sources. Talk with teachers and librarians and do internet searches to find the best items to fit your needs.

o Fabric & Velcro – Local fabric stores. o Plastic storage containers – Local stores.

� Laminate – GBC http://www.gbcconnect.com/ 1-800-723-4000 We use 10 mil laminate for most items and 5 mil if flexibility is needed. The heavier laminate wears well and will stand up on its edge without bending.

� Velcro fabric – Central Shipee, Inc; http://www.thefeltpeople.com/ (Showloop is the fabric used in KSHS trunks.)

� Models – Riccio Exhibit Services; http://www.riccioexhibitservices.com/ (Custom designed scale models of three American Indian homes were included in our latest trunk.)


Traveling Trunk Program SWOT

Positive Negative Internal Strengths

� Reach new audiences such as those not currently visiting the

museum, a growing senior population, and underserved geographical areas.

� Provide lessons that are more in depth or extensive than gallery tours.

� Flexibility to coordinate reservation times with a borrower’s trip to Topeka, a state legislator’s trip home, or shared use by neighboring schools.

� Opportunity to use research and activities from other educational programs.

� Opportunity for staff to work with teachers on the development of classroom curriculum. The knowledge they gain can be used in the development of other programs.

� Use with in-house programs such as summer camps, annual celebrations, etc.

Weakness � Staff time and money needed to develop trunks and maintain a

trunk program. � Space needed for storage, managing the program (inventory,

reservation preparation), placing trunks waiting to be picked up or being dropped off.

� Shipping trunks requires having them picked up at your facility or the ability to transport them to the shipping company.

� Impact of container size and weight on the health of staff working with them.

� Investment in extra pieces for backups, especially if the contents are tied to a curriculum and the trunk is being used without staff that could easily adapt lessons.

� The relationship between time and number correlates differently for trunks than tours. One four week booking could be several hundred people for a festival or three people for a home school.

� Shipping company controls delivery time and shipping charges.

External Opportunities � Less expense per student than a field trip. � Teacher is in control and knows his/her students. Lessons can be

adjusted to fit the abilities and needs of a specific class. � The “excitement” of going on a field trip and being out of school

does not distract from the material being taught. � More accessible to western Kansas than field trips to our

museum. � Builds interest in a future museum visit. � Length of reservation allows for use of the trunk on multiple

days and by multiple classes. � Versatile program that can be adapted for use with a variety of

ages in a variety of locations and formats.

Threats � Borrowers cannot always get a trunk when they want it. Some

trunks get heavy requests at certain times of the year (ex: American Indian trunks in the fall). Users calling late get discouraged when trunks are all booked.

� Ability of the borrower to use a trunk is negatively impacted if lessons are not well written or if staff do not accompany trunks.

� Reservations need to be made around annual testing schedules and school breaks.

� Pieces needed to teach trunk lessons are missing if museum staff does not consistently inventory trunks and missing pieces are not replaced promptly.

Education

KSHS Traveling Trunks AASLH[1]