PaleoJoe's Ultimate Field Trip Contest: A class trip to Wyoming for a Dinosaur Dig
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, PaleoJoe is the name of a fictional character in this series of children's books called PaleoJoe's Dinosaur Detective Club. The author of this series and the real-life inspiration behind the character PaleoJoe is the Paleontologist Joe Kchodl. I am sorry; I didn't ask you whether that was how you pronounce it.
Joe Kchodl Absolutely perfect.
Rob Huisingh I got it right?
Joe Kchodl Right.
Rob Huisingh He is here in the Foxbright Studio today to talk to us about his books. The work he does communicating dinosaur and fossil information to children and communities and a contest sponsored by Fox 2 News giving away the ultimate fieldtrip, and an entire class is going to go to Wyoming on a dinosaur dig. PaleoJoe, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Joe Kchodl Thank you very much; it's great to be here.
Rob Huisingh This Friday, your books arrived from your publicist, and I took them home over the weekend, I had intended to read them, and I started reading The Disappearance of Dinosaurs Sue, which I found to be very engaging. I put the books down, I had to go out and do some yard work, and when I came back in my 11 year old daughter Molly was reading them. So, I kind of took a step back, well by Sunday evening all four books were done. I asked her, I said, "So, Molly what do you think about those books?" She said, "They are awesome dad, and when is the next book coming out." So, the question is when is the next book coming out?
Joe Kchodl Oh, my gosh! The next book it will probably be out in about another three or four months. We are working on it right now, trying to get it edited, and ready to go into production, but that's the kind of responses I get from parents all across the state, actually all across the country. One of the parents came back to me later and said, "You know, we bought your book at a bookstore, and dad was driving and I was reading it to our son, and he wouldn't let me stop reading it. We couldn't get out of the car until the whole book was done."
Rob Huisingh Yeah, I read that you started collecting fossils when you were ten.
Joe Kchodl Yes.
Rob Huisingh It's obvious even from my experience that your books are a hit with children. Why do you think it is that so many of us are fascinated by dinosaurs and fossils and what was the allure to you?
Joe Kchodl I grew up in the state of New York, which was extremely fossil rich, about as fossil rich as Michigan is. Michigan has got lots of great fossils in it, and for me it was walking out into the woods and fields, and kicking over these stones, and usually those things I found on those stones were called fossils. So, I went out and started getting books and reading as much as I could about fossils, and then I learned about dinosaurs, and we all know about dinosaurs. These big giant creatures that once roamed the earth, and I think the allure for most people even adults is that these creatures are gone, they are no more, and they are kind of the monsters of our imagination. They are the things that we can't see what they were like. So, our imagination just kind of runs wild and kind of makes up these giant mythical creatures.
Rob Huisingh And to think that they actually existed.
Joe Kchodl They actually existed and that's the neat part about being a Paleontologist, because when you are digging in the dirt, you go down two, three feet and all of a sudden you reach a bone. I mean, you are the first human being to see that bone, and it's millions and millions of years old. It's just exciting, exciting is not even the word for it, awesome. Actually, I have a better word for it it's paleoriffic.
Rob Huisingh Paleoriffic.
Joe Kchodl Well 'paleo' for old and 'riffic' for terrific, it's paleoriffic.
Rob Huisingh Alright, you spent time talking directly with children, and from what I understand it's a pretty big deal when PaleoJoe comes to a school. Tell us about your school assembly presentations, what are they like and what do you try to accomplish?
Joe Kchodl Well, I started back in 1993, traveling to schools all over the state of Michigan, and I found that fossils are so fascinating to kids, they just sit still and listen and soak in as much as they could. My assembly program really begins with, I talk about what a Paleontologist does, what are fossils. I introduced what fossils are, there's a couple of different kinds of fossils, there's trace fossils, which just give us evidence for something existed, and evidence is important when we talk about our books and then there is the real fossil like a dinosaur bone or a seashell.
From there, I go into how fossils are formed, because there is a lot of different ways that they can be formed, and the kids need to know that, because it's actually part of the Michigan curriculum that they need to learn how fossils are formed.
So, I tell them before you leave high school you will know all about it. So, tell them you heard from PaleoJoe first. From there I move on into a description of what the fossils are like in the state of Michigan, because again here we are in the state of Michigan, very fossil rich state. From there, I do move on into dinosaurs, because all kids love dinosaurs, and I have to disappoint them, and say there were no dinosaurs in the state of Michigan. Then from there, I move on to a brief little puppet show for the young kids, grades 'K' through '2' and for the older kids grades '3' through '6' and even above that. I start talking about something I call Dinosaur CSI.
We talk about what we know about dinosaurs by the evidence that is found in the ground around those dinosaur bones, and that really is exciting. I am going to be doing a program at Saginaw Valley State University for their lifelong education program to senior citizens, and again they are excited about dinosaurs just as much as kids are, and I talk a lot about what we know about these creatures, because of what we find in the ground and the condition of the bones, and the trace evidence surrounding those bones.
Rob Huisingh You are the real deal. You are a real Paleontologist, what are some of the more recent digs you have been working on?
Joe Kchodl Well, I have been, "Gosh!" all over the place. Most recently I was out in Montana, and I was digging on a Theropod dinosaur, which is a large meat eating dinosaur, and we were digging at two separate sites. On my side of the valley, we had that Theropod, and the other side of the valley we had a Triceratops, and we were all digging at our sides.
After about two days of digging on a couple of bones that I found a 'humorous', which is an arm bone, then I found a piece of a 'vertebrae', then I found a 'rib bone', and then I found a 'gastralia'. And a 'gastralia' is one of those bones that kind of ties the two rib bones together in the front. After about two days of digging, I started getting a little soar, all cramped up being in the same position. So, I decided to do a walk about, and I am walking along to top of a ridge to get to the top of hill to see how beautiful the badlands were, and then as I got to the top of the hill, I looked down at my feet, and there were Triceratops bones at my feet.
So, I was really excited about that, I grabbed up all these bones and I ran back down to hill, and I said look what I found, I found a Triceratops and they say yeah that's really cool, but we have got so many other bones were digging right now, we'll have to wait and yours is going to have to be dug up later. So, that was kind of fun this year. I have actually discovered a Triceratops site. Prior to that I have been digging with Dr. Bakker, Dr. Robert Bakker is one of the premier Paleontologist in the country. They call him a maverick and he truly is a maverick. He has a degree from Harvard and a degree from Yale, and he is just a spectacular Paleontologist; very, very knowledgeable, kind of like my inspiration in Paleontology.
We were digging there and I dug up a Camarasaurus, which is a large long-neck plant-eating dinosaur, and we dug up many, many other bones in the very famous Como Bluff. Como Bluff is an area where we first started discovering dinosaurs in the United States as they were building the railroad through United States the Union Pacific, they came upon this area, and the area was just literally littered with bones, bones everywhere. Right away they found out how valuable this was, and they moved the railroad a couple of miles to the one side, and then they just started digging dinosaur bones there.
Rob Huisingh Yeah, it's fascinating. Let's talk about something - this ultimate fieldtrip, I understand that Fox 2 News is giving away an entire class trip to Wyoming to go on a dinosaur dig with you PaleoJoe, and talk to us about the contest.
Joe Kchodl Well, the contest is really something that's never been done before, and we are really excited and proud to be able to do this contest. Thanks to Fox Detroit, Mackinac Island Press, Blue Lakes Charters, and also the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming we have put together the ultimate fieldtrip. We are taking one entire classroom of kids, their teacher and chaperones out to Wyoming to do an actual dinosaur dig. Now, they are not going to stand there with their hands in their pockets watching Paleontologist work. The children will actually get a chance to dig in the dirt and find these fossils.
We are digging in an area that's Jurassic in time, about a 155 million years old, and the students will actually get a chance to dig in the dirt, touch those fossil bones, brush them off, clean them, plaster them, bring them back to the laboratory, look at them under a microscope, work in a museum. It's a fully developed program to let students actually see what it is the Paleontologist do. Then, I don't care if they ever become Paleontologist or not, my dream is that they will be sparked that something will click in their brain and say, boy I really want to be a scientist.
Now, they may not like Paleontology or rocks or fossils or minerals, but you know they might like mathematics or teaching or oceanography or butterflies. I really don't care what they like, I want them to get out and learn and study as much as they can about what they like, that's what's all about.
Rob Huisingh Is it too late for people to participate?
Joe Kchodl It is not too late, the contest goes through November 26th and all the people have to do is log on to either www.paleojoe.com, which is my website or www.myfoxdetroit.com and then there is a link there for the contest.
For example, on paleojoe.com it's my logo for the Dinosaur Detective Club Series that says 'Dig Contest' across it. They click on that and that will take them directly to the contest page. At the bottom of the contest page, there are two additional links, one is for 12 and under, one is for 13 and over.
All the students 12 and under click on that link and they will see a form, that form needs to be printed out, and filled out by the student and the parents and then sent back to Fox.
The 13 and over which would include the parents, because I think the parents are older than 13, all they have to do is just fill it out online, and they can enter that way. It's open to parents of school age children, grades '1' through '6'. It's open for all teachers and principals of school age children '1' through '6', and it's open to all students, grades '1' through '6' within the entire state of Michigan.
Rob Huisingh Wow! So, once people register, they answer questions every week.
Joe Kchodl Yes, they have four questions they need to answer and the questions either come directly out of my PaleoJoe Dinosaur Detective Club books or they are even simpler than that. Sometimes all they need to do is, go on to one of their search engines, whichever one they like, and the questions can be answered very easily that way.
We have made it very simple, because we want everybody to be able to participate, we want to give everybody in the state a chance to go out and dig in these things that we call dinosaurs. Hopefully, principals are listening to this and teachers are listening to this, the best way to do it is to print that page out, make a copy of it, and send it home with every student, have the students then fill those forms out, bring them back to the school, and then the school can send them down to Detroit in mass. That will save a lot of postage; it will save the students from losing it or their dog eating it. It will get down to Detroit, and they will be entered in the contest.
At the end of the contest, November 26, we are drawing one name out of a hat, that student's entire class teacher and chaperones get to go dig in dinos with PaleoJoe.
Rob Huisingh That's pretty darn exciting.
Joe Kchodl That's phenomenal.
Rob Huisingh I understand that there was a curriculum that was put together.
Joe Kchodl Yes, there is a curriculum that was designed by a school in Ann Arbor the Emerson School, and it is a spectacular curriculum, it's over 200 pages long, but don't fear for your specific grade level it's only about 40 pages.
So, it completely covers grades '1' through '6'. So, you just go into the website either Fox Detroit's or mine and you could actually download that curriculum, it is downloadable. And then that curriculum covers mathematics, science, social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Geography, all sorts of different subjects that revolve around dinosaurs.
So, it is a fully developed curriculum that helps again reinforce what teachers are teaching in school. For example, if you are doing Mathematics, it will help you find out how old these dinosaurs are multiplication, addition, subtraction.
It will help in the mathematics part of it. If you are talking about Language Arts, we just try to teach you different things about dinosaurs and their names. How the names are derived from Greek and Latin word.
So, it really is a fully developed curriculum that's wonderful thanks to the teachers in Emerson School in Ann Arbor for putting the curriculum together, it's spectacular. It will help the teachers again, because it's right there, all they have to do is download it. They don't have to do any additional work.
Rob Huisingh Well, PaleoJoe, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on our show, and the time that you give to our children in these presentations, it's fun and pleasure, and I hope you will come back and visit with us again sometime.
Joe Kchodl I would be very happy to come back and I am available to teachers across the entire state. I do lots of school programs for kids and my reward is to see the smiling faces of those kids, as they are looking up at me as I am touching and holding and showing dinosaur bones.
Rob Huisingh If you would like to contact PaleoJoe, he can be reached by telephone at (989) 430-3980. Again that's (989) 430-3980. You can also visit his website at www.paleojoe.com, again that URL is www.paleojoe.com. His books are published by Mackinac Island Press, and more information on Mackinac Island Press is at www.mackinacislandpress.com. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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