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Johanna Thompson's picture
Digital Learning Specialist
Year Started: 
2004
Introduction: 

Johanna Thompson spent eight years in the history classrooms of Los Angeles and Costa Rica before moving to The Field Museum and informal education 8 years ago. She has always believed that often the best classroom is anywhere but the classroom! Since joining The Field Museum’s Education Department, she has taught hundreds of student programs on topics ranging from soils to fossils to evolution. She served as Project Manager for the Museum’s Renewable Energy Vehicle (REV), an outreach program on solar and alternative fuels and developed learning objectives for WhyReef, a virtual coral reef gaming experience launched in 2009 in the youth-centered virtual world of Whyville. Thompson teaches a museum studies and youth design credit course for high school youth, co-teaches the I Dig Science virtual paleontology program, and runs the annual Digital Planet video-making summer camp, which this year will focus on the science behind bioluminescence and this summer's exciting exhibition, Creatures of Light. Currently, she is serving as Content Advisor for Science, Off-Script: Teens Take The Field, an exhibition aboutht e movies teens have made on curring edge Museum research. Thompson is also a lead coordinator on Virtual Visits, the Museum’s first behind-the-scenes live broadcast of a mammal dissection. Often seen on a bicycle, she loves artichokes and avocados, and makes the meanest fish tacos this side of California.