2. How much preparation time is required for this lesson?
Instructors in adult literacy programs are rightly concerned about preparation time because often instructors are not paid for preparation time. And yet, in my experience, they're a dedicated bunch really wanting to do a good job and wanting to provide great opportunities for learners. The beauty of electronic field trips, one of the beauties aside from the content that's of great interest to adults, is that a lot of materials are there really requiring very little additional preparation time on the part of the instructor. With the Mars Project if an instructor decided, say, for example to do an experiment in the classroom then it probably would be just a matter of assembling some of the necessary basic materials. The nice thing about a lot of these projects is that learners can be asked, "Do they have empty baby food jars? Do they have straws, fishing line hanging around?" and be a part of the collecting of the materials as well. The preparation time for an entire project, I guess, varies on how much of it the instructor plans to use. The nice thing about these projects is that they can be interspersed in small or large chunks into an ongoing curriculum.
