SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Discovery Cove have always sought to provide a bridge between the animal world and you. With the debut of CONNECTIONS, we expand the relationship between our parks, wildlife, and yourself in a whole new way - inviting you to immerse yourself in and become a part of the conversation.
The heart of the conversation lives right here, within our various blog offerings. Initially, we are offering three distinct lines of dialogue - each with varying levels of participation.
First, we are taking you behind-the-scenes with our Ask Shamu blog. Each year, we receive thousands of questions through our Ask Shamu email service. Often, it takes several voices from within our various zoological departments to answer these questions. For the first time ever, we will be bringing those multi-disciplinary discussions out from behind the curtain so that you can see all the thought and effort that goes into our answers. Just to keep it interesting, in addition to the back-of-house dialogue behind the answers to some of our most common questions, we’ll be including some of our most compelling, interesting, and/or unique questions as well. While SeaWorld and Busch Gardens staff will be the only ones actually posting and commenting on this particular blog, we thought that the conversation was interesting enough that you just might want to listen in.
Second, we are very pleased to be re-introducing Julie’s Journal - a monthly reflection by SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Animal Ambassador Julie Scardina. Some of you may know that a few years ago, Julie shared her thoughts through a monthly journal offering within the ANIMALS website. It was a great offering and there is some truly interesting stuff there (We encourage you to check out the archival editions within the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens ANIMALS website.); however, it was a one-way conversation. Now, by bringing the Journal back as a blog, we are inviting you to talk directly with Julie and one another regarding the conservation, education, and research topics that Julie brings to the table each month. Just to be clear, this will be a moderated conversation, with comments undergoing review prior to being posted. Should it arise (through the choice of topic or otherwise), we do not intend to avoid controversy. Rather, we want to avoid losing the topic at hand and promise to ensure a dialogue appropriate for all possible participants. (As a good rule of thumb, adults, make sure that you would be comfortable with your statements were a group of kids listening in and, kids, make sure that you would be comfortable with your statements were a group of adults listening in.)
Third, we offer Schooling - a complimentary dialogue to our monthly Land, Sea, & Air e-newsletter (which is being re-introduced itself) designed specifically for educators. Within Schooling, we plan to discuss the classroom activities offered in each month’s Land, Sea, & Air (LSA) so that we can provide additional insight into their application and find out from you how they are working. In fact, what we hope to provide is not only a conversation between our instructional designers and you, but an active forum in which educators can cross pollinate ideas and approaches around the topics and resources we provide. Schooling is our most specialized blog offering at this time, with participation primarily encouraged only among educators and discussion primarily focused on a given month’s LSA topic and associated offerings. That being the case, the conversation will be entirely organic, with commentary posting to the blog without moderation. We hope and expect the discourse to be substantive, engaging, professional, and focused. See you in School(ing).
This is an exciting new opportunity for us to engage one-on-one with you. As the conversation(s) evolves, we may find it appropriate to adjust aspects of our approach to best serve the unfolding dialogue. That may mean that the boundaries of blogs change or that the types of offerings expand or contract as we move forward. It’s really your call.
Explore with us and discover what we can become…CONNECTIONS.
