Middle school students are camping out at the Museum of Natural History this summer to learn about scientific research and bring ancient sea monsters back to life. NY1's Technology reporter Adam Balkin filed the following report.

Middle school students are taking part in the American Museum of Natural History's Virtual Worlds Camp. During the week-long session, the children study museum exhibits dealing with the oceans during the late Cretaceous Period and use sophisticated computer-modeling software to design and virtually recreate what some of those watery ecosystems looked like more than 100 million years ago.

"In this instance, you saw how they took their learning and development of ideas and things they wanted to test about camouflage and moved into an idea and then into proved it by putting it in a 3-D setting utilizing the technology, testing the color against the background that was created," says Ellen Futter of the American Museum of Natural History. "What they're really delving into is how you take information and you use authentic science and develop an enhanced level of confidence and certainty about what you think might be true and then you test it, and that's what the scientific process is all about."

One of the big lessons the children are learning is how to balance fact versus inference versus conjecture when creating their virtual worlds -- just like researchers.

"A fact is something you absolutely know for sure. An inference is something based on that fact it's an educated guess," says seventh-grader Kelly Wong. "A conjecture is [when] you don't have much evidence, you don't know a lot about it but you're making a best guess."

"A conjecture based on a conjecture based on a conjecture is going to be a lot less likely to be true than an inference based on a fact based on a fact," says seventh-grader Harry Fosbinder-Elkins.

Just a week at a museum, and already it takes a scientist to truly understand what some of these teens are saying.

To find out about other programs like these in the area, visit www.ConnectAMillionMinds.com. It is an initiative NY1's parent company, Time Warner Cable, is running to promote education through science, technology, engineering and math.