Interactive Tours

  Interactive Tours

Example 2 - A high school history teacher, located on the west coast of the United States, wants to showcase to her students new exhibits being held at two prominent New York City museums. The teacher wants her students to take a "tour" of the museums and be able to interact with the museum curators, as well as see the art work on display. Afterward, the teacher would like to choose two pieces of artwork from each exhibit and have the students participate in a group critique of the individual work of art. As a novice of distance learning and distance learning technologies, the teacher turned to the school district’s instructional designer for assistance. In the role of the instructional designer, what distance learning technologies would you suggest the teacher use to provide the best learning experience for her students?

As an Instructional Designer you must look at your situation and determine what the needs of this course/learning experience are. In this example, the history teacher is looking for:

• Tours of the Museums in New York
• Way for students to interact with Museum Curators
• Ability to see the art Work in the Museums
• Ability for students to critique selected works of art

In order to complete these tasks the teacher would be best served by utilizing two technology resources: Media Sharing sites and a Blog.

Media Sharing Sites are websites that facilitate the sharing of text, pictures, videos, presentations, and audio file. Examples include Flickr and Youtube (Week 3 Media Resource.)

Blogs are online journal sites where one can post views on various topics, can include text, images, audio links, and video links to other web pages. (Week 3 Media Resource.)
 

In the example the teacher would like to show tours of Museums to her students and allow them to see the works of art in these museums. The best way to do this would be to use a Media Sharing site. YouTube currently has many Interactive tours of various museums being offered on their site. There are already some postings for museums in New York that the teacher could just have the students view. For example the Metropolitan Museum of Art has this tour posted http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHrmoSlfLD0&feature=related .

Another option would be for the school to create their own YouTube channel that the students could go to. Many schools are creating channels where the students view specific YouTube content, as well as information on the school itself.

“Among those using YouTube effectively are the Guilford County Schools (GCS) in Greensboro, N.C., with 338 videos uploaded to its channel since it was created in January 2010. GCS’s videos have been viewed 29,420 times and range from features about students and school events, to panel discussions among educators about learning trends. At last count, 60 viewers “subscribe” to the GCSchoolsNC channel, which means they’ve chosen to receive video feeds from the district on their own YouTube pages” (McCormack, 2012.)

Utilizing a Media Sharing Site or developing a Channel of Media Sharing Options would allow for students to view many different museum tours, including specific works of art. They could comment directly to the postings on the media site, but a more effective way to incite specific critiques and discussion would be to create a blog.

The teacher could create a blog for her class. The blog could contain anything that has to do with her courses and information being taught. In this specific example she could post images of specific pieces of art and have the students comment directly on the art.
 

Teaching Today explained the benefits to blogging in education.

“In addition to providing teachers with an excellent tool for communicating with students, there are numerous educational benefits of blogs. Blogs are:

• Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
• Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
• Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
• Powerful tools to enable scaffolded learning or mentoring to occur.(2006)

Specifically they explain how blogs can be used in discussion.

“A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to be reactive to one another and reflective. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.”(2006)

Not only could the blog be used by the teachers and parents it could be easily accessible to the Museum Curators. They could post an image of a specific work of art. They could give historical information and ask discussion questions of the students regarding the art or artist. Students would be able to respond and post additional questions.

Combining the use of YouTube to show students the actual museums and then having a blog to discuss as a class as well as with curators would create a complete learning experience. Using technology in this way not only creates interactive learning, it also motivates the learning by allowing students to use resources they are familiar with and excited by. Creating a truly interactive technological learning experience helps increase student achievement, motivation and overall learner development.

Resources

McCormack, E. (2012, January 10). How schools are effectively using YouTube. Retrieved from http://schoolcommunications20.com/?p=410

Multimedia Program: "The Technology of Distance Education"

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Using blogs to integrate technology in the classroom. Teaching Today (2006). Retrieved from http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47