Week 3 Application - EDUC 6135

Example 2: Interactive Tours

First and foremost would be the need to see the exhibits. There would be no ability to discuss and critique without first seeing the exhibits. This would require a nice Adobe Flash-based interactive graphic. This would be the classroom technologies part of distance learning, used to record, present, and display instructional information. (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012) A good example is the Colonial Williamsburg Museum Project:

(http://www.history.org/history/museums/murraySisters/)
They use a flash-based graphic to show the different aspects of restoring priceless works of art to people outside of the process. A similar style can be used to showcase the two museums and each exhibit the teacher wants to focus on. If a tour of the entire museum is what the teachers wants, the virtual tour used by the Smithsonian is great:

http://www.mnh.si.edu/vtp/1-desktop/

Using this method of overlapping panorama pictures to give the illusion of being in the museum would be the next best thing to actually going to New York. This would be beneficial to students from other states that are learning these ideas but cannot make it to the Smithsonian. My wife's 1st grade class visits this site to reinforce some of the ideas they are learning.

The other part to distance learning is the telecommunications technologies that connect instructors to distance learners. (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012) This would be a CMS that would have the capabilities to email questions, post to a discussion thread, view outside resources, access grades, and any formative assessment the teacher would like to use. In the scenario the teacher wants the students to critique the exhibits as a group. Using a website like Haiku, they could post to a discussion for everyone to see. This would open the learners to new ideas they might not have thought of on their own. The email part, as well as the discussion area, would also be open to museum curators' interaction that could answer questions and give more background information.

Since the teacher is a novice, a website like Haiku is good for her because it can guide her in the right directions to edit the areas she needs. This would take some help from the ID (me), but it would empower her to be able to make changes on the fly without having to rely on me each time. Of course I would be there for any support she would ask for, but the goal is for her to manage it autonomously without any major supervision. 

References

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