Distance Learning Technologies

Example 2: Interactive Tours

The scenario I chose is: 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.

There are several methods that can be implemented to facilitate the instructor’s need to connect the resources so that the learner can access them. Moreover, the issue that the instructor may be faced with is budget. The school may not have the funds to pay for the necessary technologies needed for to complete the distance learning objectives.

There are several technologies that could be incorporated to complete this tour of the New York City museums. Because teens are the learners, enhanced technology would be essential for this distance learning project. As the instructional designer, I would first suggest 3-D virtual tours. These tours would stream via the internet at the learner’s individual computers. This streaming can be provided by the museum that gives a tour of all of the exhibits. Streaming video can hold the attention of the student, fit various learning styles and can act as reinforcement to learning (Cofield, 2002). Virtual tours can expose the learner to the learning opportunity without being at the site. This type of technology would keep budget costs to a minimum.

Another learning technology that the instructor could use is PowerPoint presentations. The instructor could use the information from the museum’s art exhibits and transform them into PowerPoint slides. These slide show the art and offer detail description of the each piece. I do not believe this will capture the student’s attention as long as the virtual tours, simply because virtual tours are real time footage.

The last suggestion would to contact the museum curator to discuss setting up a WebEx for the students. This WebEx would consist of the curator giving the students a detail overview of the museum exhibits and the artists. Along with the WebEx, the curator could provide the instructor with assessment suggestions for the students.

All in all, I believe each one of these technologies could enhance student learning and engagement. These technologies promote student involvement, while learning about art exhibits.

References:

Cofield, J. L. (2002). As assessment of streaming video in web-based instruction. Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association.