Distance Learning-Application 3

The task this week:

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 a high school history teacher I try consistently to give my students the most authentic experience possible. I have been in this teacher's shoes of wanting my students to have access to something that technology can make possible. For this teacher, I would recommend 2 different Web 2.0 tools to tackle this problem.

First of all, the teacher wants students to be able to "be" at a museum. This is easier said than done as the teacher will need help from the museums end to make this happen. I believe that a podcast would be an excellent method for integrating a virtual field trip. Students could actually see pieces of art, and listen to the curators. With any luck, the museum would have something like this available, but if not, there are several options that the teacher could do. Through the use of Web 2.0 tools, there are several teacher sites such as classroom2.0 where teachers can collaborate and help each other out. It would be very possible to find a teacher in the New York area to go and film the museum and upload the video to a CMS, in exchange for the West-Coast teacher doing the same thing close to her. (Side note: In my classroom, I constantly am collaborating with a history teacher who lives in North Carolina. We have never met each other face to face, but I collaborate more with him than I do members of my own school department. Finding a teacher to collaborate in the project is extremely feasible.)

The second piece of technology that I would recommend to this teacher to critique a piece of art is a wiki. Using a wiki, the teacher can upload a picture, invite the students to comment and then have a learning discussion where students are able to critique and discuss the piece of art. The beauty of a wiki is that the teacher invites students so each student has their own screen name and so individual tracking is easy. A wiki is also an incredible way to have a discussion with your students, and as a school district instructional designer, I believe that every teacher should have a classroom wiki site.