Interactive Tours for High School Students

As an instructional designer, I would jump at the chance to tackle a project like the one below scenario:

Example 2: Interactive Tours

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?

To begin, this scenario appealed to me as an educator and a current students working on my master’s in instructional design.  This scenario calls for the instructional designer to retrieve a website for distributed learning, as mentioned by Simonson et al., (2012).  “Distributed learning is a broader term that can be, and in fact most often is, associated with face-to-face instruction that incorporates some form of technology-based learning experience, either inside or outside the classroom” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 124).  I enjoy the challenge of looking for new, exciting ways to present materials to my own elementary students and feel this scenario presents just that…a challenge.  The main challenge with this scenario is finding an interactive tour for the students to view the New York City museums.  The below website through Museum Hack offers tours for students to discuss the tour while they are online touring the museum.  The teacher would need to purchase tickets, just like a travelling field trip, at a cost of $59.00-$79.00, depending on the museum the teacher chooses.  First, the students could view the following website, depending on the specific, museum as a whole class, using a computer and projector.

www.museumhack.com

Along with the above website, there are also several websites that are geared toward specific museums.  As the instructional designer for the teacher, I would be sure to get a list of the specific museums from the teacher which he/she wants to tour online and locate websites that had virtual tours for the class to view.  The virtual touring technology piece gives a teacher on the opposite coast of the museums the ability to share visuals in a way as close to real life as possible.  The interactive piece allows students to ask questions while touring.

From there, students could be assigned two pieces of artwork to use in a collaborate discussion using Blackboard CourseSites.  There are many reasons I feel this piece of technology is perfect for this scenario.  First of all, CourseSites is free for the teacher, up to five courses at a time.  It is also very user friendly, in my opinion.  For high school age students, the website will be easy to navigate with facilitation from the teacher.  The incorporation of online discussion hits on many areas of standards for student learning.  Students are putting their typing and communication skills to work, along with the debating and comparison piece.  Another great feature of CourseSites for young students is that parents must agree to their students using the online resource.  One the online classroom is set up the teacher can monitor the students in a computer lab or allow them to work from home with parent supervision, depending on the assignment the teacher chooses.  The teacher can break the classroom into groups, or allow the students to choose their own group based on which pieces of artwork they wish to critique.

The class is now designed for the high school teacher to view interactive tours of museums in New York City, then set up an online discussion for the students to communicate about the two pieces of artwork.  With some facilitation from the teacher, the students will be able to learn from one another and collaborate with the use of a computer.  Collaborating online can help students to “overcome issues associated with face-to-face interactions” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 138).

 

Resources

CourseSites by Blackboard.  Retrieved from https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/index.html

CourseSites by Blackboard.  2013.  CourseSites Terms of Use. Retrieved from https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/CourseSitesTOU_Final.pdf

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

Zerve, Inc.  2015.  Museum Hack.  Retrieved from www.museumhack.com