Week 3

Taking an Interactive Tour

Free images from http://acobox.com

Interactive tours are a great way to increase student interest and engagement.  Such tours enable students to take a "virtual field trip" to locations far and near.  This week's blog posting will provide insight into tools that can enable such field trips.

As an example, a high school teacher of American History wants to tour art museum exhibitions related to historic time periods being studied.  Her class is located on the west coast of the United States, but she want to view exhibits at two New York City museums.  The tour will include an interactive discussion with the museum curator on the features and styles of the art exhibits.  The students will then critique two works of art from each exhibition, as selected by the teacher.

A variety of tools can be used to accomplish this type of interactive tour.  The first option is to see if a virtual tour of  the exhibit of interest has already been made available on the internet.  Museums,  like most other businesses and entities, have a presence on the web.  On their websites, the teacher can locate a variety of current and previous exhibitions.  These virtual exhibits may provide pictures, textual  information, narrated videos, and interactive media.   Some American History exhibitions currently available include the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing that offers exhibits of furniture, architecture, ceramics, glass, pewter, silver, and jewelry, as well as an exhibition of Native North America Art  that provides picture, text, and video of specific exhibits.  Additional videos are offered on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's You Tube channel.    Other sources offering  virtual multimedia tours of exhibitions from a variety of museums include the PBS arts website and the Google Art Project.  The tools required for this type of  interactive tour are simply a computer with internet access attached to a large screen TV or a digital projector and screen.  Alternatively, if students have individual computers with audio earphones or earbuds, each student can take an individualized tour.  The virtual tour could then be accompanied or followed by an interactive session with museum staff to discuss exhibits and address student questions.

Alternatively, if the teacher has a contact with the museum curator, the museum staff may be willing to create a custom tour.  Capabilities provided by digital cameras, digital audio-video recorders  make it easy for novices to record images and sound files that can easily be loaded on to a computer.  Museum staff can share images and video by posting them on the web using wikis, uploading videos to YouTube , presenting them using web conferencing tools, or even through streaming video/webcast if the school and the museum have these capabilities.  If the museum curator is willing, a particularly effective, relatively simple option for engaging the students would be to set up a web conference that would allow the students to view pictures and videos of the exhibits while being able to converse with the museum staff.  A number of tools are available to web conference, including GoToMeeting, Webex, and Adobe Connect.  Web conferencing tools allow the museum staff to present pictures and videos from their computer  to the teacher's computer or students computer(s).  The teacher can connect her computer to a large screen TV or digital projector to display images to the entire class.  Speakers and a microphone attached to the class computer(s) and the museum  computer enable two-way conversation.  The session can even be recorded for viewing later.

Following the exhibition presentation, the teacher wants to divide her students into small groups to critique selected exhibits.  A variety of tools can provide an interesting, 21st-century collaborative experience.  Blogs or wikis are excellent tools for enabling students to report and reflect on information.  For this situation, since the teacher wants the students to report and reflect in small groups, wikis such as wikispaces would work well.  Another option is to have students video their critique using an inexpensive, easy-to-use video recorder such as the FlipVideo.  This provides a welcome variation to the standard written summary.

References

Adobe Connect (2010).  Retrieved from http://connect.brand.us.sem.adobe.com/content/try?sdid=IEAST&skwcid=TC|22191|adobe%20connect||S|p|5894708062.

Art Project: Powered by Google (2008).  Retrieved from http://www.googleartproject.com/.

Cisco Webex (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.webex.com/.

FlipVideo (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.theflip.com/en-us/.

GoToMeeting (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.gotomeeting.com/.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: The New American Wing (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/american_decorative_arts/american_wing_2009.

Metropolitan Museum of Art; Special Exhibitions (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId=%7b67815B03-6866-46AD-ACEF-C637B4C52B1F%7d.

PBS Arts (2010),  Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/arts/.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Wikispaces (2011). Retrieved from http://www.wikispaces.com/.

YouTube: Metropolitan Museum of Art (N.D.).  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/user/metmuseum#g.

Distance Learning MindMap

Distance Learning Defined on Prezi

Week 1 Post

Distance Learning Defined

When asked to give my definition of distance learning, I thought, "How hard can that be?"  Distance learning is what I'm doing now. It's online learning, right?  Distance learning is computer-based instruction. The teacher is in one place, and the student is in a different place. It can be synchronous, such as the instructor providing an online lesson in real time, or it could be asynchronous, in which case I could look at that online lesson anytime I want.  Assignments are completed and submitted using drop boxes, postings to blogs, wikis, or conversation boards.  Students work independently or collaborate, but everything is done using technology.

What I learned from our week one resources was that I had a very narrow concept of distance learning. I've taken lots of distance learning classes without even realizing.  Remember all those advertisements asking, "Do you want to be an artist?" or how about the one that asked, "Do you want to write for children?"  Well, I took that course on writing for children, and it was a distance learning course.  The only technology use the use of a computer to type my assignments, but those assignments were submitted and returned on paper using what we now call snail mail.  Yes, I mailed my stories to my professor via the U.S. Postal system, and after several weeks I received a marked-up copy from my instructor.  Other examples of distance learning from my past includes satellite lectures in an MBA program, educational television programs, and WebEx trainings provided by our State Department of Education.  I also took several computer-based training on Microsoft Office and .Net programming that I did consider to be distance learning courses.  I found that these were actually not considered distance learning courses based on the definitions provided in this week's resources.

So, how do you define what is and isn't distance learning?  Well, one commonly accepted definition according to Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek (2009) requires four components:

1. The course or program is provided by an institution, such as a college, school, or company.
2. A separation of teacher and student exists, based on geography, time, and/or intellectually.
3. Interactive telecommunication occurs between the student and the teacher, either synchronously or asynchronously.
4. Connections exist between the teacher, student(s), and resources by sharing data, audio, or video, resulting in learning experiences.

However, there exists a number of other definitions of distance learning. The United States Department of Education defines distance learning as the application of telecommunications and electronic devices to enable instruction across distance locations (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek (2009).  That sounds a lot like my initial definition of distance learning, and I submit that that definition is too narrow.  Other definitions include Rumble's description that requires physical separation of student and teacher and two-way communication, and Keegan's definition that requires five elements including:

1. Separation of teacher and student.
2. Planning and preparation of learning materials by an educational organization.
3. Use of technical media.
4. Use of two-way communication.
5. Application of a primarily individual learning process.

More recent definitions include concepts such as open learning and virtual learning, which focus on the individualization and computer delivery of e-learning.

So in my revised personal definition of distance learning, I would propose that distance education requires the following features:

1. Separation of student and teacher during most or all of the instructional time.
2. Involvement of an instructional entity that plans, manages, and supports the instruction.
3. Two-way communication between the teacher and the student.
4. Interactivity using media such as print, audio, video or other computer-based tools.

This definition covers everything from correspondents courses to online learning management systems.  I believe that distance learning can be achieved in many ways, and therefore my definition is much broader than it was before.

In the future, I can envision the definition of distance learning becoming even broader as e-learning options grow. Consider the changes that have been made in just the last 10 years in electronic communication, delivery of information, accessibility of pre-recorded learning in both audio and video formats, and collaborative technologies that allow access to other individuals near and far.  I envision continued tremendous growth in the availability of tools and materials that support computer-based distance learning.  However, e-learning is no magic fix for educational needs in business, in higher learning, and certainly not in K-12 education.  What I do see as very promising is the integration of increasingly available distance learning with face-to-face instruction to provide a richer education for all students.  I agree with Huett, Moller, Foshay, and Coleman (2008) when they predict:
...our view for the future is actually quite positive: We just need to choose to view e-learning as the question rather than the answer.  In short, the Internet and e-learning make wonderful things possible if we decide, as educators and trainers, to exploit those possibilities intelligently and systematically.

References

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–67. Retrieved from the Academic Search Complete.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Welcome colleagues!

I look forward to learning with you in this course!