Distance Learning Technologies

Interactive Tours

A high school history teacher located on the west coast of the United States wants to showcase new art exhibits (to her students) that are currently displayed at museums in New York City. Costs prohibit her from sending all her students to New York City just to view the exhibits, so her proposed solution is to provide interactive virtual tours and have the students critique the work in group settings. This can be achieved by utilizing Web 2.0 tools. They are, “highly participatory and promote collaboration, networking, sharing, and the widespread generation of content, and the editing and mixing of content from diverse sources for new purposes through a model called the mash-up, by both groups and individuals” (Simonson et al, 2009. p. 244).

A Web 2.0 tool that could easily be incorporated by the students for this scenario is a blog. Blogging is considered an excellent platform for student reflection or reporting activities defined in a teaching experience (Simonson et al, 2009). As the history teacher wants the students to critique the works of art in a group format, blogging will allow learners easy access to collaborate on their findings. Setting up a blog is free on several sites and the one I found to be user friendly was blogger. The site is easy and guides participants through every phase of creation.

 https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=blogger&ltmpl=start&hl=en_GB&passive=86400&continue=http://www.blogger.com/home#s01

A perfect example of how successful this tool works for learner participation is the site from which you are reading this discussion. I am able to post thoughts and comments for fellow learners to view. Comments and feedback allow for learner interaction among colleagues and instructors. Blogging is fast, safe and allows the learner the ability to participate at their own pace and schedule.

Bringing the art exhibit to the students on the West coast is easy thanks to virtual tours, which can also be designed to be interactive for the learner.

Virtual tools can be used by incorporating a Youtube video which would display the art exhibits in a video format or using a platform such as Previsite allowing the instructor the ability to create their own virtual tour.

The video below shows participants how to make a virtual tour.

http://youtu.be/tPKa6iOyFRQ

 

There are numerous sites that incorporate virtual tours allowing learners to ‘view’ the knowledge without leaving home. The teacher’s guide.com has a link to a Virtual fieldtrips for students to view learning material from an Ancient Roman Villa

http://www.villa-rustica.de/tour/toure.html

 to the Great Wall of China Virtual Tour.

http://www.thebeijingguide.com/great_wall_of_china/index.html

“Course management systems are also commonly used for distributed learning purposes, enabling teachers of conventional face - to–face courses to provide learning resources and conduct course – related activities, such as discussions and testing, outside of normal class time” (Simonson et al, 2009, p.238).

With such a diversity of online systems available, learning will never be the same.

References

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

The Teacher’s Guide (n.d.). Virtual Fieldtrips. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from:

http://www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html

YouTube(2009). How to make a Virtual Tour with Previsite.. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPKa6iOyFRQ