Week 3 Application: Suggestions for using learning technologies

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 artwork 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?


1) The first thing I would do is check and see if the museum web site offers virtual tours that would allow students to view the exhibits on their own either before or after the discussion with the museum curators. This way they can spend as much time as needed going back and looking at the artwork to absorb what the curators explained, while the teacher does not have to “reinvent the wheel.”

2) Next, I believe, since the instructor is new to distance learning tools, I would try to keep the approach simple and focus on something the instructor and/or the students already know how to use. Therefore, I would suggest the use of two-way audio/video conferencing for a virtual fieldtrip, in this case, through Skype. Through Skype it would be very easy, for example, to connect multiple museum curators in different exhibits at one time with the class . All it would require is having each curator logged on to his/her own lap top with an eyeball camera who walks students through the exhibit, showing the pieces, adding comments, and answering live questions from the students as they went. This portability is exactly one of the benefits of this type of technology (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009)! The teacher could connect her one computer to an LCD projector so the entire class could participate at one time. The curators would see the students, and the students would see the curator. As our text points out, the use of this kind of application that focuses on “live, synchronous” distance education is growing rapidly (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009).

3) My second suggestion to the instructor then would be to set students up with gmail accounts so they may access Google Docs. I would then have the teacher post to Google Docs a Word document containing the images of the artwork she wants students to discuss, and I would have her share that document with the groups of students she establishes. They may post their comments in the Google Doc the instructor shared in a conversation format, all working simultaneously, avoiding the problems that wikis have in that only one person can have open and comment on the wiki page at a time. On the other hand, students could also use the chat feature in Google Docs to share their ideas before posting their final conclusions to the Google Doc. The instructor could look in on any group to see how progress is coming, to offer insights, to check chats, and to facilitate the discussion, as needed.

4) Both of these options would address some of the barriers facing schools. There is no extra money needed to utilize the technology for this experience, assuming that a classroom has at least one computer with a camera built into it and an LCD projector. There would be no accessibility problems since the material is not stored on a school server. All students would be able to access and write in the Google Doc from any computer with Internet access, no matter what word processing program might be used on the computer. Compatibility issues disappear. In addition, the instructor needs minimal training to be able to use Skype and Google Docs and may even already have had personal experience with those tools. On the other side, students would be able to have pleasant personal interaction with the museum curators. The ability to have a conversation and get immediate feedback to their questions would enhance the learning experience and remove the passivity factor (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009) that would occur if students merely watched a video about the exhibits. The use of Google Docs would allow participation by all group members, even those who tend to be quiet. It would give students a “sense of community” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009). All of these factors should add up to an easy, effective learning opportunity.

References

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

Mind map re:Distance Learning

Re-defining distance learning: Week 1 blog

9/11/10 Redefining distance learning - Week 1 blog entry

• Your personal definition and observations of distance learning before starting this course. Consider what you learned about distance learning this week and how this learning has influenced your personal definition.
  
  
• Before starting this course, I thought of distance learning simply as what I have been doing with Walden and that which I researched prior to starting a master’s program, taking online courses. Therefore, I thought of distance as a rather recent development or at least since computer technology has become available to the masses in terms of cost and accessibility. I had never classified all of the other categories of learning outside of the traditional classroom as “distance learning.”
  
  

• Speaking metaphorically, I also thought of it as the “Cinderella” of the education family – a hidden beauty full of potential but often looked at in a condescending way by those in power. I have developed this attitude due to the response I’ve received from school administrators with whom I’m have to fight to continue my education. Due to my husband’s job as an athletic director that requires him to keep erratic hours that vary widely in any given season and from week to week, I am the parent responsible for all of our children’s activities and supervision during the school year. As a result, I cannot commit to being in a classroom in a specific location even just one night a week. I do find it ironic that my reason for turning to online courses is a reflection of the reason for the popularity of Anna Eliot Ticknor’s Society to Encourage Studies at Home back in 1898 (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). So, more than one hundred years later, all of these cohort learning opportunities, including those brought into our schools by our administrators, have never worked for my circumstances. The only opportunity I have had to continue my professional growth is through online courses that offer asynchronous learning. Yet, I have met resistance every time I have approached an administrator about my desire to continue my education through online courses. This style of learning has not earned the reputation for quality that traditional classes provide. However, in comparing what I’m doing in my classes, online, as compared to my peers sitting in a cohort, I’ve had better quality teachers and more relevant instructions and projects than they have. What is it going to take until administrators catch up with the times and recognize the value of this type of education?
  
  

• Your revised definition, which combines your previous thoughts about distance learning with new information you learned this week.
  
  
• What a shock I had when looking at this week’s time line and noting how far back distance education actually goes (1833) and what it includes (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010)! Of course, it includes correspondence schools and transmission of lessons by television and radio (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010); however, I had never heard the term “distance learning” applied to these mediums; therefore, I never considered them as such. My own students make up credits through correspondence classes where material is sent back and forth through the mail, but even that appellation has been shortened to just the name of the school, rather than the method of delivering and receiving learning materials. No one gives a second thought to learning across a distance when done through the mail.
  
  

• I also had never considered the wide variety of technologies involved with distance learning prior to this week - from the telegraph to the television and from satellite to the Internet – nor the institutions (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010) involved in laying the foundation for the level of acceptance and quality available today (another reason to love Duke other than its basketball team!). Who would have thought Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania would be early leaders? Yet, it is exactly the characteristics unique to those states that would require innovative responses to the learning needs of their inhabitants.
  
  

• All in all, I would say that my definition of distance learning is much more inclusive and broader now than it was at the beginning of the week. As a result of learning what it has incorporated in the past, I have a wider vision of what the future may bring.
  
  

• A summary of your vision for the future of distance learning as it continues on a path of evolution and change.
  
  
• It is difficult for me to predict the technological innovations that will occur that will impact distance learning because technology is expanding exponentially. If I were to make an educated guess, however, I would think that the changes in technology will continue to evolve to allow even more interactivity with simpler and simpler interfaces to encourage non-technologically oriented learners to be successful.
  
  

• As far as the impact in secondary education, where my concerns focus, we are just now in the process of recognizing and formalizing the 21^st Century Literacies that students are going to need to succeed (NCTE, 2008). This must become pervasive at the post-secondary school level before it trickles down to the secondary level where I teach. Until colleges demand these skills from their students, I do not think that the majority of secondary schools will respond quickly. This may happen sooner than I expect though if it is true, as stated in the article “The Evolution of Distance Education:Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web,” that economic and access issues are driving an explosion of growth in this area (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008).
  
  

• In addition, perhaps politics will play a role in moving this kind use of technology down to the secondary level. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, speaking on July 15, 2010 at the College Board AP Conference, said that we must stop thinking of high school graduation as an “end point” and instead, consider it a “launching pad for further growth and lifelong learning for students.” He went on to call the current structure of schools outdated and not serving its student populations in meeting the needs of today’s world (Duncan, 2010). If valid school reform would truly move to the forefront of the political agenda, distance education could become an invaluable tool hooking up students with opportunities that might not otherwise exist.
  
  
  

References

Duncan, Arne. (2010, July 15). [Address]. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Remarks at the College Board AP Conference on The Three Myths of High School Reform. [Transcript]. Retrieved September 11, 2010, from http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/three-myths-high-school-reform-secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-college-board-ap-confere

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Distance learning timeline continuum [Graph]. Retrieved September 7, 2010 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4442084&Survey=1&47=3976079&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70

NCTE. (2008). NCTE positions statement: The NCTE definition of 21st Century literacies. National Council of Teachers of English, Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition

Back to blogging! This time it will be for a course in Distance Education, a favorite topic of mine! My goal is to move my high school to providing its own credit recovery program based on our own curriculum and delivering it online. I've got a long way to go to convince the power that be that this is a viable alternative!