Distance Learning Scenario

Scenario-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 help the history teacher out with this project the technologies that I would suggest would be an interactive tour and a web-quest. After the teacher has introduced the lesson, she could build a web-quest for her students. (see below) A web-quest is similar to a worksheet that is solved by going to various websites to locate the answer. A web-quest can easily be made, differentiated, and completed with basic computers. Even if the teacher is not familiar or unsure about making a web-quest, a very simple search using Google or Bing (see below)can deliver thousands of examples or ones that other teachers have used. I have personally used and created many web-quests and the students enjoy them.

Once the web-quest is complete she could send her students on an interactive tour of the museum. Since she wants to have her students interact with the museum curators setting up a webcam or Skype would allow them to have real-time conversations. Another option to have synchronous communication would be to setup a discussion board where the students could log on and post comments to the curators to comment back. Using the http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/museumkids.asp will take her students to the museum’s main page(see below). While in communication with the curator, the students could navigate the museum, pausing for questions and still seeing the major exhibits without leaving their classroom.

A more self guided tour would use http://www.moma.org/interactives/destination/# will actually take her students to the museum of modern art in New York City. The tour is animated, yet has the abilities to focus on pieces of art. From this site she could assign various paintings for her students to discuss or even have activities with (see below). This site allows the students to use other intelligences to examine and manipulate the paintings, while learning about the pieces of art. With some practice, trial and error the teacher should become more familiar with using the technologies to enhance her lessons.

Week 1

After reading/watching the resources this week, it was apparent that I underestimated the time that distance learning has been available. I was under the impression that it was mostly talking about online and computer aided instruction. But I failed to realize is that distance learning has been going on since the early 1800’s (Timeline). Then once I got a reality smack in the face I started to remember the stuff that we did in grade school. I remember the learning of English from a satellite TV program. I can also remember listening to stories on the radio (recorded) that our teacher played for us. Looking at the way things have evolved over the years, it is still amazing how things have stayed the same. The four basic components to the definition of distance learning helps give me the picture that I saw as today and relate it to yesterday. The four key components are: institutionally based; separation of teacher and student; interactive telecommunications, sharing of voice, data, and video (Simonson, 2009).

What I see as the potential benefits to my current position (8th grade Science) is the ability to deliver information and the WOW factor all at once. One of the hardest things to show and teach is the atom, for example. Now with the laptops that my students have they can search the internet, watch a streamed video, and use an interactive website to manipulate the parts of an atom (otherwise impossible). Another benefit to distance learning is that I am able to take graduate classes with the busy schedule that I have. Not only am I a teacher, but I also have a family, coach 3 sports, referee, and workout every day. In the traditional setting one of these items would have to suffer for me to get an education, I would have to sit in a classroom and lose hours per day (which I don’t have).

What I see as potential challenges is the technology itself or access to it. Most people have a computer today, and they are becoming more affordable every day. Even with the computer you still need internet access to take an online class, search for information, participate in discussion boards, etc. Another challenge is making the course interesting yet flexible, as well as academically challenging enough. The need for teachers/professor to teach in this untraditional environment is also a challenge. Another challenge that is over looked is academic dishonesty. With the “learner” not being in direct face/face contact with the teacher, there are more chances that dishonest academic behavior is occurring. To counteract this software is being developed and implemented that check for academic dishonesty in papers and discussion (Turnitin). Dr. Simonson (2009) stated that distance learning is and will grow exponentially, however it will not abolish traditional learning. In our last class I did a research project on just that “Replacing traditional instruction methods with computer aided instruction.” I found from my research that a blended instructional model is still the most preferred and effective. In my own room I use a mix of both as well. Overall distance learning has more advantages then disadvantages, thus the reasons it has survived and evolved from the 1830’s.

The future of distance learning in my opinion will be more blended instruction. As the schools today become more available to students not in the classroom, a new method will be needed to accommodate the need. With society’s changes, distance learning can bring the traditional classroom into the global classroom; allowing classes to be accessed from anywhere, cooperative learning, web casting to foreign lands, states, connecting cultures across the country & globe.

Source:

Distance Learning Timeline Continuum [Multimedia]. (2011). Walden Library.

Simonson, M. R. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: foundations of distance education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson.

Simonson, M.R. (2010). “Distance Education: The Next Generation.” Walden Video Library.

The story of an ID.....

Using blogs is a good way to stay connected. It does require discipline to check your blog, not just the discussion boards! I will have to add this to my routine and after 14 times it will be a habit! Great!

Where you invest your love, you invest your life! Think about that one!!