Selecting Distance Learning Technologies: Interactive Tours

For my application assignment this week, I chose to explore distance learning technologies that would support the “Interactive Tours” example where a teacher wants to showcase distanced museum exhibits to her students and give them the ability to interact with curators and critique artwork.  There are many Web 2.0 applications and technology tools that could support this kind of interactivity and distance learning, “Web 2.0 applications are not limited to education—in fact, Web 2.0 exists primarily outside the education sphere—but these technologies have extraordinary potential for education and the kinds of learner-engaging functions that should be incorporated into the next generation of course management systems” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012, p. 129).  If the teacher decided to use a CMS to host different distance learning activities associated with her museum exhibit project, she should make sure the CMS supports the web technology tools she wishes to use.  Two web technology tools that I think would be effective to use for this project are an interactive web video and a collaborative wiki.

The interactive web video can be created by the teacher on her computer utilizing video technology and media/photos of the exhibits that are available to her on the internet.  Interactive web videos can be created online through sites like YouTube.  As Murphy (2009) describes in his article on creating interactive YouTube videos, it’s relatively easy to create options for the audience to click different icons to follow various video segments.  This would enable the teacher to create a tour of the different museum exhibits her students could explore at their own discretion and also enables the teacher to create video segments that perhaps had additional information given by the museum curators.  A great example of an interactive YouTube video that allows the audience to choose the sequence of the video can be found at this link:  YouTube Street Fighter (Murphy, 2009). 

I think a wiki would be a useful technology tool to allow the teacher to post photos of artwork and have the students critique the artwork as a group with every student having access to the wiki site, “A wiki can be an excellent tool for collaborative online writing assignments and group activities compiling information in a single online resource” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 129).  If the teacher is working closely with the museum curators, she could even give the curators access to the wiki site to view the student’s critique and participate in engaging the students.  The curators could have valuable input and could provide additional links and information to interested students on the wiki.  A great example of a wiki that shows collaborative input as well as links to other sites, definitions, and multimedia is EduTech:  http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Interactive_multimedia.

References:

EduTech Wiki:  http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Interactive_multimedia

Murphy, D. (2009, April 20).  Create your own interactive videos.  PC World.  Retrieved from:  http://www.pcworld.com/article/163458/create_your_own_interactive_videos.html

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