Selecting Distance Learning Technologies

Interactive Museum Tour

For my distance learning example, I chose example two, the interactive museum tour.  Many organizations, to include museums, subscribe to one or more social media sharing sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. These sites allow users to “follow” the site and post comments about the site.  Museums will also want to share photographs, presentations and other information about the museum’s artifacts and may choose to do so through the use of a media sharing site such as Flickr or YouTube (Laureate Inc., 2012).  In order to create a group critique about the art exhibit, the instructor should consider creating a blog (Laureate Inc., 2012) and have the students log in and post their critique about the art or if the museum already has an art exhibit blog, the instructor could work with the students to submit a group blog entry on the museum’s blog site.

The museum may also offer podcasts (Laureate Inc., 2012) about various exhibits so the instructor should make sure that her students are familiar with podcast technology and look for podcasts for the students to download and view, if applicable.  The museum may or may not offer virtual tours; however, the instructor could work with the curator to use some type of discussion technology (Laureate Inc., 2012) to develop a webinar or chat session  to allow the students an opportunity to ask questions of the curator in real time.

The Smithsonian offers a wide variety of technologies for distance learners to connect and explore the museum on their website.  On their “ways to connect page” (Smithsonian, 2012), the Smithsonian offers users the following web 2.0 technologies: Blogs, Facebook, Flickr, Mobile, Pinterest, Podcasts, Twitter, YouTube, and Virtual World.  Pinterest is an online “pinboard” that allows users to share pictures, videos and other interests (Pinterest, n.d.).  The Smithsonian’s  Virtual World offers a program called the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum, which is a an avatar-based 3-D virtual world featuring learning activities based on bilingual mixed media experiences created to increase visitors knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Latino Cultural Heritage through innovative and engaging online experiences (Smithsonian, 2012).  This technology was developed by the VITAL Lab, a research and development facility at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio (VITAL Lab, 2011).

References:

Laureate, Inc.  (Producer). (2012). The technology of distance education. [Web Video]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_1341074_1%26url%3D

Pinterest. (n.d.)  Pinterest.  Retrieved from http://pinterest.com/

Smithsonian. (2012 February 2). Connect with the Smithsonian.  Retrieved from http://www.si.edu/Connect

VITAL Lab. (2011). Virtual immersive technologies and arts for learning laboratory.  Retrieved from http://vital.cs.ohiou.edu/