Hypothetical Situation:

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?

Hypothetical Solution:

The two major educational benefits to an activity of this nature are the ability to see the the artwork in a virtual tour and also being able to communicate with a museum curator.  If I were the instructional designer in this case I would look to find a virtual tour of NYC museums online in an established and reputable online virtual tour service. After a quick preliminary search I came across this website; http://www.virtualnyctour.com/guide/museumDetail2.htm which provides hyperlinks to several different virtual museum tours located within New York City.

The second and more enriching experience of contacting and having an interaction with the museum curator is more challenging.  Once it is identified by the teacher which museum the class would be taking a virtual tour of the teacher would then have to contact the museum and speak with a person in a management position about the possibility of a distance learning experience. THe best manner in which to conduct the distance learning experience with the curator would be in a synchronous format with live audio video communication with the curator.  Skype would be the most likely be the best vehicle for this for o f distance learning.  If for whatever reason a live video and audio communication could not be established between the curator and the students then a different form of communication technology would have to be implemented.  I believe in this particular scenario it would be most beneficial to keep the line of communication as synchronous as possible if it was unable to occur then an asynchronous form of interaction either through a cloud document or even email would be a greater beneficial experience for the students than not having it at all.  

The educational benefits of a virtual tour have been known to educators for many years.  Below are a two quotes taken from research literature pertaining to distance learning that illustrate how powerful of a tool virtual tours can be in an educational experience.

“Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) have a valuable role in supporting and enhancing real fieldwork and empowering students who are disadvantaged financially or physically” (Stainfield 2000)

“The advantages of a virtual museum are many. First, it offers economic access to the artifacts to many persons and to those, such as the physically disabled, for whom it might not be possible otherwise. Second, it is safe for the artifacts. Third, it allows each artifact to be displayed. Fourth, the setting can be approximately chosen or even specially composed. Fifth, people can combine, operate on and generally "play" with the artifacts. Finally, it can show to people scenes which otherwise could only be imagined.”  (Tsichritzis 1991)

Work Cited:

Stainfield, J., Fisher, P., Ford, B., & Solem, M. (2000). International virtual field trips: a new direction?. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 24(2), 255-262.

Tsichritzis, D., & Gibbs, S. (1991, October). Virtual museums and virtual realities. In Proceedings International Conference on Hypermedia & Interactivity in Museums, Archives and Museum Informatics (pp. 14-16).

Introduction to Distance Learning

Distance Learning and Important Factors

When talking about distance learning it is important to have a understanding of what exactly distance learning is and what are the important factors related to it.  As defined by Dr Michael Simonson, "Distance education can be defined as formal education in which the learning group (teacher, student, resources) are separated by geography and sometimes time."  This definition also brings to light the three most important factors within distance learning and they are the teachers, students, and resources.  

Original thoughts and new understanding

Originally up until this past week I thought of distance learning in the terms I have come to know it through online learning. I was completely unaware that distance learning has been an instructional strategy that dates back to 1833 with Newspaper mailing correspondence.  The time line of the development that Distance learning has gone through seems to be directly related to communication technology advancements.  As communication technologies changed and developed so did the manner in which distance learning was implemented.  Currently there has been a large amount of growth in distance learning due to the recent innovation on the internet of Web 2.0.  Most likely this growth trend will continue especially as we enter the era of web 3.0. As web 3.0 becomes more common place than it will only serve to enhance the current communication provided by the internet.

Thoughts for the Future

With the exponential growth of the distance education has experienced over the past five years by growing 400%.  If the current trend continues we should fully expect to see immense continued growth over the next 5 years and continuing into the future.  Although this growth will continue at a rapid paces it would be very unlikely to see this lead to replacing traditional schools and secondary education.  If The traditional schools will not be replaced and distance learning will continue to grow this would mean more people are receiving more education which would most likely lead to a more intelligent better educated workforce and society.