Selecting Distant Learning Technologies

The possibilities that exist today because of technology were only a dream in the past for various reasons. It would be very difficult for a teacher on the west coast to have her students visit museums in other parts of the country nearly impossible with the many budget crunches that face nearly all of the schools in the country. New generation web technologies, or as (O’Reilly, 2005) calls them, “Web 2.0.” These sites allow for digital interaction between many groups eliminating distance and in many ways budget from a learning experience.
The challenge to enrich learning experiences outside of the classroom is a challenge for many reasons, but with Web 2.0 technologies it is much easier for teachers to provide special enrichments to their students. There are many different types of technologies that a teacher could use to take their students on a virtual field trip where they visit a place, such as an art museum, virtually so that they can see the exhibits that are in other parts of the world while not leaving their classroom. The teacher wants her students to take a tour of the museum and to interact with the curators and then have the students critique some of the works found at the museum.
There are many forms of content creation that exist but as Simonson, Smaldino, Albright and Zvacek (2011) say, “one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 is that literally anyone can generate content.” For this challenge since travel to New York to visit a museum is not possible then the teacher could create a VoiceThread. A VoiceThread is, “collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in five ways- using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file or video (via webcam) (VoiceThread 2012).” Using this Web 2.0 technology the teacher can have the museum curators upload images of the different pieces of artwork while talking about each piece and present it to the students as if they were actually there on a tour in the museum. The students can then talk back to the curators on the VoiceThread and that gives them an opportunity to respond to the students. The teacher would also like the students to critique different pieces of work from each exhibit which the students can do in the VoiceThread on the slide for whichever piece of work they choose. The students are able to click on the slide of the work they are critiquing and can add text, voice message or a video critique of that work.
Although the teacher is a novice when it comes to distant learning, the great thing about Web 2.0 technology is that “anyone can place content on the Web without knowledge of web page design tools and methods” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright and Zvacek, 130, 2011). The teacher can use VoiceThread to have the students take a tour and learn about a museum that is across the country and interact with curators and with each other at the same time. This gives them an authentic learning experience that has some meaningful outcomes in the class.
Recourses:
O’Reilly, T (2005). What is Web 2.0” Design patterns and business models for the next
generation of software. Available online at:
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2011). Teaching and learning at
a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
VoiceThread LLC. (2012) North Carolina Available online at:
www.voicethread.com