Week 3 Application

Example 2: Interactive Tours

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?

In order for the teacher to provide the best learning experience for her students, she should consider using Moodle and blogging. Teachers will be able to set up quizzes through this CMS and create assignments for students. Since she is an online instructor the students should find it at ease to navigate through the site. Students and instructors will be able to communicate while posting in discussion forum, as well as download their assignments so that instructors can view them online and post grades online though Moodle.

Blogging will be another way that the students and instructors can post work. If students learn to blog while in high school it will be a breeze once they get to college and blogging becomes more popular, especially if students decide to major in instructional design. Students can either have their blogs open to the public or they can assign it to only who they want such as the instructor and other classmates. “Web logging, or blogging, is a form of online reporting and journaling that gives anyone an opportunity to publish on the Internet. Blogs can be open to the public or restricted to groups of readers determined by the blogger. Blogs can be excellent tools for student reflections about course content or reporting activities in a student teaching experience,”  (Simonson, et al, 2012).

References

Moodle. (2013). Retrieved  on May 27, 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: foundations of Distance Education. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.