Two Museums and Degas' Ballerinas

Week 3 Assignment 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?

          One of the greatest things about living in our modern computer age is having the world at our fingertips, and this includes having access to the great art museums of the world. One such facility in New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, makes a strong effort to interact with teachers and students from across the world, providing interactive content on its website, lesson plans, and illustrated guides to collections that can be downloaded and printed from Portable Document Format (.pdf) files. The Morgan Library and Museum likewise offers a number of resources for teachers and others who want the “virtual” experience of the museum without the expense of the trip to The Big Apple.

          The offerings from these great galleries are vast, so my first advice to the teacher is to narrow her virtual tours to a theme, such as a style of art or a particular time period. A teacher could spend hours, even days, presenting slideshows of the art available, but this would give little to the students in the way of learning experiences. This history teacher has to determine what the learning outcome should be for this exercise, and match the technology available to the required outcomes (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). Making these content decisions is essential before the first Web page is ever opened. Simply throwing technologies into an unplanned lesson will not yield anything valuable to anyone in this history class.

The Dancing Class, circa 1871  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

          My suggestion to the teacher would be to find common themes in the two museums that can be explored and compared, and that will complement one another. As an example, two museums currently have exhibits on Degas, the impressionist painter who devoted a great deal of his work to dancers in the ballet. The Met’s website has a multimedia interactive presentation on “The Dancers and Degas” which allows the viewer to listen to narrators and click on individual pieces of art to learn more about Degas’ techniques and subjects (Russo & Blum, 2012). This exhibit is accompanied by the music of the ballet which played a part in Degas’ inspiration, so students can feel as if they are immersed in the art and music of the time period and place while they are learning about the artist and his work. The interactive presentation is aimed at a somewhat younger audience than high school students; nevertheless, it is interesting and contains so much valuable material that students of all ages can enjoy the activities available. At the same time, The Morgan Library and Museum has a less flashy but equally interesting interactive module on Degas’ drawings; it contains photographs of his sketchbook, allowing students to see what Degas would start with as he observed life in nineteenth-century Paris (The Morgan Library and Museum, 2010). The individual pages of the sketchbook are scalable so that students can zoom in on one area, and panning tools allow the observer to move the page around and concentrate on one area or another as desired.

Degas Sketchbook, circa 1880, Morgan Library and Museum

          In order to present this wealth of images and information to a classroom of high school students, I would first ensure that the teacher is able to access the Internet in her classroom and present the contents on a large enough screen for the whole class to see. This technology exists in most schools today in one form or another, whether using projectors on a large roll-down screen or with portable computer carts. This would allow the teacher to present the virtual tour at the beginning of the lesson plan. Taking the concept a step further, if a computer lab is available to the students, they could each experience the Met’s interactive site at their own paces, and make choices about which parts to watch and which ones to skip, as the material is extensive.

          From this point, I would create a wiki site where the students can compare notes, work together on findings, and explore new areas together to share with their class. One of the advantages of a wiki is the ability to work both asynchronously and in real time; another is the wiki’s ability to embed video, audio, and other Internet resources. The collaborative nature of wikis allows all the students in the class an equal share in the creation of the site, the compilation of information, and the discussion and exchange of ideas that become possible in an interactive, web-based environment (Beldarrain, 2006). Finally, the teacher wishes to have the students compare two pieces of art, one from each museum. In the case of the Degas exhibits, it is clear that many of the simple sketches in the Morgan Museum sketchbook are the basis of some of Degas’ greatest paintings of the ballet, so I would encourage the teacher to go through the collections and make one choice from the sketches and one choice from the Met’s ballet paintings, so that the students can further explore how a painting can evolve from the original observations of the artist to the final work of oil on canvas.

          This same sort of comparisons of museum collections can of course take place with art from any time period or within any subject matter, so the teacher is by no means restricted to my findings on the Degas works. The important element in any teacher’s use of technology is to use it with a purpose. In other words, simply because content exists on the Internet does not mean that it will be applicable or appropriate to every teaching situation. However, when it can enhance learning, as this exploration of two great museums will do, teachers and instructional designers should consider how to make the best use of the available material. Allowing the students to use the interactive presentations on the two websites will enrich their sense of connection with the museums while providing them with much more material than would be available in a single book.

Resources

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), 139-153. Retrieved from EbscoHost Database

Russo, T., & Blum, F. (2012). The Dancers and Degas. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/interactives/art-trek/the-dancers-and-degas

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

The Morgan Library and Museum. (2010). Degas: Drawings and Sketchbook. Retrieved from The Morgan Library and Museum: http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/degas/sketchbook.asp?id=1

Opening Day

Hello everyone and welcome to Distance Learning with Lyn. This blog is devoted to the topic of Distance Learning, in conjunction with my class of the same name at Walden University, where I am pursuing my Master's in Instructional Design and Technology. Please feel free to comment and share your own thoughts on this topic. I look forward to the exchange of ideas we will create here.

What is "Distance Learning?"

When I first think about “Distance Learning,” I immediately bring my current education to mind – online school where everyone is in the “cloud,” and we all meet in one place but not at one time. But reading about the evolution of distance learning, I am reminded that people have been learning – and teaching – at a distance for a very long time.

My perspective grew while reading Tracey & Richey’s work on how distance education has evolved over the past few centuries (2005). They talk about distance education from its beginnings when people would learn by correspondence. This type of learning was used by both of my parents in different ways. During the Korean War, my dad enlisted in the Navy as a SeaBee, a member of the Naval Construction Battalion. While stationed in Adak, Alaska, he was told that he could make the next rank if he learned how to run a water purification system. The system in question did not exist in Alaska, but my dad was determined. At nearly 9,000 miles from home, he was about as distant from learning as he could imagine. He asked my grandfather, his mentor in plumbing, to send him books about his topic. He studied diligently through the endless Aleutian winter, and when it came time to return stateside and take the exam, Dad aced the test; he was faced with the actual equipment for the first time in his life. 

Years later, my mom answered a magazine ad for a correspondence course in interior decoration. She’d always had a flair for design, and there were no local opportunities for her to go to school. I remember well the books coming in the mail, mom doing her homework on many sheets of graph paper, and her excitement when her work came back with high grades. Her work took hours of her time, just as it would have in a regular classroom. Her only communication with her teachers was by mail. But she pursued her studies with the same vigor that she would have if someone had suggested she went to a top flight university.

In my own life I’ve has various experiences with correspondence learning. When I’ve wanted to learn a language and no one was available to teach me, I’d get tapes, and later CDs, and learn on my own. When we think about distance learning, we have to keep in mind that there is distance teaching as well. While I never saw any of these faceless foreign language teachers, they were nonetheless part of my learning experience. There was, as Moore puts it, a “transactional distance” between these teachers and me – that space between their input and my understanding. This distance was by necessity expanded by the absence of interaction between us. If I didn’t understand their input, my understanding would suffer from this transactional distance (Moore, 2011). Fortunately for me, my understanding of foreign languages tends to come easily. 

From time to time I’ve had to learn to use a new type of software for work, and this has also created a need for distance learning, usually in computer-based tutorials of a few or many lessons. These are often boring, but usually sufficient instruction, where I would learn a task, answer some multiple-choice questions about it, and then go on to the next task. These are rarely great examples of instructional design. They are usually deeply embedded in old shades-of-gray database default colors, with little or no audio component and absolutely nothing exciting or even mildly innovative. For someone like me who is highly motivated, they work. I wouldn’t recommend them to others, if there were some other way to teach them the skills.

I’ve had the opportunity to observe a different sort of distance learning in a synchronous, video conference-based format. In Moab, Utah, a friend of mine attended Utah State University’s local campus, which consists of some computer labs and a couple of big rooms with video displays. Instructors somewhere else up north televise their classes live, and students in Moab are connected by audio in order to ask questions and contribute to discussions. They can see the instructor and the students at the other site, but the instructor cannot see them. Students must identify themselves, such as “Susie in Moab here… how do we…?” It’s cumbersome, but for people who are four hours or more by car from the nearest town with a college, it’s a start, and offers more interaction between teachers and students than they originally had when everything was online.

For the past year I’ve found myself in a contemporary distance learning situation with my studies at Walden University. The work requires self-discipline, but I am highly motivated to complete my degree. As a result of my recent readings, I’ve greatly expanded what I thought of when I considered the words “distance learning.” What I would love to see in the future is this type of education available to everyone, everywhere, regardless of ability to pay. I am a proponent of open education, and I believe this can take many forms. For most people these days, this will be online learning, but with my expanded view of what distance learning can be, it could also include hands-on work by mail or even conference by phone.  

My daughter briefly attended a state-run online high school when illness kept her out of regular classes. To say that her program was bland and boring is an understatement. My own vision for the future is to design online learning for high school learners that is really engaging. What she experienced was what can be expected when a school tries to use the “craft approach” and turn a classroom course instantly into an online course, with no consideration for the differences encountered in online education (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008b). Moller, Foshay and Huett note elsewhere that “Regardless of its theoretical currency, the most effective strategy is the one learners actually use” (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008a, p. 73). High school students will almost never be motivated to learn when placed into situations where there is no real interaction, no reason to explore further, and no expectation that there is any value in the instruction. My vision for the future would be for secondary students to have the option of online instruction that is exciting, engaging, and effective. In a world where so much information comes at them so quickly and in short, interesting bursts, a long page of black-on-white pixels is unlikely to be used for very long.

I came into the current class thinking of distance learning as exclusively connected to the Internet. I no longer see it this way – distance learning can be any learning where the person with the information is separated by place, and possibly by time, from the person wishing to gain this information. Teaching can be entirely anonymous as it is with “how-to” videos and audio tapes, or it can be very interactive as it is with online school such as we are using now. I can see an explosion of information through all the threads of the World Wide Web where anyone who wants to know anything can simply connect to the Internet and learn. Beyond this, the wide exchange of information such as takes place in MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses) can mean that not only an instructor, but an entire community of both teachers and learners can exchange knowledge, ideas, and visionary experiences (Cormier, 2010). This is the learning world I wish to join. I look forward to a time when everyone learns whatever they want to know by simply logging on and beginning an information exchange with others, exploring together and discovering new information together. This is how I see distance learning in the future – and it is beginning now, and growing every day.

An Evolution of Distance Learning

References:

Cormier, D. (2010, December 8). What is a MOOC? Retrieved February 24, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008, September/October). Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web: Part 3. TechTrends, 52(5), 63-67. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008a, May/June). Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web: Part 1. TechTrends, 52(3), 70-75. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008b, July/August). Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web: Part 2. TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database

Moore, M. (2011). Distance education theory. American Journal of Distance Education, 5(3), 2-8.

Tracey, M., & Richey, R. (2005). The Evolution of Distance Education. Distance Learning, 2(6), 17-21. Retrieved from Education Research Complete Database