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