Ornisa's Blog

This publishment is the last post of virtual museums in this blog. I would like to say good bye and thank you to every classmate who has shared their experiences and put comments in this blog. For this post, I found another useful blog which suggests how to create virtual museums from PowerPoint. The author is Dr. Christy Keeler, a pedagogy scholar from Clark County School District’s Teaching American History Grant. I found it is interesting because the blog contains samples of student-made and teacher-made virtual museums, tips to build the rooms and to put pictures (tips available in video), ready-made museum templates, as well as benefits of using virtual museums.

Teachers in any subject can assign the virtual museum project and I believe that students will definitely be engaged in the task when they get a chance to build their own virtual museums. This is another challenging way for students to present their knowledge!

Educational Virtual Museums Developed Using PowerPoint

My Reflection on Blogging

By doing this blog assignment, students teach each other. We take the role of both teachers and students. To post the information onto the blog, we have to search for appropriate information before making the decision of what we should present to friends. The students need to be very responsible to the audiences who will read the information and especially when it is online where anyone can read. During the process of searching for information, students gain more knowledge about the topic because we have to go through a lot of information about the selected tools. Also, students have to maintain a blog by answering questions or commenting on ideas posted by friends. These are the roles of teachers to facilitate learning. As students, we read the post and comment on the information on others’ blogs. To make a meaningful comment, we have to understand the post. Subsequently, we know more about various tools from other people’s blogs and get some ideas to apply in education. From this task, most information posted by friends is updated. I am not a person who keeps abreast of technology so the information has made my world wider.

The blog assignment is a good activity for the class. Every student is required to take part. However, it is necessary that everyone participates actively in the activity – posting every week as required, commenting on the information and maintaining the blog. There is a sense of teamwork underlying this task even though it is individual work. If it happens that many students do not cooperate, the activity cannot move forward. Discipline is a big word for this way of learning. I think if this blogging is used with children, teachers will have to intervene quite a lot by helping to either pose or answer the questions. This is to make clearer views of knowledge because younger students may not be able to explain it well to their friends.

Surfing through existing weblogs, I found that many educators share their experience about teaching in their blogs. Weblogs are generous places where people exchange personal experience causing sharing in an educational online community. The visitors can also interact with the authors by using the comment features. If we want more information, we have a means to contact with the author. Educators learn from other teachers’ experience from any place in the world. Even though some information is personal, as educators I believe that we can analyze and adapt whatever is appropriate to suit our situations. Blogs then are good resources for teachers as they can help teachers generate some ideas to make their classroom more effective.

In this assignment I have presented 2 technological tools: Flickr and Virtual Museum. I studied many projects about Flickr and virtual museum related to classroom activities but I haven’t tried them myself. If I have a chance in the future I will try to make use of these tools in the classroom or in training. However, what I have already done is that I have sent a sample of a virtual museum created by a student to the teachers in my school along with the useful sites for virtual museum creation. I hope that the project will be a suitable replacement for some traditional assessments like a paper report or an ordinary PowerPoint presentation.

I came across a blog which compiles list of interesting online museums. The author also puts the main contents of each museum so it is easy for teachers to find the online museums which are related to their subjects.

Check it out at http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/Best-Online-Interactive-Museum-Exhibits-Students-2871369.

Computer enjoyment – Pleasure a student derives from using computers

Computer Importance – The perceived value or significance of knowing how to use computers

Computer Learning Engagement – Students are actively involved in their own learning by using computers

Virtual museum and inquiry-based learning

Virtual museum is a database-driven source where the student can explore and learn in an interactive manner. Students can study an organized collection of electronic artifacts and information resources. A good virtual museum will provide information which the student can perform searches ranging from simple questions to those of greater depth. For inquiry project, students raise a question and do the research to support their assumption. They will have greater depth of knowledge as they can construct their own knowledge. This is a shift of paradigm where in the old approach, teachers give lecture and students bank information in their brain. Virtual museum can be a very good resource for students to search for knowledge to support their ideas.

Some more interesting virtual museums

National Museum of Women in the Arts http://www.nmwa.org/

The Museum of Unnatural Mystery http://www.unmuseum.org/unmain.htm

Virtual Museum of Arts El Pais http://muva.elpais.com.uy/flash/muva.htm?&lang=en This is an award winning site.

Reference: Mindi Donaldson, Virtual Destinations and Student Learning in Middle School: A Case Study of a Biology Museum Online, 2006

Tons of virtual museums can be found on internet. Teachers can create a lot interesting lessons from these virtual museums- another innovative online edutainment. They are very good resources for students to learn with fun element. However, in another way round, teachers can ask students to create exhibit for their personal virtual museums.

The possible activity can be:

At this moment there are 100’s of museums and the like that have created virtual tours of there facilities. After spending some time looking into this tool I realize that the world is at our fingertips.

This will indeed spark great interest in students of all levels. The limits of normal field trips are now forgotten. There can be nothing in between the students and learning. Money and time can now be forgotten as excuses for not going. Of course a power failure could damper the virtual tour!

An example of an excellent tour is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Online exhibits include AIDS: The War Within; Apollo 8 Command Module; the Big Dig Construction Site; the Coal Mine; Hatching Chicks; Giant Heart; and Animated Industrial Gears. A nice aspect of the virtual museum is the inclusion of exhibits that will appeal to students in grades 1 to 4 as well as exhibits more suitable for older students.

Activity: Invite students to explore the Coal Mine exhibit and then ask them to write a paragraph explaining whether they would like to work in a coal mine, and why or why not. A more complex activity for students in grade 5 o above involves visiting a local business or industry and photographing its operations. Students can then use the photographs as a basis of their own exhibit on the business or industry.

Optional Activity: Have students visit the The Chick Hatchery exhibit and write captions for the online photographs of a chick's birth.

Reference website- http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr057.shtml

This will be my last posting about Flickr. I have taken “Virtual Museums” for my next topic. This week I will talk about Flickr in Thailand from my views and small interview; also I have provided the links to Flickr pages where teachers posted their school works and to a few lesson plans using Flickr.

My Reflection on Flickr

When I first got Flickr for my blog topic, I asked IT staff in my school about it. One of them did not know what Flickr was whereas the other two staff know that it was a kind of online picture storage. They could not state clearly though what it could do in Education. One IT staff gave a useful answer for the use of Flickr in business world. He told me that the company could present their work through Flickr and invited the customers to see it there. It is another way to showcase their work. Do I know it myself in ther first place? The answer was ‘no’. I had to do the research on this and especially what it could help us in education. I found that many teachers have tried to incorporate Flickr in their lessons. What about the teachers in my school? I went to the computer teachers first. All of them have never introduced Flickr to students and never used it. Some of them don’t know Flickr at all. For other subject teachers, I randomly checked the lesson plans and couldn’t find anybody using Flickr.

I think Flickr is not quite popular in Thailand. People use Facebook more for their social networking and photo gallery. If they do use Flickr in the education terms, mostly they do it to show their school work or for other people to keep track of the school’s events. Teachers rarely incorporate Flick into their instruction. So far as I’ve been through a good amount of uses Flickr in the classroom, I will introduce this technological tool to the teachers in my school in the school magazine. I hope that it will help add colors to their lessons and can bring any dull lessons to life.

Links to Flickr Images Relating to Classroom Ideas

• A teacher collects students’ work and presents classroom ideas on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunna/collections/


• Classroom displays on Flickr.
  http://www.flickr.com/groups/classrmdisplays/pool/

Links to Lesson Plans Using Flickr

• Pamela AuCoin, a teacher teaching World History at Queens High School for the Sciences at York College in New York talks about incorporating Flickr in her lesson ‘Propaganda during the Russian Revolution’. Students search for images, post them onto Flickr and then exchange comments relating to the topic. Ms. Aucoin gives a clear steps for the class. See http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntny/nychelp/technology/flickr.htm


• A teacher assigns students to use Flickr to record observations of the life cycle of a plant. Click here for a complete lesson plan for the class.

Pros:

• Flickr has the ability to promote motivation to learn in students. This is because it is not originally developed as an education tool. Students will feel more relaxed when learning with Flickr.


• Flickr as one of the social networking technologies can foster interaction and communication among learners. It will especially play an important role in online learning courses where students may have limited time or distance barrier for face-to-face interaction. Flickr can be a tool for students to build a network with their peers through photo sharing and commenting. Photos also reflect experiences so the site is where people exchange experiences. Flickr then builds a sense of community.


• Besides a network among peers, students can tie with a community of expert or amateur enthusiasts. Students are exposed to professional experiences.

Cons:

• Flickr is not censored. Instructor should give advice on inappropriate images to students especially young learners.


• As Flickr contains a myriad of photos and people set the names of their albums or photostreams at will, searching for the right images on Flickr may be time-consuming and tedious.


• Like in other vast online information sources, students may be distracted easily from the learning goals by wandering the photo sets which are not related to the learning topics.


• Some of the pictures on Flickr are copyrighted so they cannot be downloaded to be used in other settings.

Below are the sites where people expressed their experience in using Flickr. Check out what they said and you will see more of its benefits and disadvantages from their views.

A student's reflection on her practicum to present a library on Flickrhttp://classes.tametheweb.com/librarybug/category/practicum/

A teacher shared his experience on using Flickr in classrooms. The presentation is on the slideshow. http://www.slideshare.net/michaelc/teaching-with-flickr-presentation

See example 6 “Have students post images they have created to Flickr” on this page. http://cit.duke.edu/services/consult/web20casestudies.html

References:

7 things you should know about…Flickr from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7034.pdf

The Promise of Social Networks By Derek E Baird, November 1, 2005 http://www.techlearning.com/article/4816

• During an online synchronous class, the instructor uses the Photostream feature as an alternative to a PowerPoint presentation. After the class, the Photoset is available for asynchronous viewing at the student’s leisure.


• A student in a historic preservation takes a walking tour of a historic district and takes photographs of various architectural elements. These photos are organized into a Photoset and then viewed in a Flickr generated slideshow during an oral report to his class. He later uses them as a reference resource for his coursework.


• A botany graduate student on a field research expedition takes photographs of different types of plant life found in the jungles of Costa Rica, and then includes these as photo illustrations in her written report and/or research web log. As a graduate teaching assistant, she holds an online help session in FlickrLive (IM) and uses her photosets as reference material for her students.


• An American Studies professor travels to Walden Pond during the summer and uploads his pictures to Flickr. The photographs provide his students with visual context and imagery for the places discussed by Thoreau. This example could work equally as well in the history, science, or foreign language classroom, and allows the student to make asynchronous connections to the content being taught in the classroom.


• After a field trip to a living history museum, student groups write a summary of their trip in a blog and use Flickr to illustrate their report. They are able to augment their own photos with relevant images found by searching tags in the global Flickr community archives. As they work on the project they are simultaneously developing writing, technology, photography, as most importantly collaborative learning skills.


• A foreign language teacher posts pictures from her travels in France, and provides descriptions of the local color, landscape, and architecture. Students are also able to practice their burgeoning language skills by leaving comments and notes on photographs in French, thereby putting their use of language in a situated context. Students form a private group in Flickr, search the global archives for photos tagged “France”, “Eiffel Tower”, or “Paris” and then discuss (in French) interesting or relevant photographs in FlickrLive.


• An online instructor scans diagrams, charts, or other materials and then posts them using Flickr directly into the course blog or newsgroup. By sharing the URL of a specific picture it can be used as an e-handout during a synchronous course lecture.

Taken from The Promise of Social Networks by Derek E Baird, November 1, 2005

http://www.techlearning.com/article/4816

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

As there are tons of pictures on Flickr, sometimes finding the right images can be a tedious task. This week I have here for you 2 awesome search tools for finding Flickr images.

1. Tag Galaxy This search engine tool can help us narrow the search for a more efficient search. After entering the search term in the search box, the image of the sun with planets circling the sun will appear. The sun represents the initial search term and each planet represents a related tag or an additional term.



2. Flickr Related Tag Browser The result from this search engine contains an initial 30 images surrounded by a cluster of over 20 related keywords or tags.



This two search tools can help us a lot as they provide related tags. We will have more choices of search terms and at the same time the tools help us refine the search.

Reference:

http://www.suite101.com/content/top-5-search-tools-for-finding-flickr-images-for-use-in-education-a273456#ixzz0zCGvkBTE

http://taggalaxy.de/

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

1. Any lessons aiming to promote and build visual literacy skills in students.


2. Use single photographs for writing prompts (either creative or interpretive writing).


3. Use multiple image sets for digital storytelling projects.


4. Use photographs to do image analysis in Art class.


5. Use photographs for visual argument in any subject.


6. Study geography from geotag function of Flickr. Photograph can be linked to the source of the photo, permitting a visual, geographical study of a particular place. http://www.flickr.com/map?place_id=wVzKvc6bAphUAzlxNg


7. Create virtual field trips. Check out this photostream for amazing shots of interesting places. http://www.flickr.com/photos/altus/2348834419/in/photostream/


8. Teach students about intellectual property rights. Members can apply a variety of Creative Commons licensing to the photographs.


9. Create slideshow in Flickr.


10. Create digital visual portfolios.


11. Create visual documentation of school events and students’ works.


12. Use Flickr to create a database of school projects. RSS (really simple syndication) feed of Flickr will allow parents and other community members who subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when new photos are uploaded.

Summarized from “Using Flickr in the Classroom” by David Jakes

Before talking about Flickr in the instructional settings, it is better to know what we can do with Flickr.

1) Tell a story with your photos.
2) Share your photos with friends and family with flexible privacy control.
3) Connect Flickr account to Facebook, Twitter, Bloggin, Yahoo! and even on your site.
4) Upload your photos to the web by mobile device, email, browser or Flickr’s desktop application.
5) Organize your photos into sets and from sets into collections.
6) Explore the places through geotagged photos on Flickr.
7) Check out photostream of many interesting events such as NASA Goddard Photo and Video's photostream and the White House photostream
8) Connect to others who share your interests as ten-million plus groups are in Flickr!