Online+Museums

Here is my paper on three different online museums and how they can be used to integrate into various content areas.



**Online Museums and Exhibits First Person Paper** Shadra Tomei March 7th, 2010 **Introduction** Museums are effective learning tools that are not utilized enough in the classroom. With budget cuts and money issues, online museums allow teachers to take students on a trip without ever leaving the classroom. This week I learned how museums can measure student achievement and how visitors relate interactive exhibits at museums to their lives. Museums have standards they follow to ensure that education is central to their exhibits. They take great care in the comfort of their visitors. It is essential to visit museums or provide online learning experiences for students because interactive and hands-on exhibits provide memorable learning experiences. **Key Points and Highlights** The first museum I selected was the Henry Ford Museum. This website offers a plethora of online exhibits that cover all content areas. The online exhibits offered information, important dates and facts, as well as pictures. There were interactive models for the classroom. The interactive models had games, questions for the students to answer, as well as an abundance of information about the subject matter they were addressing such as colonial life, slavery, and the model T. There is also information on the site about field trips, professional development, and a section of resources for teachers and students. This website provided valuable information for teachers, students, and parents to use to meet science and social studies standards. The second museum I selected was The Field Museum. The online exhibits were set up much like webquests. They had information about each subtopic of the topic. They had photo galleries. There were also educational resources for each topic. There were events and programs related to each exhibit. There were also research experts that helped to create the exhibits. There were even e-cards to send to friends. There are interactives embedded in the exhibit also. There was quite a bit of information provided for each exhibit which was impressive. The final museum I chose was the British museum. It can be found at []. This museum provides a section just for students where they can create, play with, discover, and post their own artifacts to share with others. The museum provides gallery photos, facts, research collections/articles, and online exhibits. There are world cultures to explore and collections of artifacts to view. There are also online tours of different exhibits, mostly on different cultures or countries. There was a lot of information on other cultures which I think will be very beneficial to American students who may not know much about life on the other side of the globe. **Rationale for Selecting Sites** The rationale for selecting the Henry Ford museum is that it meets science, language arts, and social studies standards. It has exhibits science standards on inventors. It has exhibits for social studies standards on the civil rights movement, innovations that impacted history, slavery, and colonial times. The student interest will be high with this website because it presents information in a fun way. The interactive exhibits will engage students while promoting learning. The students have access to resources to help them master a standard. The Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) this museum addresses for fourth grade are: ELA4W3: The student uses research and technology to support writing, ELA4LSV1: The student participates in student-to-teacher, student-to-student, and group verbal interactions, S4CS7: Students will be familiar with the character of scientific knowledge and how it is achieved, SS4H3: The student will explain factors that shaped British colonial America, SS4H4: The student will explain the causes, events, and results of the American Revolution, SS4H5: The student will analyze the challenges faced by the new nation, and SS4H7: The student will examine the main ideas of the abolitionist and suffrage movement. The interactives of the Henry Ford museum were very informative and engaging. The rationale for selecting the Field museum is that it too meets curricular standards in the areas of science and social studies. It provides online exhibits for sound, natural disasters, female scientists, and conservation. It also provides an exhibit on maps for social studies and the Colombian Exchange. The student interest will be high because there are a lot of visuals and interactives embedded in each exhibit. The standards addressed by these exhibits are: SS4G1: Students will be able to locate important physical and man-made features of the United States, SS4H2: The student will describe European Exploration in North America, S4P2: The student will demonstrate how sound is produced by vibrating objects and how sound can be varied by changing the rate of vibration, S4E4 The student will analyze weather charts/maps and collect weather data to predict weather events and infer patterns and seasonal changes. I really liked the format for these exhibits; they are organized well and easy to follow. The rationale for selecting the British museum is the cultural aspects of it as well as the standards it addresses with writing and science. There will be high interest of students using this website because there is a student corner just for them including student-created projects, and resources for kids. The fourth grade standards met with this website are: ELA4W3 The student uses research and technology to support writing, S4L1 The student will describe the roles of organisms and the flow of energy within an ecosystem, S4L2 The student will identify factors that affect the survival or extinction or organisms, such as adaptation, variation of behaviors, and external features. The British museum has unique exhibits that will attract the attention of students. **Potential Instructional Activity** The activity I created, Colonial Life, students could complete using the Ford museum and the Field museum. The objectives for this activity are: 1) Students will be able to locate where the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies are on a map, and 2) Students will be able to successfully answer questions the Daggett family about what life was like working, eating, and living in colonial times. The GPS addressed with this activity are: SS4G1: Students will be able to locate important physical and man-made features of the United States, and SS4H3: The student will explain factors that shaped British colonial America. The materials the students will need are access to the internet, social studies textbooks, and maps of North America. The first step in the procedures would be to show students maps from various centuries from the Field museum online exhibit called Maps. Show students “The Americas Map” and the” World Map.” Then give students a current blank map of North America so they can label where the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies were located. They can use their textbooks for this information. Then students can go to the Ford museum website and locate the online exhibit “A Colonial Family and Community.” They need to complete the entire online activity. It involves looking at maps, reading, watching videos, and answering questions. There are two assessments for this activity. One is that students correctly label a map with the locations of the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. Another assessment is the questions on the A Colonial Family and Community activity on the Ford Museum website. I would follow-up with a quiz about colonial life compared to the lives that students live in the present. I would also have a class discussion about it comparing and contrasting lives of students in colonial times and present times. **Challenges Encountered** One of the challenges I encountered with this project is linking the standards to the museum. Sometimes that was difficult as a lot of the museums have world history exhibits and not as many American History artifacts. Another challenge I faced was with the British museum. Due to it being a European museum, there wasn’t a large focus on American culture/history. I could not find anything in any of the museums to link to mathematical standards. Overall though, the museums provided exhibits that would benefit students and teach the GPS. **Potential Issues in Implementing Instructional Activity** One potential issue in implementing the instructional activity is time. Teachers feel they never have enough time to teach all the standards. This activity is going to take some time to complete so it would have to be allotted in the lesson plans. Also, there may be computer issues. Students have log-on issues to the computers at times and this activity is mostly online. One final issue might be locating all of the colonies on the map. There are websites that show this and it is also in the social studies textbook. Overcoming these issues will lead to an engaging activity for students to learn about colonial life. **Lessons Learned** One lesson I learned from this activity is that there are multiple online museums that have exhibits or interactives that align with the GPS. I have links to eleven different museums that I can align with fourth grade standards and integrate into instructional activities in my classroom. I have learned how to navigate different online museums to find the exhibits and interactives that match the standards I teach. I have valuable articles about museums to share with my colleagues at work. I have also learned how museums centralize learning in their exhibits and that they can be beneficial resources for teachers. **Conclusion** After writing this paper and viewing online museums, I will be using them more often in my classroom. I feel more confident in navigating and using online museums. I have aligned museum websites with GPS and have successfully planned an instructional activity using two of the websites. There are a variety of different types of museums available for teachers and students to use. Museums can provide hands-on, visual, cultural, and interactive experiences for students that they may not experience otherwise, and it is essential that we utilize museums as learning tools in our classrooms.

References The British Museum (2010) //Themes.// Retrieved April 5th, 2010 from [|http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/young_explorers- 1/discover/museum_explorer/americas/tools_and_technology.aspx] The Field Museum (2010) //On-line Exhibits. Retrieved April 5th, 2010 from// []

Georgia Department of Education (2005-2006). //Fourth Grade// //Standards.// Retrieved April 5th, 2010 from http://www.georgiastandards.org

The Henry Ford Museum (2010). //A Colonial Life//. Retrieved April 5th, 2010 from []