Technology Outside the Classroom

For my Social Studies Curriculum class, we were assigned to visit a museum and plan a lesson surrounding the student's visit. My third grade class goes to the Mariner's Museum (Newport News, VA) every spring, therefore I thought that I would visit this museum in preperation for my student teaching. -- one lesson plan down, many many more to go.

As I arrived at the museum, which was recently rennovated and absolutely beautiful, I was not sure what to expect inside. Of course I had gone online and did basic research on what I could find there. I knew the museum has various different exhibits all documenting maritime history, but I really had no idea what to expect.

I knew that I wanted my students to participate in the Age of Explorers docent-lead tour, but I needed more information on what the students would be learning in order plan my lesson. When I came up to the counter, two wonderful employees quickly came to my assistance. Each employee was also a teacher and worked at the museum on the weekend as a side job. They knew exactly what I needed and were very helpful. However they could tell me all about the museum but little about the tours offered. The education department was not avaliable on the weekends, but still I was led on a private tour of what my students would be seeing and other interesting parts of the museum. I left feeling very excited for my next visit, yet I still did not know too much about the program I was about to commit to.

I again looked online and this time I took my time to navigate through the website. It was AMAZING all of the information I found. The website is actually a huge resource of information on maritime history. It has many articles from its 1,750,000 item library avaliable online. I was able to find the entire curriculum that would be covered in the Age of Exploration tour. But most importantly I found activities and lesson plans that the museum recommends for students before or after their visits. The lessons could be used for almost any aged students and most were legitimate, but just needed to be personalized. It was great!

I think that it is great that a museum is catering to a larger audience (the student, teacher, and parent) by provided such a wealth of information online. In an age when time is so precious it was great to see so much information on the programs avaliable from anywhere with internet access. It also allowed those who are not able to travel to the Mariner's Museum to retrieve much of the information one would recieve from a tour-pictures, movies, and articles are avaliable. Maybe I am just behind the times, but I was and still am very impressed with how much we are able to learn through the internet, no longer do we have to travel to museums to learn the information, although I am still a full believer that nothing can be better than the in-person visit, but this allows those who can't to be that much closer!