Software to Help High School Students Use Museum Objects in Historical Inquiry

1. Software to Help High School Students Use Museum Objects in Historical Inquiry Presenter: Ronald Marx Bob Bain Meilan Zhang

2. Funded by Department of Education (1998-2002) Partnership among Hi-ce, Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, and two high schools in Detroit area. Research and development project Science curriculum units: Extreme Structure Cell phone Battery Social studies curriculum units: History Geography Primary Sources NetworkProject overview

3. “Virtual Expedition” Overview • What is “Virtual Expedition”? • Software to help high school students use museum objects in their scientific and historical inquiry. • Virtual Expedition program has two parts: • Science VE is embedded into extreme structure curriculum • History VE is embedded into history curriculum • Using primary sources in Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village • Develop virtual reality tools for houses • Collect substantial sources about the houses

4. History Curriculum Overview 1 • Support teachers and students as they develop and extend their historical knowledge and thinking skills. • Unique in that it builds upon and uses: • State and national standards, • A disciplined-inquiry approach to history and social science, • Specially-designed technology to support student inquiry, and • Resources from the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

5. History Curriculum Overview 2 • Driving questions in the curriculum: • Why did so many people move to Northern industrial cities in the twentieth century? • What adaptations did people and communities make in relation to this migratory trend? • What explains the more recent population decline in these cities and the rapid expansion of their suburbs? • Disciplinary inquiry • Frame problems—Seek evidence—Analyze evidence—Present findings • Curriculum units: • Introduction • Unit 1 Intro to Historical Inquiry • Unit 2 European Migration to American Cities: Detroit, 1910-1924 • Unit 3 The great Migration, 1920-1950 • Unit 4 Suburbanization, 1945-Present

6. Why “Virtual Expedition”? • Research on history teaching and learning • How historians and high school students think differently? • Example: • Reading sources • Using museum objects

7. Why “Virtual Expedition”? • Obstacles to students effectively using museum resources • Connect museum objects to inquiry • Interrogate objects • Locate and use the “hidden” museum resources • One shot problems • one-shot field trips • one-shot questions and answers • one-shot investigations • one-shot conversations

8. VE design • Help students connect museum objects to their inquiry • Help students locate and use the “hidden” museum resources • Help students interrogate objects • Address one-shot problems

9. ”Tools” in VE • View sources tool • Sourcing tool • Comparing tool • Comparing objects tool • Enlarge objects tool • X-ray objects tool

10. Work this year • Create QTVR tool for Sojourner housing project • Collect sources for Sojourner housing project • Conduct usability test

11. Thank CARAT program for supporting this project!