Gallery Walk
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Virtual Gallery Walk
Lesson Plan
The prerequisite to having a virtual gallery for communicating student project work is that the students must submit some form of project work, preferably in electronic format. This makes it easier to convert the project work into media (generally a texture) that will make up the student exhibits for the gallery walk.
Ideally, students should choose from multiple discrete topics for their projects. This allows the developer to group the projects by topic to aid in organizing the exhibits for the gallery, making the activity much more intuitive. It also makes the activity more educational, because there is a great deal of new information for each student in the topics that they did not choose to research.
The current gallery walk displays projects based on a biome research project, where students researched one of six possible major land biomes. A such, the lesson plan for this specific gallery walk consisted of:
- A few lessons on what biomes are to prepare the students for the research project. - A guided research project where students produce a biome poster after researching the biome using internet resources. - A virtual gallery walk where students learn the details of the remaining biomes from studying other student posters.
How to play
The mechanics of a virtual gallery walk are quite simple, making a virtual gallery walk a fairly ideal candidate for the students' initial foray into Second Life. This is particularly true if the gallery is enclosed and the developer transports the student avatars into the gallery before demonstrating the module (this way the students can't fly away or become lost).
The exhibits inside the virtual gallery are generally high-resolution textures depicting project work. Students who are able to quickly become proficient in Second Life's controls have the opportunity to quickly switch between exhibits by utilizing the camera movement/zoom controls. By placing the exhibits at "virtual eye-level", students who struggle with Second Life controls can make use of an alternate methodology for viewing the posters by switching to 1st person mode and walking from exhibit to exhibit.
Controls
The virtual gallery walk only requires students to learn how to walk and how to switch to 1st person mode (by "wheeling up"). This makes the module a good candidate for an initial foray into Second Life. Students who adopt the controls quickly may find they are more effectively able to view exhibits by using the camera movement/zoom controls, but this is not required.
Feedback
* The students really enjoyed this one; students loved to see their very own work on display in the virtual world, and said they thought virtual gallery walks were even more fun than real ones. No students reported problems in being able to view the exhibits; rather, most preferred the high-quality color posters (as opposed to low-quality, black and white printouts used in regular gallery walks). There was very little off-task behavior, with almost all of it occurring at the beginning of the hour when textures started loading or as a result of unplayable frame rates from specific computers in the lab that were later identified to have less RAM than the rest.
Before using the module
* As described above, students should complete some kind of research project which will produce the exhibits shown in the gallery before the module can be demonstrated. Other than that, this is a good module to introduce early in a chapter (even before learning the bulk of the material of a unit) because the aim of the activity is research itself.
Benchmarks and Indicators
Earth and Space Sciences, 7th Grade
8. Describe how temperature and precipitation determine climatic zones (biomes) (e.g., desert, grasslands, forests, tundra, and alpine).
Language Arts, 7th Grade
- Locate sources and collect information from several sources, such as school library catalogs, online databases, and electronic resources
- Use an appropriate form of documentation with the teacher's help (e.g., bibliography, works cited)
- Use various communications techniques including oral (spoken), visual, or written reports to present information that has a clear position and necessary evidence about the topic.
- Analyze information found in such representations as maps, charts, tables, graphs, or diagrams.
- Summarize information in reading materal using key ideas, supporting details, and noting gaps (inconsistencies) in the text.
After using the module
* Students should be knowledgeable in the overall characteristics of all six different major land biomes and ready for deeper discussion of the ecology found within the biomes.
Downloads
This module is located on Second Life on the Steam project's teen island. Please contact me for more information js290006@ohio.edu.
Pre and Post Questions
A detailed worksheet that calls for the students to report information they found on biomes other than the one they originally researched is supplied at the beginning of the virtual gallery walk. Due to the mechanics of a virtual gallery walk, the most appropriate benchmark for measuring the effectiveness of the virtual gallery walk on learning is an examination of the thoroughness and accuracy of the completed worksheets. An electronic copy of this worksheet is supplied below.
