Museum Box Just Another Resource To Train our Students

Museum Box allows students to learn new information and share it with their peers and teacher in a unique and creative way. Sri Kusumawati Md Daud, Fauzan Mustaffa, Hanafizan Hussain and Md Najib Osman in their article, Creative Technology as Open Ended Learning Tool: A Case Study of Design School in Malaysia, concluded that students need a wide variety of technology training and open ended assessments to allow students to think on their own and determine the best way to display their findings. Employers need students who can figure out the problem and solve it. A list of six technology standards which students should know nationally by eighth grade to enhance employable skills and raise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy in the United States are listed below (Kay and Honey, 2005):

• Communicate Effectively: Students must have a range of skills to express themselves not only through paper and pencil, but also audio, video, animation, design software as well as a host of new environments (e-mail, Web sites, message boards, blogs, streaming media, etc.).

• Analyze and Interpret Data: Students must have the ability to crunch, compare, and choose among the glut of data now available Web-based and other electronic formats.

• Understand Computational Modeling: Students must posses an understanding of the power, limitations, and underlying assumptions of various data representation systems, such as computational models and simulations, which are increasingly driving a wide-range of disciplines.

• Manage and Prioritize Tasks: Students must be able to mange the multi-tasking, selection, and prioritizing across technology applications that allow them to move fluidly among teams, assignments and communities of practice.

• Engage in Problem Solving: Students must have an understanding of how to apply what they know and can do to new situations.

• Ensure Security and Safety: Students must know and use strategies to acknowledge, identify, and negotiate 21^st century risks.

By using Museum Box, a student will be able to give a presentation about a given topic, analyze and interpret data and display it in one of the many boxes. In addition, they will need to map out their boxes and prioritize which information needs to be shared. Engage in problems solving and maybe even embed their paper on internet safety strategies. In closing, while Museum Box takes a little to set up for your school, the time spent is well worth your while.

How are you measuring up in your classroom with the above mentioned standards?

Work Cited

"Critical Issue: Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement." Web. 20 Feb. 2011. <http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/technlgy/te800.htm>.