We Are Your Audience 
Rachel Horwitz, McKinley Middle School, USA
Cathy Intemann, McKinley Middle School, USA
Remember that wonderful feeling you had when you visited a museum? You could go to whatever exhibit interested you. You could wander aimlessly or stare intently as long as you liked. You could fill yourself with knowledge or gloss over all the information and just look. You could stay as long as you liked or leave when you were through. Students can have the same opportunities in classrooms by using virtual museums. Virtual museums are new tools in the technology arsenal that allow teachers to promote standards for their subjects as well as promote reading, writing and research. They give students the opportunity to wander through and wonder at the world’s best museums with the same freedom that we experienced with our actual visits.
Museums have the objects that pertain to the subjects teachers teach. A good, interactive, museum Web site provides teachers with dynamic material that hooks students in ways textbooks cannot. Interactive museum Web sites can align information to standards for English, math, science, social studies, fine arts, and technology. Students are the museum audiences of the future and as such need to be acclimated to possibilities of virtual museums by seeing collections in their classrooms. Museums with the right Web sites are the portals.
We propose to demonstrate how teachers align instruction to standards, how we choose a Web site from an Internet search, and how we integrate the museum Web sites into the classroom lesson to broaden and enhance instruction. We want our students to wonder at and wander through the museums of the world
Mini-Workshop: We are your audience [Users]
Keywords: Museums in classrooms, museums and educational standards, teaching, standards, interactive, museum collections, future patrons
