The virtual tour I explored was the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Panoramic Virtual Tour. It can be found at: http://www.mnh.si.edu/panoramas/. As the site states, this virtual tour allows students using a desktop computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) to take a virtual, self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum. You can even browse a list of past exhibits, which is included on the ground floor map (see upper right map buttons). The visitor can navigate from room to room by clicking map locations or by following the blue arrows on the floor that connect the rooms. The desktop version is the best and includes numerous camera icons to indicate hot-spots where the visitor can get a close-up view of a particular object or exhibit panel.
From looking at other museum virtual tours I thought the best part about this virtual tour was the availability across different devices and the ability for the user to click on the camera icons for close up views. The quality of all the images and the panorama was exemplary. I also really liked the user-friendly navigation within the panoramic views of the museum. It was very easy to tell where you were within the museum as well as access the past exhibits. As a teacher I think I would use a scavenger hunt or some other assignment to give the exploration of this site some purpose and I wish there more of the captions to exhibits could be seen, but overall this was one of the best quality museum virtual tours I saw and I would recommend it to teachers.
What a great way to show kids things that are so far way though sites like these. Creating an iSpy game would be ideal for students to create or do do on their own.
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