One of the things I love about online tools is the niche audiences they can create and serve. For this week’s exploration of virtual tours, I scrolled randomly until the middle of the spreadsheet and chose the first available tour I found. In the end, I took a tour of the Duke Lemur Center in South Carolina and learned about the research being done on black and white ruffed lemurs’ color vision. Can Ruffed Lemurs See Red? is a short and interesting explanation of a simple experiment being done to detect mutations in female lemurs that can give them the ability to distinguish between red and green, unlike most female lemurs and all male ones. This could be quite interesting for a child interested in learning more behind the scenes information about zoos, as it describes the concept of ‘enrichment’ as well as the simple experimental parameters (the lemurs are shown a tablet with two squares, and if they touch the red one, they are given a raisin). Plus, adorable pictures of black and white ruffed lemurs!

I chose this tour at random, but I tend to automatically associate zoos and augmented reality, personally. The vast majority of them nowadays seem to make very good use of QR codes to enhance learning, printed on informational placards outside of enclosures. I can never forget the red fox enclosure’s code, which linked me to the then-popular video What Does the Fox Say? followed by actual videos of foxes vocalizing. I love QR Codes; they’re fun and educational for all ages.

I think that in the classroom, though, QR codes will be invaluable in the coming school year. They can be used in place of shared documents, in order to lessen the spread of germs. In the library, they can be used to link a student to books similar to one they enjoyed. At a distance, perhaps the QR code on the library website could link to a video of a librarian’s booktalk or a video of a student who recommends it (with permission, of course). I could even see a QR code functioning as a paired text, perhaps from a fiction work leading to a non-fiction work that explains or elaborates on certain concepts.

Astley, R. [Official Rick Astley]. (2009, October 25.) Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up (Video) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ