Content
So, we encourage you to go out there and “play the field” to see how virtual field trips can future-proof your own teaching. Each of the seven videos is accompanied by an explanatory PDF. Guide students through a website with the use of a Smart Board in the classroom or at an individual computer station with a few or a small group of students. Relevant vocabulary can be introduced with a word bank list of words, and titles of each section of the virtual field trip to find can be shown in order. Students can be guided to choose appropriate activities at a variety of ability levels. The features range in grade-level appropriateness, from very young through secondary students, and many of the activities can be done by students independently.
The importance and need for practical and reality-based learning has opened the doors to different approaches, among them being virtual field trips. Boston Museum of Science The website of the museum offers teaching resources and guides, and it takes students on virtual field trips related to the museum collection using video, video casts, and podcasts. Most of these virtual field trips are available to anyone, and are free to access, meaning your students can visit or revisit the sites anytime. To make your activity extra special, seek out guide-led, live, interactive experiences so that your students can hold conversations with an expert. You can also supplement the trip with assignments and fun games.
Stone Lab Virtual Field Trips | Ohio Sea Grant
Broadway HD offers a one week free trial, as well as monthly and yearly subscription options. We provide K-9 teachers with student-centered videos for social studies, geography, life science, and ancient civilization curricula. Click here to see how which videos align with the curriculum for your state and grade. Super Simple has a lot of great resources for little kids, including songs, activities, and printables.
Even trips to local monuments and historical sites have become expensive due to rising fuel costs and soaring entry tickets. Though the museum gears most tours towards grade school, they also hold separate online tours for university students and adults as well. Your students can trek the Great Wall of China from the comfort of home. For $15, The China Guide offers a guided tour through high resolution images of the Great Wall of China via Zoom. Your students can also take part in question and answer sessions with an expert and have an interactive experience.
Detour – Immersive Audio Walking Tours
These are “bare bones” VFTs that provide the most flexible experience. They are virtual spaces that can be used for nearly any type of experience, just as the real field site would. They have basic informational content, like maps and a virtual compass. The subject matter content can be presented by an instructor via synchronous lectures, instructor guided tours, or through instructor created field guides and exercises. These can be particularly useful for exercises where students are learning to make their own observations in the field. Although these virtual resources were jump-started to address the current needs for online learning, these resources will also be useful situations in which in-person field trips may not possible.
- Programs are designed to be engaging and easily facilitated for any of these audience types.
- Virtual field trips help bridge this gap by including pre-recorded discussions and interviews with experts.
- And as a proud mom to a son with special needs, I understand the power of visual learning.
- This has placed enormous amounts of financial pressures on faculties along with staff time commitments to complete fieldwork (Welsh & France, 2012).
- This investment of teacher time, bussing costs, and lost learning time due to travel usually means that students often only experience field trips on a very limited basis, if at all.
- Use online mapping resources and desktop studies to augment your virtual field trip.
Of their study, 80% of students showed a highly positive attitude towards the educational value of this VFG. While there is no agreed spatial scale for VFGs due to their varying purpose and nature as commented on by Arrowsmith et al. multilayers of VFG scale that are all linked to each other provide the best learning experience for students. In their study they had a three scale approach that incorporated small to large spatial scales. VFG’s are often a repository of various data, yet what makes them more than just this, is often an element of educator led discussion situated within a framework of tasks to be completed (Stott, Litherland, Carmichael, & Nuttall, 2014).
Under the Sea Visit
Due to this, the issue of scale vs detail is one that the creator must finely balance with regards to the objectives of the VFG and computing power that is available. Often VFGs are currently web based and often accessed through module pages on a University system. While this increases the portability and accessibility nature of VFGs it further limits their detail. VFGs have often struggled to become virtual in the sense that the technology https://globalcloudteam.com/ for immersion was lacking and often required cumbersome body suits to place the user in the computer generated field (Jacobson et al., 2009). So while VFGs are very interactive and can be highly detailed, the student still sees that environment via a computer screen which limits its virtual aspect and thus its comparison to a real field trip. A summary table of the benefits and drawbacks to VFGs can be found in Table 1.
This virtual exercise is an example of how a VFS might be used. It is an exercise designed to get students familiar with locating themselves on a topographic map, using bearings and topographic features. This exercise is designed to be used with «The Dish» SGVFT and a Google Jamboard. This virtual field site covers some highlights of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite National Park along the CA 120 Highway. These are all in progress, with more features, trips, and topical resources being added regularly. Please contact Ryan Petterson with feedback and suggestions.
Social
If you will be interacting with a live expert, have your student prepare questions ahead of time. The Country Music Association and Discovery Education are partnering to immerse students, educators, and families in the instrumental STEAM skills and dynamic career paths that make up the Country virtual reality in education Music industry. Most Virtual Field Trip programs are best with no more than 50 students. For large groups, we suggest the Radical Reactions or planetarium shows as they have a smaller amount of interactivity (and a high amount of “oohs and ahhs!”) that work well with big groups.
The theme in my classroom is ‘travel.’ Thanks to VFT, the pandemic couldn’t stop us from having weekly field trips. Student perceptions of a virtual field trip to replace a real field trip. The website in its entirety has a ton to explore, including citizen science opportunities and STEM lessons, but the videos of astronauts in the space station are pretty stellar.
Prepare for the Virtual Field-Trip Experience
The health of the oceans is suffering, and this has affected some of us more than others. Coastal communities, and those who are less-advantaged because they have less access to resources and face increased societal oppression, are more at risk from rising sea levels and storms. But there are some amazing groups working around the world to make change, educate their communities and build collective awareness.
