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Virtual Field Trip
 Like
regular field trips, virtual field trips are designed to be entertaining
and educational.
Trips range from the simple, such as a photo tour of a famous
museum, to extremely detailed and high-tech field trips that offer
video and audio segments to make the visit more interactive.
Virtual field trips provide opportunities for new discovery in
the classroom. The virtual fieldtrip may be created prior to an
actual trip the students will be making. In this way teachers
can prepare students for the adventure they will have. This allows
the teacher to focus on particular points of interest that the
students should key in on.
A virtual fieldtrip could also be created after the actual trip.
This type of trip would reinforce the concepts taught and also
be a type of "scrapbook" for the adventurous trip.
The last type of virtual fieldtrip would be just that, virtual.
The students would not actually be going on a trip but visiting
a destination via the web. These pages make the students feel
they are actually visiting the location. Videos, graphics, sounds,
etc. are often used on these pages to help create the effect of
visiting the location.
Teachers can create a virtual field trip using Microsoft
Word, PowerPoint, or a web page.
The teacher chooses various sites that students will visit that
pertain to the chosen topic. At each site (stop along the journey)
or after a visit to several sites, the students will complete
an activity or create a "souvenir" at the field trip
stop.
A teacher made guide is provided for each tour stop that explains
what the students are to do.
The activities may be an interactive experience at the particular
site, writing in a journal, making a booklet of information, sending
a post card about the stop, etc. The main idea is to get students
to use higher order thinking skills in using the information they
find at the various sites along the virtual tour.
Older students may be given the task of creating a virtual field
trip about a given topic. That way they can research information
on the Internet and narrow their web site selections to what they
feel is significant about their research topic.
The following sites are good examples of Virtual Field
Trips:
Samples
http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/virtproj.html
Rain Forest
http://home.xnet.com/~istra/virtual/jnally/rainfor.html
Tigers
http://www.5tigers.org (look
at the adventures section)
Temperate Forest Biome
http://www.field-trips.org/tours/sci/forest/_tourlaunch1.htm
Volcano World Virtual Field Trip
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/kids/vrtrips.html
Virtual Tour of the National Mall
http://dcpages.com/Tourism/
Educational Web Adventures
(wonderful database of virtual field trips; can be searched by
subject or grade)
http://www.eduweb.com/portfolio/adventure.php
Tramline: Pi on the Web Field Trip
http://www.field-guides.com/math/pi/index.htm
Tramline: Shakespeare on the Net
http://www.field-guides.com/lit/shake/index.htm
Tramline: Endangered Species Field Trip
http://www.field-guides.com/sci/endanger/index.htm
Education World’s The Human Body Online Tour
http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson065.shtml
Surfaquarium’s Top Virtual Field Trips
http://surfaquarium.com/IT/vft.htm
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