Virtual Field Trips
A virtual field trip is a way to visit another place without even leaving home or school. Students learn both by constructing a field trip of a local area and/or by taking a tour with another class through their local site. If you do a search on the web you will find that virtual field trips have become a popular way of showing what is inaccessible to others - a trip backstage at the Sydney Opera House, or even the house next door if it is for sale.
Examples of Virtual Field trips:
Subject Areas:
- English
- Study of Society and Environment (History, Geography, Environmental Studies)
- English as a Second Language (ESL)
- Languages other than English (Modern Foreign Languages)
- Science
Age Level: 5 years to 18 years
In an educational context you can either construct a Virtual Field Trip with your class extending their knowledge of their local area or the specifics of the rainforest project in the school's grounds, or visit another class's site and ask questions of the host class.
Virtual Field Trip web sites can include movies, digital images, panorama, audio clips, a well as text and links to other information sites. To make the most of their classes visiting your site a generic email contact (class or teacher) can be included for questions.
Some schools use a Virtual Field Trip model to capture their intercultural exchanges, students constructing the web site whilst on tour so that parents and the rest of the school community can keep in touch almost in real time.
Other schools use a Virtual Field Trip model to send photos and text forma remote locations (e.g. camp) back to students who are unable to participate in the event and they construct the web site.
Last Modified: 10:20:49 Sunday, 26 October, 2008
