Virtual Field Trips

Virtual Field Trips is an online resource of destination-based videos for social studies, geography, science, and literacy curriculums.

Virtual field trips allow students to travel all around the world right in your own classroom.
This engages students and helps them to stay focus. Students are able to see relativity or size of a place or animal.

virtualfieldtrips.org is a great resource for teachers for virtual field trips that is categorized by state and standard. There are free resources available for teachers of any grade level and for any topic! Teachers can even go to YouTube to access virtual field trips.

Virtual field trips are great for helping develop social and emotional skills. Students are able to understand a different perspective through taking a field trip to another place or see an animal virtually than on paper. Virtual field trips help bring global awareness to students. Many times students do not know what is going on across the world or even in the next state. Students are able to see what is going on in the world around them and even communicate with someone from that area to ask essential questions to bring more understanding. Students are able to understand cultures and places.
Teachers can even use Skype for virtual field trips. Teachers are able to Skype with people who are working in a specific career or live in another country. This is great way to introduce different careers and bring understanding to a culture. Students are able to communicate directly to the person and ask questions to deepen their understanding. Students are more engaged and will take the experience with them forever.

There are so many benefits to using virtual field trips. For one they are affordable for everyone! Students are able to go places that they normally cannot because of cost or lack of time. So many virtual field trips align with the curriculum and this would give students access to do more research on topics. Virtual field trips support all learners and creates global citizenship. There are no restrictions! Students are able to explore and zoom into areas throughout the field trip and take more time than being on a tour at the actual location.

Nearpod

Nearpod is a collaborative board to integrate into any classroom and makes a presentation interactive!

The presentation is a lot like PowerPoint or Google Slides, but the presentation can be on a student's device and controlled by either the teacher or the student. This is a great tool for teachers to use to make lessons interactive, produce realtime responses, and show student activity and progress monitoring.

The presentation can include:

-quizzes

-open-ended responses

-fill in the blank

-draw-its

-session reports

-virtual field trips

-videos

-audio

-3D photos

-sway 

-activities

With each of these responses in Nearpod, the teacher has the ability to have the student's name show or not show when they respond. Teachers can either use Nearpod in a live lesson or have students go at their own pace. Live lesson allows teachers to control when students can view parts of the presentation and not get ahead in the lesson. Teachers can also give students access to the presentation and the students can go at their own pace.

Students are more acceptable to learn through Nearpod because it is interactive. Students are able to look at teacher instruction in a whole new way. Teachers are also able to see realtime responses from the students while presenting and make changes as the teacher needs to for the students to better understand the material or go deeper into the material. Students are actively engaged in the lesson and can give feedback immediately without disrupting the class.

COST |
Silver Membership - Free
Gold Membership - $10/month
Platinum Membership - $29/month

I had never heard of Nearpod before the presentation about it, but I will definitely be incorporating this into my classroom! I will be using these features that I think are very important for teaching and instruction:

Nearpod 3D Feature < 

This feature gives students access to view 3D images while the teacher is presenting. The students can manipulate the image to investigate and notice details on their own device that they normally could not in Google Slides or PowerPoint. 

Virtual Field Trips < 

This is an amazing feature that allows students to explore a place that the class is discussing. Just like the 3D feature, students can manipulate the field trip on their own device or the class can take the trip all together. This is great for students to study more about a topic or place! The virtual field trips take students to places that the class cannot take altogether. The field trip includes sounds and students can look all around as if they were there in person.

Sway < 

Sway allows students to study more about a person. This feature teachers can add details about someone and the students can click and explore the facts instead of just reading the facts off a screen. This makes learning more interactive and helps to keep students focused!


I will incorporate these features in mostly science and social studies instructional time. This is great to use when teaching students about our local and national government, animals, parts of a cell, and historical figures.