By Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Wanna get away, in the comfort of your very own classroom? Here are some “destinations” you might opt to visit for your next virtual field trip:
“Museum without walls” showcases California history
You don’t have to travel to Sacramento to visit The California Museum’s latest displays. You can visit “California Legacy Trails: The Only in California” experience and inspire your students with segments on:
- A celebration of California’s history, people and culture.
- Tales of brilliant California technological innovation and accomplishment.
- A history of California’s contribution to motion pictures, technology, agriculture and culinary trends and their influence around the world.
- A showcase of California’s natural beauty and environment.
- The history of the California’s green revolution, including its leading thinkers, policy direction and innovations leading the path to the future for the planet.
- Famous women of California.
First lady Maria Shriver, who was instrumental in launching the project, describes it as a “museum without walls, where students of California history, culture and trends can interact in an ever-changing community 24/7 — where history, people and ideas come alive in new and exciting ways.”
The California Legacy Trails are designed to bring California and its history to a universal audience with historical perspective, slide shows, biographies, videos, artwork and timelines available on each trail. Users can become part of a community by creating their own trails and adding comments to other users’ submissions.
The Trails are designed to function as a fun and engaging online teaching tool with “robust educational content” including downloadable materials that can enhance lessons that meet California State curriculum standards. Additional interactive functions include a downloadable California Passport containing e-postcards of California images that allow users to insert themselves into a scene; interactive games; and additional educational resources. Sponsors are the Dave and Lucile Packard Foundation and Adobe.
To begin your journey, go to www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/legacy-trails.
Check out colleges on the cheap
Visit top colleges without having to set foot on a campus with CollegeClickTV.com, a website that offers insider college experiences through direct access to those who know the most about it — the students.
The new website, which has access to hundreds of schools and thousands of student interviews, is helping high school students and their parents make informed college decisions through unscripted peer-to-peer video review content. Through exclusive partnerships with U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review and CliffsNotes, the website plans to build its content and attract additional viewers.
The site boasts the largest online video library of professional and exclusively produced college reviews. It serves as a one-stop online resource, showcasing more than 30,000 video reviews from 200-plus colleges and universities across the country.
Eric Yaverbaum, a CollegeClickTV.com partner, adds, “We hope CollegeClickTV.com will be the first place people go before they visit a college campus. We are confident that our joint ventures will aid in the transformation of how students determine which schools they really like, and which to invest their time in learning more about.”
CollegeClickTV.com was designed to help high school juniors and seniors make informed college decisions while keeping the stress levels low by providing entertainment and social networking features. Peer-to-peer video content features interviews with students, local merchants, faculty and staff from more than 200 colleges and universities across the country, offering thoughts on all topics applicable to college life.
For more information visit www.collegeclicktv.com.
Teachers can visit some experts
Teaching Crusade helps school teachers succeed by connecting them to nationally recognized experts, authors and innovators in the field of education through free webinars and teleseminars. This helpful resource gives teachers the opportunity to receive help and be provided with real and viable solutions, techniques and strategies to teach their elementary and secondary students.
Teaching Crusade shares the latest information on teaching, products, services and resources, and is also active in finding, negotiating, and securing favorable pricing with vendors for their member base. Founded by teachers in response to the high cost of teacher support programs, Teaching Crusade provides a free avenue for school districts nationwide to support their staff.
According to Nikki McDevitt, one of the founders of Teaching Crusade, “No matter what your experience is before you enter the field of teaching, your first several years are very challenging. Between classroom management, discipline, curriculum planning, parent communications, student behavior and motivation, administration, technology integration and state testing, the task of teaching can be daunting. Even for veteran teachers it’s hard to keep up and stay inspired. Helping all teachers succeed at this task — especially those in their first few years — is the purpose of Teaching Crusade.”
A membership to Teaching Crusade is currently being offered for free. Experts who can provide real benefit to Teaching Crusade members are encouraged to apply to their speaker panel for upcoming events. Local, state and national teacher support organizations, universities, colleges and Teacher Induction Programs are also encouraged to direct their members to Teaching Crusade.
For more information visit www.teachingcrusade.com.
Virtual field trips and more from KQED Public Broadcasting
Explore Northern California science, environment and nature through this KQED program. Take your students on virtual nature hikes and walks with science themes, which include a Google map with specific locations geo-tagged to photos and descriptions; a background science article; and the ability to upload your own photos of the hike. The explorations — as virtual or real field trips — capture your students’ interest while teaching about topics ranging from earthquakes to wetlands. Directions for creating Explorations with students in your area, as well as a low-tech place-based activity called EdTreks, are also online.
KQED Public Broadcasting has developed numerous other resources around the science program “QUEST” to help educators integrate multimedia on exciting science subjects into their curriculum. QUEST explores the stories and people behind Northern California science, nature and the environment, and how their work is changing the world around us. It includes a half-hour weekly television series, weekly radio reports, an innovative web site and unique materials for educators. Resources include:
- Streamable and Downloadable Video and Audio — All QUEST television stories and radio reports are available indefinitely on the web site and can be streamed or downloaded via iTunes to your computer. Supplementary web-only content in the form of video extras, slide shows and charts and diagrams are also available.
- Educator Guides — Written by educators, they are produced for select QUEST television stories and radio reports and correlated to the California State Science Standards. The guides provide teachers with additional background information, ideas for creating an interactive experience for students using QUEST audio and video and links to lesson plans.
- QUEST Blog — Daily community science blog posts by local scientists and experts allow you and your students to communicate with others about hot science topics. The blog is a great way to introduce students to varying viewpoints on a subject and provides a public forum for them to contribute their own ideas.
- Community-Contributed Photos — You and your students can upload your own photos related to QUEST topics through the photo sharing site, flickr.com. Join the KQED QUEST flickr group at www.flickr.com/groups/kqedquest.
For more information visit www.kqed.org/quest, or contact QUEST Education at ScienceEd@kqed.org or 415-553-2819.
Visit the Big Apple online with MeetMeAtTheCorner.org
Meet Me At The Corner’s website helps you send kids on virtual field trips, providing intimate, behind-the-scenes tours of many of the Big Apple’s most renowned landmarks. Geared to children ages 7-12, the site provides 3- to 4-minute educational and informational tours from a child’s point of view via video podcasts. Each trip or episode provides suggested readings and curriculum-based follow-up activities that meet national standards. The site is free of charge. Below are some of the better Big Apple trips.
- Join New York City resident Emma climbing the 1,576 steps to the observation deck on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.
- Follow Yadi, also a New York City resident, visiting the Forbes Galleries’ toy soldiers, 500+ toy boats and more!
- Watch as August learns how to play chess with the masters in Washington Square Park.
- See Metro, age 12, visit the New York Humane Society.
- Tag along with 10-year-old Will as he checks out the gargoyles during an architectural walk of City College.
- Go bird-watching in Central Park.
- Take an insider’s tour of the Broadway show Hairspray.
- Visit the Swedish House Marionette Theatre.
For more information visit MeetMeAtTheCorner.org.
Explore Yellowstone National Park
Windows into Wonderland, the National Park Service’s series of electronic field trips exploring Yellowstone National Park, is a set of Flash animations that intercut cartoons with actual photos of the park.
Students follow along with the animated members of the Yellowstone Ministry of Mysteries as they investigate natural phenomena, including the geysers, hot springs, and animals that make Yellowstone famous. Students will enjoy “Getting into Hot Water,” about a mysterious problem with the park’s rivers, or “Where the Bison Roam,” about the misadventures of a buffalo named Rosie.
According to Edutopia, “These trips are best suited to students working singly or in small groups, so they can participate in the interactive features that crop up from time to time, like short quizzes and games. Hot Water has a clever feature, a pop-up notepad that lets kids jot down their hunches as they try to solve the mystery. Although the ‘live’ component of these field trips — a Q&A with park experts via online message board — is active for only two days after each video premieres, the For Teachers link has lesson plans available for students in grades 5-8. For example, one lesson explains how to demonstrate the formation of a caldera — a mega-crater caused by a volcano’s collapse — using a dishwashing tub, a bike pump and sand.”
For more information visit www.windowsintowonderland.org.
National Geographic: Lewis & Clark
This site was launched to accompany the release of the National Geographic Society’s IMAX movie Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West — but your class can enjoy it even without the $15 DVD.
Clicking on points along a sepia-toned map lets students trace Lewis and Clark’s search for a water route from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. Along the way, they’ll learn about the approximately 300 new plant and animal species the explorers encountered and read about their run-ins with grizzly bears, their perilous passage through the Bitterroot Mountains, and, of course, their famous partnership with the Native American Sacagawea.
Each leg of the journey is accompanied by a dozen or so illustrated or photographed images of iconic American West native species such as the Montana great horned owl, the ponderosa pine and the northern bobcat, as well as a few of Lewis and Clark’s more obscure discoveries. Click on the thumbnail images of each to see more information about its habitat and endangered species status. The Kids’ Activities link will take you to related classroom activities for grades 3-5 and 6-8 from the National Geographic Xpeditions website, most of which have maps and other materials to download for offline use.
For more information visit www.nationalgeographic.com/lewisandclark.
GoNorth!
GoNorth! offers students a virtual seat on a real-time, around-the-pole journey by dogsled. The trip lasts a total of five years and is designed to help kids learn about Arctic ecology, its inhabitants and its role in the health of the planet. Since 2004 the GoNorth! team of professional explorers and educators has traveled through the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as Russia and Scandinavia, beaming back video, audio, photo and text updates.
The project’s website is truly interactive: A weekly Q&A connects classrooms around the world for a live text chat with the team and scientific guest experts like Weather Channel meteorologist Dan Dix, who fielded questions about the climate during the 2008 leg. (Students can also upload their own movies, artwork, short stories, and other handiwork to the site’s “collaboration zones,” which encourage kids to create material, not just absorb it. More than 300 pages of standards-based curriculum for grades K-12 are available for teachers to download.)
“GoNorth! is presented with energy and good humor, and kids love the antics of the sled dogs, who all have their own profile pages and student fan bases,” notes the George Lucas Foundation. One of the huskies even blogs, providing a dog’s-eye view of the trip. Yet students are also asked to ponder some environmental issues, including climate change, oil drilling, and deforestation. The 2009 leg of the journey, across the Greenlandic ice cap, will focus on maritime exploration, and 2010’s trek through Canada will investigate pollution.
For more information visit www.polarhusky.com.
Other virtual field trips worthy of checking out include: