Virtual Field Trips

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by Tracey Brown, Office of Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist

If you haven’t explored what virtual field trips have to offer you and your students, you are missing out on one of our favorite rabbit holes. Virtual field trips are so engaging you can get lost for hours exploring the resources that lead you from one location to the next. Not only are they engaging, they can help teach your curriculum. We promise!

One of the greatest misconceptions about virtual field trips is that they are all for science and social studies. While there are great opportunities for these content areas, there are also field trips for math, literacy, art, STEM, culinary arts and so much more. If you are interested in considering what a virtual field trip can offer you and your students, this blog post is for you!

According to Common Sense Media, “virtual field trips are informal learning experiences that get students out into the world, exploring the world and students' interests.” Does this mean that any collection of images that allow students to explore the world is a virtual field trip? No. While education experts do not entirely agree on a single definition of virtual field trip, the word that comes up repeatedly is “interactive”. They all seem to agree that the students should be able to engage with the content in some way; there should be elements of choice built into the experience. These choices might include the ability to click to expand information cards marked within a location, or the ability to turn and explore a 360 image or video, the ability to zoom in on visual information, or even the ability to click on a virtual guide to have them tell you more about a place or artifact.

If you did a Google search for virtual field trips, the results would be overwhelming, but we have done the leg-work for you. OIT has curated some of the best experiences on our Digital Take-Out website under the Virtual Field Trips pages. These pages offer links to trips, activities for students to complete before, during, and after their exploration and links to field trip providers so you can explore additional opportunities.

Here are some ways to get started:

Check out the Virtual Field Trip Experiences page first. It contains slide decks curated by topics such as Local Attractions, National Parks, Performing Arts, Literary Field Trips, Sports, and more. All resources have MOI approval so you can rest assured you are finding quality resources here. We are constantly adding new topics to expand this resource as well. So make sure you check back. These slide decks include links to experiences that can be shared whole group, or given to students to explore on their own. Make sure you look for the red Teacher Led Only sign when deciding which trips to send to students for self-exploration.

Next, venture to the Activities page to find pre-learning and post-learning activities for how students can begin thinking about what they will learn and then share their experience after exploration. You’ll find open-ended activities such as Graphic Organizers, project ideas from Paper to Digital, Thinking Routines and BINGO, as well as some activities geared directly towards field trips like Unboxing videos, Passports and Green-screen yourself. These activities are designed to extend the learning by encouraging collaboration and critical thinking.

Finally, as you get more familiar with the process of sharing virtual field trips you may decide that you want to begin exploring providers to see what else is out there. This is where the Virtual Field Trip Help page really shines. It shows our favorite sources for field trip experiences including Google Earth Voyager and Google Arts & Culture, but also provides resources on how to utilize these services to find your own experiences.

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