5 Field Trips Free to Students

Kids love field trips. They’re out of the classroom, get to travel by bus with lots of kids and not enough adults. What’s not to like?

A few items come to mind: Cost, staffing, potential for disaster. And that’s just off the top of my head. There’s a way to provide the field trip experience with few of the risks, no cost, and a fraction of the time away from what is likely an overstuffed education day:

Virtual Field Trips, via the internet.

There are so many options  for real-time webcams, conversations with experts (via Skype and Google Hangout), and the opportunity to visit locations that are otherwise inaccessible that classes have embraced this new approach to seeing the world. This enthusiasm has encouraged a cottage industry that often is far from the exciting, realistic experience teachers want for their students. When I search the internet, it seems any site with a camcorder and multimedia resources calls itself a ‘virtual field trip’. Truthfully, many of them are a waste of time. Sure, I like the pictures and the movies, but I don’t feel like I’m there, immersed in history or geography, with a life-changing experience that will live in my memory for decades to come.

Intellectually, I know there are good ones out there. Finally, after wearing through my favorite virtual shoes, I have a list to recommend. These next nine virtual field trips cover topics from geology to history to the human experience. See what you think:

360 Cities

What’s not to love about a website that starts:

Welcome to Earth! It’s a planet having an iron core, with two-thirds of its surface covered by water. Earth orbits a local star called the Sun, the light of which generates the food supply for all the millions of species of life on earth. The dominant species on Earth is the human being, and you’re one of the six billion of them! Humans have iron in their blood, and their bodies are composed of two-thirds water, just like the planet they live on.

Enjoy your stay, and try to stay calm.

360 Cities contains the Internet’s largest collection of uploaded panoramic images. Let’s pause here for a moment. Panos–those wide pictures that cover up to 180 degrees left and right. Right?

360 Cities does panos differently. Let me show you. Here’s one from my iPad:

You get 360 degrees around, up, down–everywhere. It’s breathtaking. The website provides specific (free) instructions for how to create these amazing panos and then accepts submittals from anyone who can meet their standards. That has resulted in a vast crowd sourced collection from all over the world, including geography, historic sites, world maps, cities, outer space (Mars), undersea, interiors of famous buildings, skylines, and more.

Education uses: From my several visits to this site, I saw nothing that wasn’t G-rated. Everything I viewed I would be comfortable sharing with students. What I did see will excite their imagination as no other picture can.

Google World of Wonders

This Google site takes you to over 150 places around the world. You can join Street View Guy and walk the area, view pictures including historic images, and read an overview text on the site. You can visit random locations or themed collections (Hiroshima and Versailles). Additional parts of World of Wonders are the Google Art Project and Historic Moments–a look at a collection of extraordinary moments in history.

Education uses: There is no better way to explore a wonder of the world than through this site. The only shortfall is that students won’t find the typical locations that fit nicely into the box of their curriculum. Inquiry-based classrooms–you will fall in love with this exploration of the world.

Sistine Chapel

This is 360 degree virtual tour, created by students and faculty in the communication and computing science departments at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University, explores one room of the Sistine Chapel. Thanks to liturgical music, a zoom features that allows for close inspection, and the bright realisim of the photography, you would have to walk through its front doors to feel more there.

Besides the Sistine Chapel, the website includes five other tours:

• Basilica of St. Peter 
• The Sistine Chapel
• Archbasilica of St. John Lateran
• Basilica of Paul Outside-the-Walls
• Basilica of St. Mary Major
• The Pauline Chapel

Virtual Cockroach

If you’re interested in the annoying cockroach, this is your place. It includes in-depth images of head, thorax, abdomen, presented in a scholarly manner.  You can investigate the circulatory system, digestive track, endocrine, muscular, excretory, nervous, reproductive, respiratory systems. I have to admit–it might be more than I wanted to know about the buggers, but for those who aspire to be the E.O. Wilson of cockroaches, this is a great start.

The White House

There are a lot of White House tours, but none quite so fascinating as this one through Google Earth. You type in the address, zoom over to DC, drop the Street View Guy on the roof of our Commander in Chief’s house, and–you’re in! From there, you walk around all the rooms open to the public, see who you can spy as you travel.

Street View offers lots of walk-throughs of buildings, restaurants, even hotels, but not a lot of education-oriented buildings. I know–I’ve tried to find them, especially after I discovered the White House tour. And my students tried. Not a lot of others out there. All the more reason this stands out as a must-see virtual tour.

A few other virtual field trips you might like: JPL offers one for young explorers, Plimouth Plantation is a popular Thanksgiving virtual destination, and this list of 20 online museums and virtual field trips from Educational Technology has a few more that will catch your attention.

What’s your favorite?

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.