Tuesday, February 1, 2022

A Little Bird Told Me: 25 Virtual Field Trip Ideas Plus 10 Activities for your Class

While it may be difficult to travel and plan field trips given the state of the pandemic, it is still possible to introduce our students to all of the wonder the world has to offer through virtual field trips. Check out the tweet below from Matt Miller as he shares 25 virtual field trip ideas as well as 10 activities for your classroom.


Google Arts & Culture

As a social studies teacher, one of my favorite sites for virtual exploration is  the Google Arts & Culture website. The site has lots of content relevant to Global and US History. You'll want to navigate to the "Explore" page. From there, you'll see a link for the following:
The Street View collection also has some cools stuff like the Taj Mahal, Palace at Versailles, Pyramids of Giza, Colosseum, etc. Keep scrolling on this page and you will also find content like the ballcourts of Chichen Itza, Tikal, Machu Picchu.

It may be useful to give kids time to explore the content independently for activating prior knowledge before you dive into your direct instruction and/or enrichment for those who finish a lesson before their peers. Check out the video below to learn how to search for quality content.




Google Earth

Google Earth has some fantastic resources to share with your students. There is a tool built into Google Earth called "Voyager" that includes various categories for exploration. If you navigate to the "Culture" page, you will notice that there are lots of engaging pre-made tours that depict historical events relevant to US and Global History. The tours are shareable via a link that you can post on Google Classroom or insert into a HyperDoc to give kids time to independently explore content with text and images. Added bonus--students can use the "Street View" option for a 360 degree immersive view of a location. Check out the video below to learn more.



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