Planning for a themed week in October!

 

                 As we move into the month of October, thoughts of using some of Halloween’s favorite themes to create a week of themed lesson plans would be a great way to motivate and engage the students during class.  The month of October offers several different subjects as a way to learn about a number of different topics from being safe to things which scare us.  These subjects and topics will allow specific learning objectives to be created for the students to complete while working in the area of the students’ greatest interest.

               For the first lesson of the week, the students will be learning about bats.  While a field trip to a bat sanctuary would be a great experience for the students, in reality, the cost of this type of field trip is unrealistic.  However, with the new advances in technology, students can now participate in virtual field trips (VFTs).  “Virtual field trips provide the next best thing to actually being in the field” (Kravcik, Kaibel, Specht, & Terrenghi, 2004, p. 26). 

               What are virtual field trips?  Virtual field trips (VFTs) are just what the name implies.  These field trips “are conducted virtually over the internet and/or video conferencing equipment, so that students can learn directly from experts in far-flung places without every learning their classroom” (Zanetis, 2010, p. 20).  Since taking the students on a real field trip would be time consuming expensive, and require a number of chaperones, the virtual field trip would allow the students to gain knowledge while experiencing the adventure without all the fuss and issues.

        

               Field trips, both traditional and nontraditional, are considered an Absorb activity.  “In an Absorb activity, the learner is physically passive, but mentally active” (Horton, 2012, p. 51).  In a traditional field trip, the students may be physically active as they move about the location, but the learner is still absorbing the information as it is being presented by the speaker.  Traditional field trips can be more than just costly since locations can be unrealistic to reach and limiting in availability.  In addition, the students can become bored, distracted, or just exhausted from traveling.

               However, in the nontraditional virtual field trip, the students are able to explore a large range of locations which could be unable otherwise.  The students would not be limited by cost, travel arrangements, or complications with chaperones and locations.  During a virtual field trip, the “classroom walls dissolve with the possibilities afforded by VFT experiences” (Kirchen, 2011, p. 24).  Experts are able to present information during the virtual field trip as standalone, interactive, and even as live presentation lessons allowing the information to be focused on the topics related to the organization, location, or subject from the virtual field trip.

 

References

Horton, W. (2012). E-Learning by design (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Wiley

Kirchen, D. J. (2011). Making and taking virtual field trips in pre-K and the primary grades. Young Children, 66(6), 22-26.

Kravcik, M., Kaibel, A., Specht, M., & Terrenghi, L. (2004). Mobile collector for field trips. Educational Technology & Society, 7(2), 25-33. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/docview/1287057095/fulltextPDF/4E6EEA46F2E341ACPQ/1?accountid=32521

Zanetis, J. (2010). The beginner's guide to interactive virtual field trips. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(6), 20-23. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ886387.pdf.