LearningWare Reviews

Virtual Field Trips

Microsoft has recently coined the phrase, "Where do you want to go today?" for it's advertising campaign. The same phrase could be used when exploring the Internet. There are thousands of sites which will take your children to places they have only dreamed of. Some are just for fun, and some are extremely educational. Finding them may be your biggest challenge, however.

Becoming familiar with your favorite search engine is the best place to start. We have settled on Infoseek around . Classroom Connect also has a good educational search engine, but it is not as thorough. If there is a place you have always dreamed of going, or are planning on visiting, type in that word and see what you get. Countries are a great place to start. Most states and foreign countries have some sort of web site. These are often for the purpose of promoting tourism, but they are valuable nonetheless. Sites like the Stonegenge site provide you with virtual tours and information about a place you will most likely never get to see in real life. There are some services which provide very extensive virtual field trips such as the Colonial Williamsburg or Adventure Online site. These tours include tour guides, videos, and interaction with others around the world. These sites, however charge for their tours. The Learning Company site often contains a virtual tour which corresponds to one of it's popular "Trail" programs. These are free of charge.

Another word to punch into your search engine is "museums." When we typed this word into Infoseek we were given literally millions of sites. The ones near the beginning of the list included the Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as many history, art, and science museums around the country. It is not realistic to visit each of these museums in real life, but virtually you can visit exhibits and browse museum gift shops.

Some of the best virtual field trips available involve space exploration. If the space shuttle happens to be in orbit, you can link to their communications channel and listen to conversations between the shuttle and the command post. We got a big chuckle out of the conversation we overheard between two NASA employees trying to get Windows 95 to work properly. There are sites which allow you to check out the very latest Hubbell space telescope shots as well as find out what it is like to be an astronaut.

Government organizations often have very good web sites. The UN site has a high quality virtual tour with tons of information on the United Nations. Watch out when you want to visit the highly popular White House web site, however. If you didn't know any better you might try typing www.whitehouse.com. This however is adults only site and not a virtual tour of the white house! Most of the national parks have web sites as well.

One last place to search for quality virtual field trips is by typing in the name of a company. Most have secured their domain names and you can take some guesses as to where you might find a company by typing in www.companyname.com, but it doesn't always work. Some, like the Crayola web site offer interesting educational web sites with virtual tours of their plants.

There are other non-traditional field trips available as well. Type in the word zoos or circus, and you will find thousands sites. Some of the best are the San Diego Zoo site, National Zoo site and Ringling Bros. Circus site. It might even surprise you to find your own city zoo has a web site! Some of these include live camera feed from the animal cages. Use your imagination and just try a word like "fire station," or "dairy farm" and see what you come up with. You can also check into the Lakeview school site and either watch, or participate in, a fetal pig dissection. This is not for the weak of stomach, but most kids think it is pretty cool.

The Internet can be a conglomeration of garbage sites and useless information. It can also be a wealth of experience and knowledge. It is not possible, or practical, for most families to travel around the world, or visit every museum in the country. With the tool you have right here on your computer, however, you can take a peek at some of the most fascinating places in the world. It will take some searching on your part. Unfortunately typing in "field trips" doesn't get you very far…I tried it. You have to scour the web, ask people what sites they have enjoyed, and try typing various words into your favorite search engine. The search will be well worth the effort.

Classroom Connect: http://www.classroomconnect.com

Nasa Audio Link: http://www.spacezone.com/nasa.ram

United Nations Field Trip: www.pbs.org/tal/un

Hubble Space Telescope: www.seds.org/hst/hst.html

Stonehenge: http://avebury.arch.soton.ac.uk/LocalStuff/Stonehenge/salisbury.html

The Louvre Museum: http://mistral.culture.fr/louvre

The White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welcome.html

The San Diego Zoo: http://www.sandiegozoo.org

The National Zoo: http://www.sdi.edu

The Natural History Museum in New York: http://www.amnh.org

Metropolitan Museum: http://www.metmuseum.org

Holocaust Museum: http://www.ushmm.org