Virtual Field Trips

We have a wonderful museum in Kansas City, Missouri called the Steamboat Arabia Museum. The museum was built by a family who traced the history of steamboats on the Missouri River, located a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River, and excavated the steamboat. It is a wonderfully historical story. You wouldn't belive what was on this steamboat. I took a class from Canada and a class from my school district on an interactive virtual tour last year. Both classes participated in projects, Skyping, other communication programs during the project. Check out the great museum website: http://www.1856.com/ I would love to share an interactive virtual tour of the Harry Truman museum or the Steamboat Arabia museum for an interactive virtual tour in another part of the country.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer G on November 30, 2010 at 9:23pm

Great post! Thank you for sharing. Virtual field trips are a great way to incorporate technology into the classroom and a fun way to take students on a field trip when you all are not physically capable of doing so. Some other great sites for virtual field trips are the Institute of Texan Cultures located in San Antonio (http://texancultures.com/). This site offers great information about Texas history and has interactive elements. The Smithsonian website is another great site for virtual field trips (www.si.edu).

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on December 2, 2010 at 6:54am

I was the partner in this virtual tour. My class was engaged in this project and we learned a great deal. We ran the project a bit late in the year for our KC hosts (they went on vacation!) but the possibilities for classroom collaboration are wonderful. I have too many of the same students this year otherwise I would book another tour. Perhaps next year!

This was my Steamboat Arabia wikipage comparing steam travel in the US and Saskatchewan. We established a blog site to coordinate the project and anchor the links to projects on Google Doc and Chat rooms.

Laurie put a lot of work into solving the practical problems of broadcasting live from a museum. We used Skype.

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Permalink Reply by blank on December 2, 2010 at 2:27pm

Wow this is really amazing. This is a great idea to be able to take students on a field trip somewhere that is nowhere close to you. Students can still get to visit a place of importance without anything stopping them from the experience. More museums should have virtual tours for students to stay educated! I love that thanks to technology all students can travel and see so much within the classroom!

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on December 3, 2010 at 12:36pm

Yes I think public museums, parks and heritage sites should introduce some planned services to add value to the money expended on them. A virtual tour with guide could handle a large number of classes.