"Outsourcing" Field Trips!

This was an idea inspired by the conversations I've been having with several people here at CR2.0 (James Dykstra and Kevin)! Finally, Lisa Parisi, Christine Southard and I have put the rubber to the road, so to speak, and now let's see this Ferari FLY! Please add ideas as you see fit! It's in pretty rough form, but we collaborated over distance through Google Docs and if you have LOTS of improvement ideas, let me know...I'll invite you in to the Google Docs page to have a go!

Outsourcing Field Trips: an International Collaboration

The idea is twofold at this point:

1. Students will collaborate to create a shared picture of their state (or portion of the state).
* Both environmental and historical information will be shared.

2. Students will collaborate to learn more about various aspects of their nation and the world by "outsourcing" field trips to partner schools. Participating schools will "honor-system agree" to host at least 2 field trips and would have access to at least 2 field trips.
* Field trips can be environmental, historical, or both.

Further Investigations:

1. Go global. Include students from other parts of the world. They will create a virtual field trip of their own country, province, township, etc.
2. After using field trips, set up Skype calls to actually "meet" student creators.

Questions to Answer:

* What makes your area/state unique?
o Geographically
o Politically
o Culturally
o People
* How has your area/state changed over time?
* What caused these changes?
o Historical
o Industrial
o Environmental

Tools to Use:

* wikis
* blogs
* Skype
* Instant Messaging
* YackPack
* Trailfire
*

Ideas for Virtual Field Trips

* Video tape historic homes and other sites
* Create podcasts describing history of area
* Build Wikis for virtually participating schools to add additional online info or questions
* Create/Design still photos of hired students with their artifacts
* Blog about sites in order to invite comments and questions
* Create advertisements (persuasive text) to entice other schools to hire you
* Trailfire for online studies?

http://www.field-guides.com/

http://www.spokaneaquifer.org/kids/wces/

Specifics of Offered Info

* Historic Sites
* Environmental Areas/ Biomes
* Different Communities
* Interviews with People with Historical Knowledge and Experience
* Government Buildings
* School Buildings including classrooms and surrounding grounds
* Careers Investigations

Curricular ties:

Science:
* biomes
* watersheds
* biographies
* discoveries/laboratories
* experiments (physics)
* animals in native surroundings or zoos?
o Zoos would be good for areas of interest
* space laboratories/observatories
* Earth Science field trips--going to see various geological phenomena
* human health issues
* environmental/global warming studies
* "green" sites and locations that are off the grid or making other positive-solution impacts

Social studies:
* Wars/battlefields/soldiers
* Turning Points/Major Movements in history
o Industrial revolution
o Westward expansion
o Women's sufferage
o Cold War
o Japanese internment camps
o Slavery
o Gold Rush
o Colonization (US and global)
o Expansion of recognition of human rights (american/french revolutions, magna carta)
o Holocausts/genocides
* Present Day Events
o 9/11
o Landmarks in Politics
o Changes to Geography
+ due to Global Warming
+ Industrialization
+ Population Changes
* Geography/location
o Areas of Interest
* Culture studies (religion, belief systems)
o religions
o immigration (past and current)
o native americans
* Famous figures in history (biographical investigations)

Careers Studies (aka distance and collaborative Job Shadowing):

The idea is that a student is paired with another student of similar career interet (general field of interest). Each student conducts a jobshadow and documents the day's work/learning. They then come back and share it with another student.

* 16 Careers Clusters
* Kuder Career Planning System

Tags: archiving, blog, collaboration, distance, fieldtrip, history, jobshadow, learning2.0, networking, outsourcing, More…science, tools, virtual, wiki

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ginger Lewman on July 6, 2007 at 6:10am

I guess what we're envisioning is a group (perhaps here on CR2.0) where people could sign up or sign in and commit to hosting at least 2 field trips a year with students. These 2 field trips could either be locally planned and offered to anyone who wanted to pick a look (like a library archive of field trips) or a class could be "hired" to take another class along (virtually) on a field trip.

Classes could participate in the group without being hired. Teachers could have students "advertise" with persuasive text, the merits of their upcoming field trips OR advertise the merits of their archiving talents and local learning opportunties in order to be hired. This last approach calls for more flexibility of the class timeline.

We could then have a database for awesome, student-led field trips to be accessed from anywhere at any time!

Permalink Reply by JoNelle on July 28, 2007 at 9:01pm

LOVE it!! This ties RIGHT into what I am planning to add to our tech integration for grades 3-5 and computer club. Practicing now is a big plus.

I'm in Fort Mill, SC- just south of Charlotte, NC and on Lake Wylie.
Our lakeside community is committed to preserving green areas, and our school maintains a nature trail right by the grounds - complete with running stream.

Along with the science, I am also am interested in the persuasive writing aspect of this project.
I see a project below that I will respond to also.
Thanks to all of you!
JoNelle

Permalink Reply by Paul Bogush on July 10, 2007 at 12:18pm

I like it...one trip I wish I could bring my kids on is to a mine from the 1849 Gold Rush...anyone out there from Cali?

I could offer a virtual field trip to a small New England town in the year 1830(farming, beginnings of indus rev), or coastal life in New England during the same period (whaling, shipbuilding).

Paul

Permalink Reply by Ginger Lewman on July 10, 2007 at 12:27pm

Paul--yes! I neglected to add you in on the inspiration to this along with James Dykstra! My apologies.

I'm SURE we have people out in California who would love to participate.
*listens for their approaching footsteps*

Permalink Reply by Paul Bogush on July 10, 2007 at 12:50pm

Also, I like the idea of being "hired." Knowing who the audience is will really help get the kids focused. It would also offer the group doing the hiring to order a field trip with a certain perspective...instead of a 19th Century New England Village, it could be What challenges would a 13 year old girl face growing up in a 19th Century NEng Village?

Permalink Reply by Christine Southard on July 10, 2007 at 8:37pm

AOK - This project has me so excited. I'm eager to start practicing with the tools before we head back to school. I live in the New York, Hudson Valley. Who would like to hire me to practice so I can prepare for September when I return to school?

Permalink Reply by Ginger Lewman on July 14, 2007 at 9:06am

OK, let's do it! (I'm throwing an idea out here, but we can modify it, in case a seashore trip is too cumbersome for you at this point).

I'll hire you to give me a tour of the seashore biome (or really ANYTHING in your part of the country). I'll set up a wiki with pages to drop your info into that have detail descriptions of requested info.

Please add photos (a MUST), videos (would be nice), and interviews with local experts (which would be a must, but dang it--this is simply an experiment, so it's something that would be good, but not essential). We need to see flora and fauna, temperatures of air/water, tidal pools, beach flotsam (or is that jet...whatever...I'm landlocked about as far from the ocean as possible), maps for location, as well as some of the environmental challenges facing that region. Finally, I'd really like to see creator feedback about what you learned in making this fieldtrip. (of course these all would be done by kids, but you're acting as the kid, so feel free to leave out anything or fake like a kid did it.)
Any additional info is always welcome!

I've started a wiki at www.SeashoreBiomeVFT.pbwiki.com where you can find all the details (am waiting for the confirmation email now). I went ahead and put the link here and I'll leave it open to anyone/everyone so they can sample our wares when we're done. When we are finished, I'll be sure to leave a review of how things went on this end; whether I received the info that I was looking for! By the way, during the school year, we ARE looking for students to be the ones doing all this work, right?

Let me know if you can think of something around here you'd like to take a look at. Our town started Veteran's Day, or you can take a look at the vastness of the last remaining Tall Grass Prairie in the world! Our region feeds the US and the rest of the world the majority of the beef consumed. We can look at the macro/micro ecosystems and I can highlight the vast watershed that is the Flint Hills and how they contributed to the crazy flooding in SE Kansas a couple of weeks ago. *sigh* what a field trip for me to do when I just really don't have a thing to do!

We can practice here, but I think I'll start a new CR2.0 group or maybe even a new network to host the Virtual Field Trips (VFT). Currently with this, and if you're game, we can provide a model to investigate and improve upon with constructive feedback.

Permalink Reply by Christine Southard on July 14, 2007 at 8:43pm

Although I teach on Long Island, I live in the Hudson Valley. There is a huge difference in geography and climate and resources. When I visit family tomorrow @ the beach on LI, I will gather some data for you and I will post.

As a special education teacher, I want to practice setting up a field trip before Lisa and I ask our students to create one. I want to anticipate any modifications I need to make, so all of our students can be successful. I also like to play to learn - LOL.

BTW - Did you see the podcast challenge for Ben & Joan's Smart Board Podcast Lesson #81?
The ‘podcast summer challenge’: Take pictures, video, etc. of a location or event near you and share it on the podcast so other classrooms can go on virtual field trips.
http://pdtogo.com/smart/

Permalink Reply by Ginger Lewman on July 15, 2007 at 7:45am

Well, it looks like this is an idea whose time has come and I'm so glad we're doing it!

I don't really need you do do the pics--I was simply seeing what can be done with this to show others some ideas. We're doing this transparently so they can see the planning we've done--and how easy it is! I may grab my husband today if we can. Unfortunately, it is Sunday, so we have limited choices here, but tomorrow could be a possibility. We'll see.

Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on July 27, 2007 at 9:24pm

I'm not quite sure what I did to help inspire this idea, but it's a really neat one. If there are any Canadians out there (or those with an interest in Canadian history), with my Winnipeg location and classes I can offer a look at Lower Fort Garry, Louis Riel's gravesite, Fort Gibraltar, and quite a few other neat places with historical significance for Canada.

I don't know if I'll get any takers, but I love the idea and would really like to hear how others' "field trips" turn out.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 29, 2007 at 4:47pm

I love the ideas here, and am trying to think of a way I can somehow get my classes participating, maybe I'll take Jonelle's idea and run a computer club after school,
The project would tie in perfectly with the 5th grade archeaology project, in which our 5th graders, are trained to become "Young Tourist Guides" for the Aquaduct and surroundings in Ceasaria.

Here's a thought I hope you'll consider, upload videos to dotsub.com to enable other teachers/students to translate them.

Permalink Reply by JoNelle on July 29, 2007 at 8:08pm

My current computer club runs before school - for students who arrive very early.