Virtual field trips are cost-effective and can take students far beyond the classroom walls.
Have you ever wanted to travel somewhere with your students, but an actual field trip has been impossible? Due to rising costs and current budget barriers, field trips are not a priority in schools these days. But that doesn't mean your students can't experience the world beyond the classroom walls. You can design a computer-generated environment with text, video, audio, and multimedia features instead. A virtual field trip is the perfect way to take your students on a trip without leaving the classroom.
Instructions
The Pre-Planning Stage
1. Identify your field trip audience. Your virtual field trip design will vary based on the type of audience you target. Consider whether a class, entire school, or community will participate in the trip. Decide how the trip will be viewed by others--in a whole group, in small groups or individually.
2. Establish the purpose or goal of the virtual field trip. List reasons your audience should take the field trip and what they will achieve upon its completion. Think about ways the audience could show they have accomplished the field trip goal, such as an assignment to complete during the trip or an interactive quiz at the end.
3. Choose a destination for your virtual field trip. Identify places linked to curriculum standards or related to a current unit of study. Consider a topic your audience would be interested in learning about. Select a location that you could visit to gather primary resources or a place with which you are already familiar.
4. Research other virtual field trips on the Internet. Take a variety of trips to gather ideas for structuring and designing your own virtual field trip. When investigating, write down positives and negatives for each field trip. Think about the features of the field trips that you liked and those that did not work well. Look at how each field trip is organized to collect ideas for your own design layout.
Creating the Storyboard
5. Create a storyboard to lay out the design of your virtual field trip. A storyboard is a visual organizer used to plan how each web page will be designed. Storyboards can be created on copy paper, poster board, or heavier drawing paper. Divide the trip into sections, assigning one part to each web page. Decide on how many web pages your trip needs and how the user will navigate through those pages. Refer to your research of other virtual field trips to choose the navigation technique that you like best.
6. Use colored pencils to sketch your pictures on the storyboard.
Draw your virtual field trip layout on the storyboard. On each piece of paper, include a variety of pictures, text, and multimedia features. Sketch the pictures using colored pencils or glue the actual images directly onto the paper. Compose text for each web page and lay out in the correct location. Draw and label the placement of multimedia features, such as video and audio clips. Decide carefully how each page is arranged, keeping in mind easy accessibility for users.
7. Design link buttons to help users navigate through your virtual field trip. Each web page needs an individual button. Organize your link buttons in a horizontal row or a vertical column. Draw the buttons in the same location on each storyboard page.
8. Use your completed storyboard to build your virtual field trip. Depending on the size of your field trip, select an HTML editor software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, to construct your trip. Once completed, upload your trip to the Internet and present it to your audience.
Tags: field trip, virtual field trip, field trips, virtual field, your virtual