We are strong believers in multimodal literacy. The diagram shows what that might translate to in your classroom.
Multimodal literacies encompass all of our senses. And so do virtual field trips! Virtual field trips give teachers the opportunity to engage the whole student, from head to toe. And there are lots of other reasons to use virtual field trips in your classrooms, too. Virtual field trips ensure equity– everyone gets to go regardless of their ability to pay, or even their ability to get good grades or behave.
Virtual field trips show students new things. And because the destinations are new, students are going to want to have a conversation about it (they always do!). If we arm them with new vocabulary, they can begin to have real conversations in specific disciplinary language.
Processing visual information is quicker and easier, and makes remembering easier, as well. Once you see something new, you will always think about that every time you see the same thing again. Actually seeing something increases awareness and reinforces newly learned material.
Now the question is, how can you really use virtual field trips in the classroom? You can use them to teach something new. You can use them to teach observation and inquiry. You can use short, quick student-made virtual field trips as formative assessments, and longer virtual field trip projects as summative assessments. Virtual field trips can activate prior knowledge (where have the students seen something like this before) and help eliminate misconceptions.
The question really is what CAN’T virtual field trips be used for?
By encouraging students to improve their ability to make observations and NOTICE things by seeing or making virtual field trips, depth and complexity increases. Students step outside the comfort of their own narrow world view to examine other far-away places and expand their global perspective. And the weird and wonderful are engaging, and can spark wonder and curiosity. We need our students to be curious question-askers and answer-seekers, rather than passive recipients of the digital messages they are constantly bombarded with.
Hopefully you are convinced that virtual field trips are a really great way to engage students and add depth and complexity to their learning. How do you make that happen? Planning is critical. We devised a virtual field trip blueprint to use when planning our own virtual field trips. It’s a way to organize your thoughts. It’s a way for you to be intentional about ensuring there is an educational purpose and structure to the work to make sure students gain academically from the experience. Find our Virtual Field Trip Planning Kit on TpT. We hope you will use the tools and ideas in this packet to create amazing virtual field trip experiences for your own students. Onward and upward!