Posted on by Deborah

Virtual Field Trips

I need a vacation. I need to go SOMEWHERE. Yes–most of us are at this point. Classroom teachers are not the only ones using virtual field trips as fun teaching aids.

Melanee Stinnett-Voss a member of Bitmoji Craze for Educators recently shared her virtual field trips in Bitmoji style HERE.

During a recent workshop for educators to improve their virtual program offerings, we went on a field trip to Mount Vernon. Our instructor first gave us a brief overview of how to move around the virtual museum. We were instructed to take a piece of paper and divide it up in four parts and label them Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. See a like document HERE

We were then given time to explore the museum on our own, noting where we found examples of science, technology, engineering and math on our sheet. After the free time, we were brought back as a group and then split up into a team or small group to talk about what we learned and found most interesting. We entered our top finds on a group Google Jamboard. Then we grouped back together for a short recap.

Museums

Tour collections and learn about the history of art and artifacts with these online museum experiences.

  • American Museum of Natural History: Brian Selznick, author of Wonderstruck, leads a virtual tour of the museum, meeting field experts along the way.
  • British Museum: This cool, interactive site lets kids browse the museum collection by time period, not by room, so kids can focus in on the era they’re most interested in.
  • Colonial Williamsburg: Eight different webcams let viewers peek in on what’s happening at places like Merchants’ Square or Raleigh Tavern.
  • Historic Hudson Valley: This site offers many history-themed online experiences for kids, from “Traders and Raiders,” which looks at the history of pirates in the greater New York Area, to “People Not Property,” which teaches kids about slavery. There are also lots of ideas for at-home historical activities, like cooking with cornmeal or “tinsmithing” at home with aluminum foil.
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art: The #MetKids site is geared for little ones, and lets them explore a cute, illustrated map to find treasures in the museum’s collection.
  • Musée du Louvre: The world-famous museum offers virtual tours by subject, from the body in art to Egyptian antiquities.
  • Museum of Science: The #MOSatHome page offers virtual looks at the Boston museum’s exhibits and hosts daily livestreams and webinars.
  • National Baseball Hall of Fame: Browse through the collection of photographs, memorabilia and more to learn more about America’s national pastime. The museum also offers virtual programming on its YouTube page.
  • National Constitution Center: Explore exhibitions about constitutional conflicts through the years, including “Hamilton: The Constitutional Clashes That Shaped a Nation.” For a fee groups can also participate in live, virtual guided tours for up to 300 people.
  • National Gallery of Art: The National Gallery has 50 video tours specifically geared towards kids, focusing on a work and the people, places, and scenes surrounding its creation.
  • National Museum of Computing: Located in Bletchley Park in the U.K., home of the famous WWII codebreakers like Alan Turing, this museum offers a virtual tour that takes visitors through the history of computers.
  • Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: You can bookmark this one to visit over and over, since it offers virtual version of every exhibition in the museum.
  • The Vatican Museum: You can get 360 looks at nine rooms in the Vatican — including the magnificent Sistine Chapel.

Farms

See how food grows, is harvested, and gets to your table with these farm tours.

  • American Egg Board: The Egg Board has virtual tours of different egg farms, and many of them let you choose different videos for kindergarten/elementary and middle school students.
  • Bonnie Plants: Home Depot takes kids on a multi-part virtual field trip to this grower, hoping to inspire kids to get into gardening themselves.
  • Bright Farms: A farm grower in Irvington, NY shows kids how food goes from the field (in this case, an indoor grower) to the grocery store. There’s even a quiz at the end!
  • Farm Food 360: Kids can see 11 different sorts of farm and food plants, including dairy cow farms, egg processing facilities and an apple orchard.

Landmarks

You might not be able to go on your sightseeing vacation at the moment, but these virtual landmark tours are the next best thing.

Zoos and Aquariums

These zoos and aquariums have live cams where kid can check in with the animals.

Even More Fun

From a candy factory to the surface of Mars, these tours take kids to places that aren’t available to them even in normal times.

  • Boston Children’s Museum: “Walk” through all three floors of the Boston Children’s Museum on this virtual tour. Direct your kids to fun exhibits like Explore-a-Saurus and the Japanese House.
  • Discovery Education: The site hosts virtual field trips for kids, from engineering plants that make the cars of the future to a lab that researches nuclear energy.
  • Great Lakes : This virtual field trip from Great Lakes Now has three components: coastal wetlands, algae, and lake sturgeon. Each video is a quick five minutes.
  • Johnson Space Center: Boeing leads the tour through the Houston, Texas facility, covering the history — and future — of aerospace innovation.
  • M&Ms Factory Tour: The Food Network hosts a virtual tour of the M&Ms factory and shows how the delicious candy gets made.
  • Nature Lab: The Nature Conservancy offers 11 virtual field trips that allow students to do everything from exploring a coastal rainforest while in a canoe to unlocking the secrets of coral reefs in the Dominican Republic. Each video is about 45 minutes long.
  • Outer Space Tours: Kids can see the real surface of Mars, courtesy of the Curiosity rover. NASA also does virtual tours of the Moon, along with the International Space Station.
  • Recycling Simplified: Take kids on a tour of a modern-day recycling center or landfill, and teach them about environmental sustainability.
  • Slime in Space: Nickelodeon teamed up with two astronauts on the International Space Station to demonstrate how slime reacts to microgravity and had kids reproduce those same demonstrations back here on Earth. It makes for an amazing 15-minute virtual field trip. Pre and Post activities available.
  • Sơn Đoòng: National Geographic offers a 360-degree tour of the world’s largest ave, situated in Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam. You can even hear the water as it runs over the rocks.
  • Stellarium Web: kids can explore over 60,000 stars, locate planets, and watch sunrises and solar eclipses. If you enter your location, you can see all the constellations that are visible in the night sky in your corner of the world.

Tour suggestions from Good Housekeeping, Weareteachers.com,