Virtual Field Trips
A Virtual Field trip is a guided and narrated exploration tour through different web pages or web sites previously chosen by the teacher, in which students can go from page to page only clicking a button. Tramline technology is a very important part in the creation of this useful teaching tool. It helps to teachers to create in an easy way, a connection between web pages instead of giving students lists of links related to a specific topic. This is a real advantage because lists of links are very hard to work for every level of teaching, especially elementary school children.
With Virtual field trips you can show to students a web page and add the information of it in a small window below the web site so the students get in context about the theme they are studying.
Virtual Field trips can make your students travel to anywhere at any time from the comfort of their houses or their classroom. For example, if they are studying about the ancient history you can take them to any museum around the world and you do not have to worry about if it is opened or full. Or if you are studying about volcanoes you can be translated to the Popocatepetl through different web sites.
There are different kinds of Virtual Field Trips. Some trips only consist of a list of links on one web page while some others use navigators or buttons to move through the tour. But there is a new type of virtual trips. It is the Real-time Virtual Trip, which involve the use of video or audio conferencing. This technology lets to students to go beyond the fact of only watch pictures but be a part of the trip in real time.
Since the appearing of The Virtual Field Trips in 1995, is has been seen as a way to organize the educational potential of the internet for students of primary and secondary education making of the teaching process an interesting and way to motivate to the students to fell identify with different lesson of classes that maybe seem boring for them.
Manuel Pereira
