Session4

=Week 2 Online (Part 2)=

1. Read "The Beginners Guide to Interactive Virtual Fieldtrips" (When you get to the page, click on the "Eric Full Text" link at the top of the page. It will download the document to your computer.).

2. Find a Virtual Field Trip (VFT) that you could use with your "students". Use your imagination, it doesn't have to be called a "VFT". There are several sites listed in the article and you can also use your "new smart searching" skills to find others. (Use those great searching skills!)

3. Add any sites you find to our group Diigo account (be sure to use tags so we can find them - add them to our group - edtec448).

4. Below is a table. Put your ideas in the table below so that we can see what you came up with! In the table below, you can add as many ideas as you like. You can enter ideas that you find on the Web (with hyperlinks) and you can also add your own ideas for your "dream" VFT. (Click "edit" above then type into the table. Click "Save" when you are finished. To make your hyperlink a "live" link, highlight the URL, then click on the "Link" button at the top of this page.)

Virtual Field Trips

 * Your Name || Topic || Website/URL || How will you use it? ||
 * Jessica Cratty || Body Parts

Farm Animals and sounds || []

[] || This is a Field Trip that you do actually have to pay for, so this would be something I'd need approved by a supervisor. However, this site tailors VFTs to your class curriculum and that would be amazing. Obviously this would be a site best used in a special education classroom setting, and the field trips happen in real time and are interactive. Additionally, my students wouldn't just be watching the puppets, I purchase (or have donated) simple materials for each student to make a puppet to take home. That way, the learning wouldn't just stop in school, parents could carry out the lesson at home as well. This site was one of hte top sites listed in the Eric test linked above. I love that you can let the program know what you would like the lesson to speak about, especially body parts. Kids only feel like pointing to and labeling pointed to body parts for so long. It's hard to think of new ways and to find creating games to help kids to learn their body parts.

Great site to talk about all sorts of different farm animals. There are facts that could be read to students, photos, and stories with some audio. This would be a great parent activity to follow through with in class instruction. Also, it would be a great way to get a student with noise sensitivity prepared for the sounds of a farm if they were goint o go on an actual farm trip with their special or regular education class. ||
 * Karen Mull || Geometry -area, distance, angles, pythagorean theorem

Algebra I and II - Parabolas || []

[] || This VFT is similar to the one mentioned in the article - Batter Up, from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead of looking at statistics though, it examines the geometry behind baseball and how to use math to determine the best way to hit a home run. The nice thing about this VFT is that there are pre- and post-field trip activities to do with your class (some are even online!) so the VFT is not just an isolated event. They also tailor the experience to different grade levels, so it can be used as early as grade 6 as an introduction to geometrical concepts, or with students that have a much deeper knowledge of geometry.

The Battleship New Jersey offers several VFT in many different content areas. One that I came across focuses on parabolas and how they are used in projectile motion. This VFT examines the equipment that was used in the 1930's to aim the guns aboard battleships and how this equipment is just as accurate today because of parabolas. An interesting way of looking at a topic that usually gives my students trouble! ||
 * Mary Pandya || Science of Sports || [] || This site allows students to explore the sports of their choice and learn about the science of them. Students can view video clips and go through the information as they see fit. I think it will be really useful for getting my lower level students excited / interested in physics. ||
 * Mary Pandya || FI Case Files || [] || The Franklin Institute has compiled a set of information on many prominent scientists in many fields of science. Students can explore the life, accomplishments, inventions, writings, and awards of many scientists at their own pace, and in whatever order they choose. The site is lacking video, but is very comprehensive, and good for project research. ||
 * Mary Pandya || Nuclear Tourist || []

[] || This site is overwhelming in the version presented in the first link (to me, anyway). It has been revamped without using frames (an outdated webpage formatting method which may not work in all browsers). The second link is in the frames view - for me it is easier to digest. This site has it all - my students could learn about any topic they want related to nuclear power plants from this site (which is a major unit in all of my classes). Students have access to video clips from the New York Times and current information on the Fukushima Reactor. Students do have access to advertisements through linked pages like the NYTimes, but I "REALed" it, and I really like the site. I would take my students to the computer lab with this site and have them answer some pre-determined questions, and then do some exploring on their own to find something to share with the class. ||
 * Leslie Serany || rainforest || [] || This is such a cute virtual field trip!! My class learns about the rainforest for 3 months and this virtual field trip would be a great way to explore it! We could take the trip as a whole class or individually. The field trip flies the viewer to a jungle and introduces him/her to 4 people. These people help you walk through the jungle. Along the way you need to stop to make shelter, find food, and observe animals. The site gives great facts and even allows the viewer to make decisions (kind of similar to "choose your own adventure books". I wish all virtual field trips were as fun and interactive. I searched endlessly for a safari interactive VFT, but was unable to find one to meet my needs. If anyone comes across one, please let me know. ||
 * Phil DeCrescente || Zoo Animals || [] || After many books read about vaiorus animals, I have found a great interest among my students with Zoo animals, specifically African Safari animals like Zebras, Elephants, lions, etc. Every year I always seem to do go the the Phialdelphia Zoo for a fieldtrip, so I thought that this would be a great pre lesson weeks in advance to the trip to 1. get them excited and 2. have them learna thing or two about those animals before we go and visit them. I think the VFT is a little bit advanced for my second graders to exploire on their own, but if I were to use it through a projector for the whole class to see, it would be very effective because of the live web cams that this zoo offers. The site also has many facts and pictures about the animals as well. I had seached a long bit to find a good zoo VFT and I thought this was one of the better ones I could come across. It has all the fascinating information that a zoo can provide but it would be able to be done in the classroom. ||
 * Megan Bonner || Art || The National Gallery

Alexander Calder

Edgar Degas

Edward Hopper || The National Gallery in Washington, DC has excellent virtual tours and field trips! Field trips can be a lot of work and most of the time, not all students in your class can attend. The National Gallery has some great free online field trips that every student in your class can see. These tours would also be useful in presentations, when writing reports or lessons, and as links in a Web Quest. Some of these VFTs are more interactive than others, but all of them are worth looking at. This link is to a page with all of their online tours. They are divided by artists, artworks, architecture, and themes. Toward the top of the page there are also links to interactive maps of different collections within the museum. There are so many different types of VFT's on this page that it would take me forever to go over all of them. So I'll tell you about a few different types.

The virtual field trip on the NGA's Alexander Calder collection is interactive. There is information along the left hand side along with links to skip to different parts of the tour. On the right is a Quicktime video and a map of the gallery. You can choose which way to go by dragging across the video or by clicking on the map. The video has hotspots that you can click on to find out more information about the sculptures and it also allows you to zoom in/out. One thing I did not like about this tour is that I could not make the video larger.

This tour is less interactive but it still allows you to see the collection of Degas' work. You can click through and read about Degas and his works. There are links to images and you can click on some of the images to zoom in to better see what the text is referring to (how Degas reused mannequins in the same position to set up his paintings.)

The Edward Hopper tour is sort of a combination of the first two. It has more links and is categorized compared to the Degas tour but is not as interactive as the Calder tour. In this tour, there art hotspots in the "A Closer Look" section, an interactive timeline, a section on frequent themes of Hopper's work, and also videos discussing his work and the real-life subjects of his work. ||
 * Jen Atkiss || Biology

Anatomy & Physiology || []

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/eheart/transplantwave.html || The page on this site is entitled "Inside a Cell" and it provides a virtual tour of both a plant and animal cell. One of the topics I teach in my biology class is cell physiology. I am always looking for new ways to help my students visualize the microscopic components to cells. This activity would provide that. I could send my students here to explore the parts of cells and ask them to record information that they find. The site provides the students with the ability to navigate through the cell however they choose. Additionally, when an organelle is selected, the site zooms in and has a video of the structure working accompanied by an audio explanation of what is taking place. This "field trip" through the microscopic world of a cell is a great extension to flat images provided in the students' textbooks.

This website site provides a virtual field trip for my Anatomy and Physiology students. The site allows the students to assume the role of doctors and perform an open heart surgery virtually. With so many of my Anatomy students interested in the medical field, I seek opportunities to help them experience careers in the field. This activity allows the students to be "hands on" in an experience that I could not typically provide in the classroom and gives them a glimpse at the various career opportunities in a hospital. ||

5. Complete your second blog post by 5/14. Topic: You need to teach your students how to search for and evaluate websites. How will you do this? Go back to the information November shared in the text. Kathy Schrock also has many wonderful suggestions on her page. Use these resources to devise a plan for how you will teach your students about evaluating information they find on the internet. (You can find the Kathy Schrock site and a few others in our Diigo Group!! - This is a test to see if you know how to use Diigo!). Share your ideas on this topic (teaching your students how to search for and evaluate websites) for your second blog post.

6. *** CHALLENGE (Only do this if you are ready for it. This is not required!!!) : Create your own "JING" video as I did on the first page of week 2. Show us the strategies you used to search for a VFT or to create your own Custom Search Engine. Post your Jing video to your blog.

Link back to Part 1 of Week 2 Online