Abstract:

What if you could take your students to the site of the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest and visit Luxembourg’s National Museum of Military History? Or what if you had the means to lead your students along the remnants of the Berlin Wall to learn more about how life was during the divide. This is what my pre-service teachers do as part of my Instructional Design for Teaching & Learning course. The future educators explore and apply instructional design principles to create virtual field trips, innovative digital learning environments, that transport students to places without the need to book transportation, collect permission slips, and solicit chaperones.

Through the virtual field trips created in my class, K-12 students can visit places like St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States to learn about the Civil Rights Movement. They will hear stories about the Freedom Fighters who jeopardized their lives in the quest of liberty for all people, learn of Martin Luther King’s visit to St. Augustine, and see the site of the famous Woolworth’s demonstration. By becoming immersed in video footage, listening to audio clips, examining photographs of historical landmarks and analyzing documents, students are given the opportunity to interpret and reflect on historical places and events such as the Castillo de San Marcos, a National Monument and the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. In addition to designing virtual tours, my students create accompanying lesson plans that align with content area standards and use digital tools and resources to maximize active, deep learning.

Just like the elementary, middle, and high school students who participate in the virtual field trips, pre-service teachers who create them, learn, refine and extend their knowledge and understanding of historical contexts and gain a newfound appreciation of social and cultural differences while researching and exploring various locations. They work extensively with innovative technology to bring their students a one-of-a-kind experience.

The pre-service teachers visit the sites and take tons of video footage and heaps of digital photographs which are edited with various programs and used to create podcasts, with closed captions so they are accessible to all learners, photo slide shows with narration, and audio to accompany single photographs. Moreover, on site planned and oftentimes spontaneous interviews are recorded. Green screen apps are used to bring history to life by using historical photos as the setting for scripted videos.

Virtual field trips are organized using programs such as Sutori, a digital storytelling platform, WIX, Weebly, and Google Sites. Once most of the field trip is organized, additional online resources are selected to supplement, enhance and complement the overall virtual field trip. Pre-service teachers are encouraged to include Did You Knows (fun facts) and formative assessment such as built-in quizzes (multiple/choice, matching, forums, etc.) or links to quizzes using tools such as Google Forms or apps such as Kahoot and Quizizz.

There are multiple variations of the virtual field trip and endless possibilities for places to travel. I challenge you to be creative and join me in creating a global learning network of virtual field trips with other college professors and teacher education programs.

Keywords:

Pre-service teachers, virtual field trips, innovative learning, global learning network.