Pros And Cons Of Virtual Fieldtrips

The days of arriving to school early with a sack lunch, eagerly awaiting roll call and then to board a bus and go on a fieldtrip are becoming very rare these days. Fieldtrips are becoming too expensive for schools to provide and parents do not want to dish out loads of money for something that could potentially be taught in a classroom for free. In all age groups fieldtrips are slipping into a memory. Yet, a new way to take fieldtrips has emerged and is growing in popularity: Virtual fieldtrips. A virtual field trip is “a guided and narrated tour of website(s) that have been selected by an educator… and arranged in a “thread” that students can follow from site to site with just a click of a button” (Tramline, 2007, p.1). Virtual fieldtrips

A website that is a good option and does this quite well is Nature Valley Trail View (2013). This site gives the options of detailed explorations of four of the country’s national parks: Sequoia National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Smoky Mountains National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. One of the best features of this site that would be extremely beneficial for virtual fieldtrips is the trail tours of each of the parks. Multiple different trails can be explored in each of the parks, and have been captured in pictures taken continually as the trail is traveled. Over 400 miles of trails within these parks were photographed for this site. As the path is traveled, there are icons that can be clicked that will allow students to receive more information about preservation, maps, and even to see 360-degree panoramic video footage of noteworthy places along the

But in contrast technology is constantly growing in our society every day. People from any age are learning to access and depend on technology on an everyday basis. Since technology is becoming more present in school districts, more teachers are willing to show students virtual tours in their classroom then taking the student on a physical fieldtrip. Studies show, that a student in junior high has the attention span that lasts from ten to fifteen minutes. Virtual fieldtrips can last on average up to an hour, so a student with the attention span of ten to fifteen minutes wont is able to focus on the fieldtrip the teacher is presenting to the