Virtual Field Trips

I got my article from the New York Times online. It is called Traveling the World, Without So Much as a Hall Pass. It was written and published by Julius Charkes on March 27, 2oo7. The article is mainly about one school, White Plains Middle School, that has adopted the new trend of virtual field trips. This way students can travel around the world without actually having to leave the classroom and spend the money on traveling. The students have seen the Amazon Reef in Brazil, have talked face to face with Sri Lanka, chatted with NASA officials, and accompanied scuba divers along the Great Barrier Reefs of Australia. Unlike normal field trips virtual field trips do not require permission slips or fundraisers. Teachers think that this a great invention, they say that the students have no limits and can go anywhere. There is some required equipment to intend these field trip, such as interactive videoconferencing, camera projector, special hardware, and the internet. This equipment can run anywhere from $4,000 to $30,000. That is a lot of money just for a field trip right? Well the schools do get state aid to help pay for such pricey tools. The schools do have to pay a "content provider" for access to museums and such things. About $50 to several hundred per trip, just as much as a normal field trip would cost. Nationwide there are about 23,000 public schools that use the virtual field trip technique, that's about 1 in 4 schools. The principal of the school states that , "Students begin to have an understanding of themselves not just as citizens of White Plains, but of the world as well.” Other schools staff have claimed that they are worried that these virtual trips will take over live trips. Some staff argue that the virtual trips submerge kids to culture and the world and that it is expands global learning.
This relates to teaching and learning because students are seeing and participating in events other than their own that they are used to seeing and being in. I think this helps students to understand the world from a different view point. Diversity is everywhere. Being opted to other states in our country and to other countries children are learning that there is diversity and to welcome it. I think that virtual field trips are awesome and I wish that I had that opportunity when I was in grade school. Although I enjoyed the field trips I went on when I was younger. I thing that schools should do both kinds of trips. Kids do need to be outside and be involved and get to know the community and environment they live in. I think that more schools should write articles on their experience traveling virtually with their students. This might influence other schools to adopt this new way of learning outside the classroom.