Blog Post #5--Virtual Field Trips

This week I created my first Virtual Field Trip.  A VFT is a digital tour of a location complete with images, information, and explanation for why you are visiting.  For my VFT, I decided to use a geology theme.  I created a tour of five different naturally occurring land formations in the United States.  Using Google Earth, I recorded a virtual trip from the New York State Finger Lakes, to the barrier island Fire Island off of the coast of Long Island, NY, to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, to the Mississippi River Delta, and finally, to the natural mass movement landslide of La Conchita on the coast of California.

I really loved using Google Earth and was amazed at the precision with which one can zoom in and really focus in on a location.  Being that I was making such a specific VFT about really specific formations of land, I was worried that Google Earth would not be able to locate my landmarks or wouldn't be able to zoom into the level I needed in order to demonstrate my points.  Was I ever wrong!  Not only was each of my land formations recalled by name, but I could easily zoom right down to street level for each and every one of them.  For the landslide at La Conchita, this was especially useful.  Here's what the street view of the landslide looks like.  What great detail!

I love how Google Earth makes use of the 3-D imaging as well as the ever-familiar Google Maps real-world imaging.  In fact, many of the functions and applications in Google Earth are very similar or the same as their Google Maps counterparts.  I found this program to be intuitive and pretty remarkable.  My only gripe is that I recorded audio of my voice talking my viewers through the tour but, for some reason, this audio failed to save on top of the recorded tour.  I'm sure I did it wrong but I got too frustrated with it to monkey around any further.  Any tips on how to make this work are greatly appreciated!

Here is a link to my VFT (without audio, sadly...).  Check it out and let me know what you think!




Here's a link to the script that I read and which should have been heard throughout the tour.

I really enjoyed the chance to make a virtual field trip.  I learned that it takes a lot of hard work, research, and plenty of patience to play with the technologies necessary to create a VFT.  I also learned that there are some pretty incredible resources out there to make something like a VFT possible.  With enough time and energy, teachers could literally bring the world into their classroom, an exciting and motivating lesson learned for me!  I can't wait to put this knowledge into practice.