3-1 Scenario Three

Scenario Three: In a fourth grade social studies class, the class is discussing the role of landscape and surroundings on early natives—what type of food they ate, the type of dwellings they built, and of course defensive systems or escape routes. Many of the students have never traveled out of their own state and are not familiar with alternate surroundings. The social studies teacher has requested that the technology integrator help her create a new lesson.


Travel out of their own state via a virtual field trip (VFT) to get familiar with different surroundings using the internet and promethean board. “A virtual field trip (VFT) is a guided exploration through the web that organizes a collection of pre-screened, thematically based web pages into a structured online learning experience. (Foley, 2003)”. With tight budgets in our schools today the VFT is a great way to save on travel expense. For this class VFT would allow the students and teacher to explore other states landscape and backgrounds on early natives and then compare and contrast to their own state. Discover education website would be an excellent place to start (see below). http://www.discoveryeducation.com/northamerica/event.cfm

Here is another website to familiarize the teacher in taking a VFT.
http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/201111/Kirchen_Virtual_Field_Trips_Online%201111.pdf