We Took (Virtual) Field Trips to Indonesia and Thailand

We just completed our second field trip with Brandon Hall from Learning Around the World GEOShow.

Minus the jet lag...

and without passports...

and no crossing of time zones...

We went to Thailand and Indonesia without even leaving our classroom and it was beyond expectation!

Our first VFT was to see the Asian Elephants in Thailand

The engagement and level of enthusiasm from almost every child was high.  These webinars allow the participating classrooms to interact with Brandon through Twitter, playing Kahoot and chatting (either face to face as an on-screen guest or through the chat feature by typing questions).  Field notes were provided for the Thailand trip and students scribbled to get as much information as possible.  This helped us make the leader board in the Kahoot challenge at the end of the webinar.

4th Place finish in the Kahoot challenge

Gloria's notes evidence her learning and engagement
throughout the hour long webinar.

For the second field trip, which was to Komodo, Indonesia, we signed up to be on-screen guests.  This was the first time for the kids to participate like this and luckily, Brandon controlled the mute button to block our chatter from the other participating classes!  Some of the students had read an article ("Dragon Alert") as part of their guided reading groups this week (happy accident) and they were eager to share some facts about Komodo dragons, a cannibalistic creature whose only predator is itself (and humans, but it's illegal to hunt).

Here's a tweet I sent out during the VFT to Indonesia.

Experiencing these trips has made the study of biodiversity (one of four strands in Ontario Science curriculum) interactive, engaging and interesting for everyone in our classroom.  Go check out if one of their virtual field trips applies to some level of interest in your classrooms.  It will blow you away!

~MissBrooks