|
|
|
| Home | Legal | About Us | Link To Us | Bookmark Us | Recommend Us | Suggest a Link | Search | Feedback | Contact | |
| |
|
|
|
Fieldtrips on the Information Highway! by Felice Gerwitz |
|
Living in sunny Florida the thought of taking a field trip outdoors any time of the year is not prohibitive. My family may choose to visit the beach, a national park, or even take a walk down a guided nature center trail. Yet there are many places that we might want to visit that are too far, costly, or just not convenient due to our schedules. I found the solution, the Internet! Online field trips are one way to visit exciting places around the world from the comfort of your home. How many of us have the opportunity or resources to visit Rome, travel to Antarctica or the White House in one week if we so desire? With the Internet this is possible on any budget. Many web sites work beautifully as a supplement to our curriculum, a topic of interest to my children, or a place for further research. In these sites we have found many wonders previously unexplored.
Unfortunately I had an unexpected problem. While logistics and cost were not factors I was finding that I was spending way too much time navigating these sites. Sound familiar? The Internet has been called both a time saver and a time waster! Hours upon hours were spent trying to work through the pages to find the information I was looking for. Not only that, but many times while clicking through pages, briefly skimming them and reading portions to my children, I'd find that when I finally looked up from the screen, I was alone in front of the computer! I had lost my "class" to other pursuits more in their area of interest. That is when I decided to research and write a book about Internet field trips Reanalyzing the situation I came to the conclusion that there had to be a better way! I have come up with a checklist of items that I'll share with you in the hopes that you can better use the Internet as a supplement to your curriculum. The first thing you should do if you are a new Internet user is take an online class, many of them are free. You can use the following website addresses www.learnthenet.com or www.sc.edu/beauufort/library/lesson1.html both are geared for the new user and will take you through terminology you may not be familiar with. You may also want to do a search with a search engine such as www.yahoo.com or www.google.com. New search engines are popping up almost daily. These can be described as telephone directories of the Internet on steroids. They contain up-to-date information of what is currently available online. You can do a search for a specific topic or a field trip destination, let's say The White House. Just be careful. The internet site for the White House is www.whitehouse.gov. If you used the tag <.com> or <.net> after the words 'whitehouse' one of these sites is reported to be a pornographic one! While I am not unaware of the objectionable quality of many websites, rest assured that there are many very wonderful and invaluable sites, such as the one you are currently on. If you use filtering software you may have difficulty traveling a particular site, anyway. Your software if effective should block access. The best advice I can give parents is to do a trial run before bringing you children on board. You may also need to download some tools to make surfing easier. If you go to a specific site and you cannot view certain aspects you will be directed to download a software tool that may help you. My advice is to always download onto a writeable CD ROM or zip drive; never on your hard drive, and then scan for viruses. While most sites that contain downloadable software are virus free you can never be too safe. Here is an outline for doing a virtual field trip and following this outline will jump-start your travels: Using keywords on a search engine will help you to narrow down the sites you'd like to visit. Once you have found a website you are interested in further exploring do a quick site overview. Look at the left, right or top of the screen to see if there are words with link buttons to follow that look interesting. Keep track of where you are going, so you can follow this path if you decide you like the site enough to use this as a field trip destination. Once you have briefly looked at the site, think of some of the goals or objectives you would like your children to take from the site. In other words, would the child learn about a historic place or delve into scientific discovery? Once you have an idea of where you are going, get ready for deeper site navigation. Keep track of the links you used to turn the page, if you will. This will be helpful for when you take your child back. You can have your child click the links with you directing them, or giving them your written directions. If you desire you may want your child to answer some pre-planned questions. This may not be one of your goals, but if so, you will have some tangible, written information you can record as school work. Another important facet of online field trips is additional activities. I don't consider this to be relegated only to additional links to other sites. I think this should include further research or a hands-on type of activity. Build a model of the historic place of interest, do a science experiment relating to a site visited, etc. While finding a good website, navigating and visiting it may take some work the rewards are well worth it. If you are really crunched for time, and who isn't? You may wish to visit my web site, Virtual-Field-Trips.com, that will give you many fully researched field trips online. So whatever technique you use, make learning fun and what better way than online? © 2003 Felice Gerwitz. All rights reserved. Re-printed with permission. |
||
 Felice Gerwitz is a nationally recognized author, educator, lecturer, mother, and homeschooling consultant. Felice is a graduate of Florida Southern College and a former teacher with a degree in Elementary Education, Learning Disabilities and Early Childhood Education. She is the founder and managing director of MediaAngels Publishing that produces study guides for homeschoolers, and Virtual Field Trips, a unique Internet exploration and learning web site. Felice has been deeply involved in homeschooling since in 1986. | ||
Would you like to contribute an article on a homeschooling topicContact us.
| Site Terms of Use | Advertise | FAQ | Privacy |
