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Thursday, November 1, 2007

Virtual Field Trips

I enjoyed reading these two articles. I thought they offered a lot of good suggestions about virtual field trips. I think virtual field trips are a good idea for any class, but especially for those schools who are short on money. Now, I think actual field trips are good and beneficial and should be kept if possible, but virtual field trips have many benefits as well. One of the best things is that they can only take up one period which is nice because they don't disrupt any other subjects. Actual field trips usually take the whole day and so the students end up missing all of their classes instead of just the subject they went for. I think they can offer a lot of substantial information, especially since a lot of museums are handing out information and programs to schools. You can learn just as much from a virtual field trip as from the actual one. Virtual field trips also save a lot of money. They cut down on the cost of transportation, admissions, and a meal. They also cut out the need for a permission slip. Virtual field trips are good not only for a replacement, but also as an enhancement to the actual field trip.

Flickr

New project time...and the introduction is Flickr. Yet again...this is a new program for me and hadn't heard of this before. I can already see how beneficial it can be. Students can learn from it (especially using the notes options) to see what is important in the pictures. I don't know what exactly I would use this for in a classroom. Maybe to discuss different cultures, histories, maybe tie in media when teaching different types of literatures. Possibly use it to help show speeches...but it is nice to have a new tool introduced. It should be interesting to see how everyone uses it to benefit their students.

Flicker

We only had a quick introduction to Flicker, but I can already see how it would be very interesting. I like that you can add notes in order to highlight the main objects of your photo. Also, for Spanish it would be very helpful to point out the objects for vocabulary practice. As for math, I wish I could change the size of the note box. The objects that I want to highlight are larger than the tiny box that appears. I am curious what else we are going to do with Flicker.