Hi there, Amber here,

School field trips are a whole lot different now then they were in the past. I remember kids I grew up with, who looked at field trips as goof off days. They were right up there with the few days a year your class might be fortunate enough to have the “fun” substitute teacher. Seriously, a lot of the field trips I remember were never very engaging or relevant to the current lesson plan. More or less they were locations that were convenient for the class to travel to. Now, with the fusion of new technologies such as Elluminate students can have access to the best educational experience possible.

Charlene O’Hanlon brings home this point in her THE Journal article “A vRoom With a View“. In it she discusses how new distance learning technologies at North Carolina’s Central Academy of Technology and Arts are providing more educational opportunities for students.

It is through this program that medical science students are able to see live videos of laparoscopic procedures (I had to look it up) from certified surgeons. Other students are able to learn to appreciate the nauseating sensation of sitting in on their first surgical procedure. This is great! Why not bring the best possible experiences to your students, just don’t forget the pepto-bismol. You don’t have to bring them to the closest cooperating hospital. Bring your students across the globe to the most remote areas and provide them the best possible learning experience available.

This can easily be done though Elluminate. You may not have access to an academic version of Elluminate, but Elluminate does offer free 3-user vRooms. You can use these rooms at no cost for as much as you’d like, and as long as you’d like. This is a great opportunity to start making use of this wonderful technology advancement.

Until next time bloggers…keep on bloggin’

Amber Koskela