Virtual Field Trips with Discovery Education

    Not every child is fortunate enough to be able to participate when it comes time for field trips. I remember being a child and being so excited the days we would go on field trips and having to watch certain students be sent to other classes with work to do for the day because they were not able to go. Whether it's due to students not being able to particiapte financially or if the parents just don't want the child going due to their own personal views, it's never fun to be left out espeically while watching all of your friends excited to go have fun. 

     

    Discovery Education has created an opportunity to ensure all children can participate in fun classroom activities and create a small break in "traditional learning". Granted the virtual field trips aren't going to be all day like in person trips would be, but it takes time in the class for the students to learn about differnt topics, and interact in the same ways during a field trip. I watched the virtual field trip, Night Navigators: Build for Bats and they were being extremely informative and used different ways to draw the children in. Not only did they learn, they also used play with legos and how to build a change to protect the bats.

https://www.discoveryeducation.com/community/virtual-field-trips/

    In the future when I have my own classroom, I will 100% be utilizing materials such as Discovery Education to bring some fun into my classroom. Truth be told, not every child is going to enjoy coming to school everyday and learning the basic skills of reading and math. Implementing fun activities such as Discovery Education, and hands on learning and play is a great way to keep the students engaged and keep their want to come to school, to come to my class.

    Not only does Discovery Education have the perks of no permission slip field trips, the program is free to use for both students and teachers. Students have access to games, videos, labs, lesson plans, homework help, and many more activities. Many schools provide students with iPads, or laptops for classroom use and at home use. Discovery Education is a great program to create accounts for the students to use for extra learning, not only could it be used to assign work to be completed, it can be viewed as "fun work" to be completed. I would probably use Discovery Education for not only their virtual field trips but also for centers, this would be a great program to use for student learning.