Get ideas for ways to meaningfully integrate mobile technology into your next field trip! Let’s explore device-neutral apps that can engage students in learning during field trips, while supporting the 4Cs.
- Creativity: VR Tours
Invite students to create VR tours of their field trip, using the Cardboard Camera app OR the Google Street View app and an audio recording app. Back in the classroom, students can connect all their tours together using Roundme on a computer.
For more, check out A 360-Degree Sense of Place, curriculum from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, or my detailed post. - Collaboration: Social Media Challenges
Use Instagram challenges or Twitter chats throughout field trips to keep students talking. More than a scavenger hunt, before your field trip, pose a higher-level question to students, such as “how do adaptations help animals survive?” Throughout the field trip, ask students to post their claims, and evidence for them (photos and videos of animals, exhibits, or chats with docents), on social media using a specific hashtag you create for your class or field trip. Encourage students to comment on one another’s posts, to have on-topic conversations during and after the field trip. If you don’t want students to use their personal accounts, create a shared class account and have all your students post to that same account. Set the expectation that they should sign their posts. - Communication: Documentaries
Students can create screencasts or videos to compare/contrast different organisms and habitats as they observe them at zoos and aquariums. Students can use free apps like Educreations or just the camera app.
For more, check out Patterns of Survival and One-Minute Documentaries, curriculum from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. - Critical Thinking: Data
Students can use video annotation apps (such as Coach My Video) to collect and explain motion data during field trips to science museums. Older students can import their data into TuvaLabs for further analysis back in the classroom.