Kinds Of Virtual Field Trips For Amazing Adventures At Home
In an ideal world, taking a field trip would be easy.
Travel times would be short, tickets inexpensive, and the perfect tour guide would always be available for the exact time that you wanted.
In the real world, logistics can be a bit messier. Flights can be delayed, or canceled. The weather can be uncooperative. Pandemics could happen.
Whatever the reason, there are times when taking a field trip in person might not be possible. Still, just because you aren’t there in person doesn’t mean you have to completely miss out. For those times when a physical field trip isn’t an option, there’s almost always a virtual trip that you can take instead!
What is a Virtual Field Trip?
The general concept of virtual field trips is fairly self-explanatory. It’s simply any field trip or educational experience that is taken through the use of an internet-connected device, like a phone or a computer.
The goal of these experiences is to build a coherent story around a particular place or time in such a way that it impacts the educational journey of their guests. Typically, they involve more user input than a movie or a documentary, inviting participation at more than a mere surface level, though some trips are much better about that than others.
Kinds of Virtual Field Trips
The trips themselves have a huge amount of variety in what they offer. Some places that advertise themselves as having virtual “field trips” actually offer little more than a web page with pictures. Others are immersive experiences that invite you to not only to view a far-off destination but to interact with the people who live and work there. While the former can be underwhelming, the latter can make for a truly immersive experience that is absolutely worth checking out!
Picture tours
The most basic examples of a virtual field trip are websites that essentially just give you a set of pictures to look through. However, even among these websites, there is a huge amount of variation in how immersive any individual trip might be.
For instance, one of the more basic tours of this type is the United States Geological Society’s Phantom Ranch Virtual Field Trip tour. This particular tour is really just a series of picture slides with text and doesn’t do a great job of immersion.
Other tours, like this one from Yosemite National Park, uses a series of 360-degree photos and ambient sounds from the park to increase the viewer’s ability to immerse themselves in the location. Text boxes give a little more context to each area and can give virtual visitors a nice jumping-off point for their own research.
Audio Tours
Adding a layer of complexity to the mix, some tours add audio to the mix. Instead of ambient noise that attempts to recreate the atmosphere, these tours use audio explanations to tell you what you are looking at, and why it matters.
Oftentimes these will be the same audio files that you would get while doing a cellphone walking tour on location, as is the case with the virtual tour of Barataria Preserve in the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park in Louisiana.
Educational VR Experiences
Virtual reality experiences have come a very long way from the clunky arcade machines I remember from my youth. As they have grown smaller and more affordable, they’ve also become more useful for a host of non-game-related content, including for virtual field trips!
As long as you have the proper equipment, VR field trips make for some of the most immersive and fun virtual field trips you can find! But again, there is a lot of variation in the quality of experiences.
Cheap VR headsets compatible with Android smartphones are a great entry point to the world of VR field trips thanks to the number of 360-degree experiences available via Google Culture and Art or YouTube. Some of my kids’ favorites were things like getting to explore the International Space Station, experiences that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to have. We used the Google Expeditions app through Google Cardboard for that one, though there’s not a lot of support happening for Cardboard at this point.
Newer VR experiences, like National Geographic Explore VR for Oculus, make it possible to dive in and feel like you’re there, but they require much more powerful devices than a smartphone. Still, since the prices on headsets like the Oculus Quest 2 keep dropping as the technology improves, investing in a headset can still cost far less than a flight across the world.
The Oculus Quest 2 is an all-in-one VR system, which means you can have a full-featured experience without buying more in the way of hardware.
The VIVE Pro Virtual Reality System is a higher-quality system, but its operation requires more than just what comes in the box, namely, a computer powerful enough to run it. It can provide a better experience but requires a lot more in the way of hardware and know-how.
Pre-recorded Video Experiences
Some of the best field trips are the ones where you have an experienced guide walking alongside you to point out any items of interest or explain important details. Virtual field trips can often be the same way!
A ton of great virtual field trips focus on the concept of seeing new places through the eyes of the guides who know them best. These virtual tours will often use pre-recorded experiences to give as many people as possible a glimpse into some of the best-loved locations across the world! I really enjoy how well sites like Get Your Guide use pre-recorded videos to give unique, personal experiences to a wide audience.
Live Video Experiences
Of course, pre-recorded experiences are limited in that there’s most often not a way to interact with your host. That’s where live video experiences come in!
Live online experiences are one of the newest versions of the virtual field trip and are essentially a blending of a regular in-person experience and a video call. But what I love about them is just how much immersion and interactivity are made possible by making use of a video call!
It makes tours of exotic locations possible, without needing a passport or a plane ticket! It makes discovering flavorful dishes from around the world possible, from the comfort of your kitchen! And it makes it possible to indulge your kids’ curiosity by bringing experts from a variety of fields directly into your living room.
Some of my favorite live virtual field trips are live tours of places like Proyecto Asis (which I visited live during our trip to Costa Rica) or live cooking lessons from around the globe from services like EatWith.com.
Another good one that I’ve seen in the past was a virtual chocolate tasting with one of the artisanal shops I toured in Guatemala. Sadly, that particular one is no longer available, but definitely keep your eyes out for other virtual tastings!
While getting to experience fun events and exotic places in person is always the preferred method, sometimes getting there just isn’t possible. I love how virtual field trips are filling that gap and making the vastness of our world a little more accessible.
