The Virtual Field Trips

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Introduction

Instructional technology has achieved great development in the last few decades, and Virtual Field T rips (VFTs) is definitely one of them. This paper will mainly discuss the definition of VFTs, the reason why it is needed, example of its application with screen shots, advantages and disadvantages; provide information on its future development as well as great resources links. Teachers and educationists will be interested most in this paper because it will further their existing understanding of VFTs, show them the future directions as well as present them with several helpful and practical websites.

What is Virtual Field Trips (VFTs)?

Foley (2001) writes,

…Virtual Field Trips are explorations through the Web, typically an organized set of links with a particular theme. Some trips simply consist of a list of links on one Web page, while other trips use some type of navigator (or buttons) to move through the tour. In its best implementation, it's a guided and annotated tour of pages on the Web that have been selected by educators and arranged in a 'thread' that students can follow from page to page, or site to site" (The Big Pocket Guide to Using & Creating Virtual Field Trips, Foley, 2001).

It is important to note that “virtual” here means “digital alternative representations of reality”. VFT currently is not an attempt to replace a virtual reality, whose intention is to get the user fully involved in an interactive computer-generated environment by using sensors and input devices such as data gloves and body suits and output devices such as head mounted displays and surround--sound audio systems. Instead, a VFT is simply an attempt to give more autonomy to the users, by...

... middle of paper ...

...stems today: an interactive casebook (http://www.wiley.com/college/ford test/index.html).

Garcia, J. M. (1993) The development of the electronic field trip to strengthen and enrich existing K-12 curriculum. Doctoral dissertation, Oklahoma State University.

Gilmour, I. (1997) Skiddaw Virtual Field Trip. A study of thermal metamorphism (http://earth2.open.ac.uk/Skiddaw/Text/Skiddaw.html).

Jenkins, A. & Williams, N. (1997) The aims and objectives of a virtual field course (http://www.geog.le.ac.uk /ufc/publications /paper001.html).

Stainfield, J., Fisher, P., Ford, B., & Solem, M. (2000). International virtual field trips: A new direction? Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 24(2), 255–263

UNWIN, D. (1996) The Virtual Field Course (Den Haag, International Geographical Union, Commission on Geographic Education Workshop on Geography Teaching over the Internet).

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