In this week’s work, I have taken a trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Well, this was not your typical trip. This was a virtual field trip! You can take a walk through this museum as well with this link.

This famous museum was amazing to tour, even just online. Through the link to the museum tours, I chose to tour the permanent exhibits, but there are other options depending on your interests. Once I picked my tour, I entered the first floor of the museum. Using the double right arrow on the end of the tool bar on the bottom of the screen, you can click through each section of the exhibits. The addition and subtraction symbols are to zoom in and out. This allows you to read the descriptions in the exhibits and get a closer look at the displays.

I also found the map in the upper right corner to be so useful! The website checked off each display on the map as you moved along. It also gave you a guide as to how you would be walking through the museum if you were actually there. If you wanted to get back to a prior exhibit, you could click on a checkmark and it would bring you back. The entire time of your tour you could pull the room around with a mouse to get a 360 degree view as well. If you preferred not to drag the room around you could instead use the middle up, down, left, and right arrows to navigate too.

I found this tour to be so interesting and well executed. I have always wanted to go to this museum, so this tour just excites me more to actually visit one day. The tour took me from fossils to African history, to oceanic history, to human origins, to mammals all on the first floor. The second floor was not as large, but consisted of geology, insects, “objects of wonder”, bones, Egyptian history, and a garden lounge. The virtual aspect of it ran very well and had no issues at all, which made for a seamless experience. The fossils and human origins were the exhibits I spent the most time in. Natural history is quite fascinating to me because it forces you to think beyond your existence. So much has happened before we existed and will continue to after.