By: Lorraine Montero

Over the past few years, Public Schools in our community do not have the funding or resources to go on educational field trips. I discovered a website that has the ability to take students on virtual events without having to leave the classroom! Discovery Education Virtual Field Trips is a fun and exciting way to create a field trip without the need of a permission slip. A new feature that the website launched is DE Docs which include documentary style videos to enhance the understanding of a certain topic more deeply. I find this tool to be extremely useful for students that want to engage in a virtual, interactive experience.

For educators you can request a demo at no cost and select the product you are interested in subjects like, Social Studies Techbook, Dream Box Reading, Pivot Interactives just to name a few. To register all you will need is your name, district school, phone number, and job title. Additionally, the site offers upcoming and featured field trips that teachers can register for as well as dozens of on demand field trips to choose from. For my classroom I would utilize the on-demand field trips periodically for instance the Change Makers in Action field trip making a lesson plan more creative as well as more engaging for the students. Accordingly, I feel that virtual field trips and DE Docs would be an innovative way to invite students to an entire new world of interactive technology. To explore more information about the site, visit Virtual Field Trips | Discovery Education.