Virtual field trip
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A virtual field trip is a guided exploration through the Web that organizes a collection of pre-screened, thematically based web pages into a structured online learning experience. (Foley, 2003)
Virtual field trips (VFTs) started appearing around 1996, but greatly grew in popularity starting around 2000. The VFT was seen as a way to organize the educational potential of the internet in a coherent, appropriate fashion, particularly for primary and secondary education. Typically a VFT will contain a selection of topic-specific web pages that are strung together into a grade-targeted, organized package. Often these are provided by commercial distributors, such as Tramline.
There are a number of different formats used for VFTs and if you do a search on the Web, you will find thousands of trips. 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, a VFT is 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.
References
- Foley, K. (2003). The Big Pocket Guide to Using & Creating Virtual Field Trips (3rd ed.). Tramline. [1]. ISBN 0-9716154-0-3.