Field trips are a brilliant way to get your students out of the school classroom and into the wider world. Learning inside is great, but a lot of kids will appreciate changing things up and seeing what they’re learning about on a more first-hand basis, improving their engagement!
With that being said, your field trips are often limited by cost and distance, meaning you can’t always take your school students where you might want to.
The answer? Virtual field trips!
Virtual field trips allow students to experience the outside world without leaving the classroom, providing the same engagement and immersion but within the classroom. How do they manage to keep the same immersion? With virtual reality (VR)!
By putting a virtual reality headset on, school students can be transported to other places in the world – all without having to set foot out of the classroom. As a result, the possibilities are endless!
In our handy guide below, we’ve got the 10 best Nearpod virtual field trips for your students to try today.
Each one uses virtual reality to really put your students in the places that they’re learning about, increasing their engagement and their enjoyment, and allowing them to learn more. Read on!
We’re starting our list off with this mini-lesson virtual reality field trip that Nearpod offers, which will take your students traveling around the United States to lots of famous locations, each rich with their own history.
Your school students will learn key facts about each of these, giving them a wider appreciation and understanding of America as a whole in the process.
Iconic United States locations include San Francisco’s enormous Golden Gate Bridge, New York City’s famous Times Square, the gorgeous Grand Canyon in Arizona, the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and many more.
Each are essential spots in American history – and continue to be to this day.This virtual field trip is ideal for both students who already live in the United States – and those who don’t
. For students who already live in America, it’ll allow them toe experience places they’ve likely never visited before, helping them to appreciate the wider country around them.
After all, the United States is enormous and varied, so no student will know it all!
Meanwhile, students from other countries will get a chance to “travel” overseas and experience one of the most notable countries and cultures in the world.
Our next Nearpod pick takes less of a historical approach to the VR field trip, instead focusing more on English and literature.
With this VR lesson, your school students will be taught about the important role that characters play in stories, as well as the primary components that it takes to create a character who is relatable and engaging.
Continuing on from this, your students will craft their very own characters by taking inspiration from the virtual reality’s tours of some animal ecosystems.
Students also take part in “Draw It” activities, where they get to draw lines connecting various adjectives to either a “protagonist” or an “antagonist”, learning about these key character archetypes that enrich any story.
Meanwhile, multiple choice quizzes also test them about the rules of introducing and establishing strong characters.
This next Nearpod virtual reality field trip takes your school students to one of the most iconic landmarks in the entire world: the Eiffel Tower.
Found in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower is an amazing feat of architecture and one that has endured for more than a century.
However, the lesson doesn’t just act as a chance to experience the landmark, but a way to learn all about 2 dimensional shapes in 3 dimensional objects.
How so? Well, students are asked to draw the 2 dimensional that you would be able to create if you took cross-sections of the Eiffel Tower.
This works because the Eiffel Tower is so totally unique in its design, with all kinds of shapes present.
Our next Nearpod virtual reality field trip is another one that combines the wonders of our world in a way that helps to improve their skills at English and creativity, this time focusing on their poetry writing.
How so? Well, the virtual reality tour takes your school students to a few iconic locations in order to inspire their poetry. These include: a winter scene in a forest, the White Cliffs of Dover, the stunning Northern Lights, and more.
By showing your young learners these astonishing spectacles of nature, it should bring out ideas and emotions within them that they can then channel into some really impactful, thought-provoking poetry.
This virtual reality field trip from Nearpod takes a look at various cultures all around the world, with a view to learning more about them but also considering “cultural diffusion” – the spreading and merging of different pieces from different world cultures.
Your young learners will be transported to sites all around Earth, where they can then look for similarities between these far-flung cultures and their very own at home. There’s more crossover than they might think!
On top of that, it forces the students to think about the role and impact of globalization, the process by which our world is becoming more and more interconnected thanks to cultural exchange, technology, and trade.
Our next pick from Nearpod’s vast range of educational virtual reality field trips is a bit of a strange one, but one that’s very useful and teaches your students in a way you would never expect!
To put it simply, this trip takes your school students to a castle in the Netherlands via virtual reality. So far, so normal, right? Well, your young learners are going there so that they can learn how to calculate interest payments. Yes, you read that right!
The lesson asks your students a question about a hypothetical friend of yours buying the castle, and then the interest they have to pay on the remaining money they own. It’s a fun, inventive way to learn about a key part of math that your students will need when they’re adults.
Next up is a Nearpod virtual reality field trip that takes students around the world, to various gatherings of people, in order to help them learn about social emotional skills.
These skills play an incredibly important part in how a person succeeds both socially and academically. We live in a social world and it’s important for students to know how to interact with other people properly.
Through this extensive lesson, your young learners will learn all about communication skills, creative problem solving, leadership, and self-determination, allowing them to become more well-rounded, sociable, and emotional individuals.
Evolution is a fascinating part of human life and human history, teaching us how we came to be the way we are today – as well as how the world, and all its animals, came to be how it is today.
In order to learn more about evolution, this Nearpod virtual field trip takes your school students on a visit to various islands in the Galapagos.
These are stunning locations for any child to experience, with gorgeous geographical landscapes, and students are encouraged to make observations of these lands that inform them about evolution and natural selection.
Our penultimate pick from Nearpod’s vast collection of educational virtual reality field trips takes your students on a journey to learn about the world’s ecosystems. Our world is one of resources and these resources are being used all the time.
However, many of us don’t think about the resources we use, nor whether those resources will run out at some point.
This trip teaches your students to think more about ecosystems and resources by considering carrying capacity on a small scale, looking at an imaginary scenario where they’re living on an island.
How many could live on the island with its limited resources? The answers help young learners to think more about the perishability of our planet’s resources.
Our final pick is a Nearpod virtual reality field trip which takes your students on a trip through time and history, educating them all about the world’s greatest empires. To do this, the virtual reality allows learners to look around various ancient ruins around the world.
These ancient ruins are found in Greece, the Inca Empire, Egypt, and China, and each offer fascinating insight about the cultures and ancient civilizations that used to operate there.
It’s a fantastic way for students to learn about the people of the past – and gain an idea of how our civilization came to be today.
Final Thoughts
Nearpod offers brilliantly educational virtual reality field trips, which immerse your school students in stunning locations around the world, teaching them about history, math, English literature, and more.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
