In an Earth Science or Geologic class, I believe that Online Field Trips would be essential in helping students understand our Earth. Many times, we can take our students outdoors and show them characteristics in our immediate surroundings to help them understand the concepts we are teaching; however, there are also many things that cannot be shown in our immediate geographic location. Field trips are a great way to show and explain these Earth features to our students, however; these trips can be expensive, time consuming and even prohibitive in nature. Online Field Trips would allow our students to experience these things much better than text or pictures ever could do. In many cases, Online Field Trips would even allow students to experience our world around us much better than being on location. Being able to show Earth’s features from above Earth, and then zooming in on them will give our students experiences that even being on location cannot show. Many of Earth’s features are so large that humans cannot see them unless they are in the air, looking over them from great distances. This is where an Online Field Trip can really bring these features of our mother Earth to life!
Students could draw these features, blog about the experience with their fellow students or create a wiki where both the teachers and students could interact with each other about their discoveries collaboratively. Teachers could also do all of this through a Learning Management System such as Blackboard or Moodle. Students could also do extra online research, depending on the extent of knowledge required and add this content to an Electronic Portfolio. Options are endless!
I think one of the more difficult technologies to use with Earth Science or Geologic classes would be the educational games. Games are often based on human interactions, and with the subject being Earth, I think it would be much more difficult to come up with a game that is exciting enough to keep students interest. I am in no way implying that it cannot be done, but rather that I cannot think of an easy way to incorporate this into this type of class at this time. I feel there are much better options to choose from for an Earth Science or Geologic class.
