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Take your students on field trips without leaving the classroom. Past editions of NetWatch and additional sites for some topics can be found online in the Archives.
by Lynda Scarrow
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Worlds at their fingertips
Virtual Museum Canada
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100 per cent Canadian
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 With 193 interactive exhibits, 420,000 images and 150 interactive games, this is one of the best-designed sites I've seen. Choose Fun and Games > All Games and scroll down to Musical Compositions to see one example of just how powerful the site is. Run your mouse along the harmonica and it plays like it would if it were at your lips. The Teachers' Centre provides numerous lesson plans and there is a directory of Canadian museums.
Reach the World
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see the world without leaving school
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Reach the World takes students from severely underfunded schools on annual field trips around the world, and invites other students to join them online for the voyage. There's a daily log book plus journals, field notes and itineraries on this very nicely designed site.
Virtual Farm Tours
4-H Virtual Farm
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a quick trip to the farm
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These two sites are great for elementary students. Canadian-based Virtual Farm Tours covers five or six different types of farms. The Virginia-based 4-H Virtual Farm is great for younger children. The horse-farm section is colourful, with lots of videos and information. Both sites include farmer interviews and interactive learning features like moveable magnifying glasses and Horsing Around.
The Artroom
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do-it-yourself art
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Designed completely for teachers, British-based Artroom provides all the tools you need to teach students about animation, video and multimedia. It covers interactive white boards, street and mobile-phone art and electronic postcards. See the Boom Music Video Academy for materials you and your students can use to make home-grown music videos.
Polar Husky
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dog-sled ride to the Arctic
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Choose the links at the top of the page to get immediately to the heart of the site where you have a front-row seat to a five-year dog-sledding expedition to five Arctic destinations. You'll find trail reports, notes and maps, supplementary materials for students and extensive teacher resources. The fancy navigation is irritating.
Exploratorium
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a sense of discovery
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Best bets for field-trip fun are the links in the right-hand greenish-yellow box. I even came across a slightly gross dissection of a cow's eye that kids will either love or hate. (If you really want to see it, enter cow eye dissection in the search box.) Lots and lots of cool information.
Additional Resources
E-Field Trips
http://www.efieldtrips.org/
Requires free registration.
Care Virtual Field Trips
http://www.care.org/features/vfts.asp
Blackwell's Best Virtual Field Trips
http://www.vickiblackwell.com/vft.html
EcoHouse Virtual Tours
www.greenventure.ca/ecohouse/tours/wastewatch/
Internet for Classrooms Virtual Field Trips
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/vft.htm
Virtual Field Trips
http://www.virtual-field-trips.com/
Virtual Field Trips 2
http://www.uen.org/utahlink/tours/
Virtual Lab
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/lab/index_virtual.htm
Not all sites are available in both English and
French. For additional sites or for French sites related to this topic,
visit Cyberespace.
Lynda Scarrow is the College's web
editor. She can be reached at lscarrow@oct.ca.
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