A nice geography lesson is to have students plan a trip to some location (or locations). There are several web tools that make doing this pretty easy — it’s just a matter of identifying where you want to go, looking through the sites to see in those places, and then “dragging-and-dropping” them onto a list that you can subsequently post on a student or teacher website/blog. Most of these sites also allow you to write a description of your trip (and why you chose the places you did), but students can do the same on their own site, too.
You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Finding And Creating Virtual Field Trips.
Even better, most of these sites also let users comment on places they have visited, which make them an excellent place for students to write for an authentic audience about locations they have really visited (which can include local spots).
Here are the sites that I think are most accessible to English Language Learners and let them plan these kinds of virtual trips (not in order of preference):
Tripline just opened for business, and it’s a great map-making application. You just list the various places you want to go in a journey, or a famous trip that has happened in history or literature, or a class field trip itinerary, and a embeddable map is created showing the trip where you can add written descriptions and photos. You can use your own photos or just search through Flickr. Plus, you can pick a soundtrack to go with it as it automatically plays through the travels.
Here are examples of the ride of Paul Revere and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
It’s super-easy to use, and the only tricky part is that you can’t add photos until after you create your trip and save it. That’s not a big deal, unless you couldn’t figure it out like me and had to contact the site.
You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Finding And Creating Virtual Field Trips.
The Rand McNally Trip Maker easily lets you design a trip anywhere in the United States, and you can add sites of interest along the way.
Google Maps lets you save and share favorite places with launch of Lists is a post from TechCrunch.
Wanderlog is a new tool for planning trips.
Google Unveils “It’s A Wonderful World” For Traveling – Virtually
Camp Target lets you plan out a road trip.
AI Tripmaker uses AI to develop travel itineraries.
Feedback is always welcome.
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You might also want to explore nearly 300 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
Hi Larry,
Thanks for another useful post. You may like to add two virtual tours from the Melbourne Museum – “A Day in Pompeii” at http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/pompeii/virtual-exhibition/ and the “Dinosaur Walk” at http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/dinosaur-walk/virtual-exhibition/
Thanks!! Geolover is great! I’ve had my Spanish students create tours on Google Earth with place marks but they have to wade through so much junk to find the top sites. The Flickr images + video + wikipedia entry make Geolover extremely accessible.
Thank you for the valuable list.
Thank you very much for all that information!. I’d like to share another nice site where you can write your own audioguides and then post them in your blog or site.
http://woices.com/
I can make great use of this information! Thank you!
This is really great and came out handy when I needed it! Wanted to add one more site that really helped me do some trip planning in case anyone is interested: http://www.visitacity.com
A quick Google search of ‘virtual field trips’ will give you over 2 million hits (no lie – I checked!). Planning one is definitely going to take some forethought. Your first step should be to tailor your virtual field trip to match it to your curriculum.
If you wanted to add more site that really helped me do some trip planning in case anyone is interested then go through:
http://www.thestc.co.uk