Virtual Field Trips

This week we learned about virtual field trips, and VR technology. I really wanted to find a virtual field trip of the Smithsonian Sculpture Garden, but there wasn’t one available. I settled on the Census Bureau, which turned out to be pretty cool!

Technology: Virtual field trip 

Link to Proficiency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMpVlvF4ao

Targeted Learners/Content area: Middle school math (8th grade)

Lesson objectives: Learn more about how math, statistics, and data visualization is used in the US Census

Lesson context: This virtual field trip would be used for students to learn more about careers at the census bureau, and how math is used in the Census. This lesson would likely take place across both math and civics courses, and integrate with the civics content on the Census. 8th grade math requires students to produce and analyze scatter plots, and the virtual field trip could provide a strong tie into data the students could analyze. 

Goal of technology use: The goal of technology use is to provide students a window into what census workers data, and different careers. Given the video is only around 16 minutes, this could easily fit into a class period, when visiting the Census bureau could be an entire day field trip. The video also provides more accessibility given that it has closed captions, in a way that an actual field trip may not. 

Brief description of how technology will be used with students: Students would likely watch the video in a classroom, and then would get to experiment with some of the tools for analyzing and visualizing data showcased in the video. Students could build interactive scatter plots as well as other visualizations based on the video. There is also an interactive quiz at the end of the field trip that students could participate with.