Slam Dunk Lessons and Virtual Field Trips

by Dianne Thompson, Technology Coordinator for Exeter's Main Street School and Lincoln Street School

Using technology to help students to find information AND to use this for synthesis AND to create projects that demonstrate higher order thinking skills is always a challenge. For the teachers who feel overwhelmed by including technology into their curriculum for learning activities, there are a couple of great solutions: Virtual Field Trips and Jamie McKenzie’s Slam Dunk Lessons.

This last year, I have been fascinated with the concept of developing Virtual Field Trips which used the Internet to take students to places they could never visit on their own. After completing a Connected University Course, I developed 3 field trips myself and am now working with teachers to create more. A virtual field trip should be just like every other learning activity: standards-based, focused on content and have accompanying materials for students to use. It should allow opportunities for students to synthesize the knowledge they gather in the trip. The field trips can have different stops with different tasks at each stop. In the format I used, there is a final project for the trip, but that does not have to be a technology-related project. Teachers can pick and choose among the stops. If they only wish to make one or two of the stops, it is not necessary to complete the entire trip. You can see examples at the Lincoln Street School Website - three that I have created and two that were created by teachers:

Ellis Island
Black History
NH History
Clouds
American Colonies

Nancy Stucker and Nina Baillargeon from Main Street School also created a great virtual field trip in Inspiration on maple sugaring. Students use Inspiration as a starting point to gather information, brainstorm, and to follow links to great sites.

Another great tool that we have just started using is based on Jamie McKenzie’s slam dunk lessons. These are again all standards-based lessons that use technology and can be done in one class period. At a recent workshop at the SPDC, Jamie showed some great examples from one of his websites www.questioning.org. Follow this link to see a description of the process: Jamie McKenzie’s Page or this link to show the simple, six-page template that creates one kind of slam dunk lesson: Lesson Template. Two teachers from Main Street (Joyce Bosch and Kat Nichols) have teamed up to use the PowerPoint tool he has to create two slam dunk lessons (one on nutrition and one on parts of a plant).

Virtual field trips and slam dunk lessons can take you anywhere from the human body to outer space. The sky's the limit!!