Middle School Students Go On A Virtual Field Trip

By Jeff White

Although they might prefer to get onboard yellow school buses and bounce their way to far off destinations, Newtown Middle School seventh graders would conclude that the next best thing is taking a field trip online.

For the past three weeks, the seventh grade students in the reading classes of Annette Kerchief, Cathy Cincogrono, and Pam Kohn have been taking virtual field trips via an online program called AmericaQuest.

Jeanne Bugay, the middle school’s media specialist, subscribed to the program two years ago, and since then students have traveled to Africa, the Galapagos Islands, and now the American Southwest, where they have joined a team of explorers on the trail of the mysterious Anasazi Indians.

The program involves a group of nine explorers — comprised of biologists, archeologists, anthropologists, photographers, and videographers — who send daily dispatches from the field. The expedition is on the quest to bike through the southwest and unravel the mystery of why the Anasazi Indians, among the oldest Native American tribes, abandoned their homes high in the cliffs of New Mexico and eventually vanished. Each day the team files “real time” updates on the expedition’s progress, new discoveries, pictures, and slide shows, along with a detailed list of “daily data,” from the group’s exact GPS position to the gallons of fresh water consumed by the group, and the length of toilet paper used.

Students follow the team’s progress through personal journal entries based on the team’s discoveries.

Students feel like they are on the expedition with the team members, as they are clued in to the daily sunrise and sunset time, the air temperature, and any new leads that the team stumbled on in its investigations. “Even though we are not there, we sort of get to experience it,” says Jenny Urfer. “It’s new for us, because it talks about a different part of the country.”

It’s 12:20 am, and I’m beat tired and freezing cold, warming up around a flickering campfire, starts one dispatch entitled “Platform in the Sky,” filed one night when middle school students were hours away from attending their reading classes. My teammates are all asleep. Above, a nearly full moon floods the canyon floor with a ghostly, blue light. It illuminates the stream that burbles past our tents and the two canyon walls that tower above. A few minutes ago, David and I returned from a magical hike to Scaffold House ruins, about a mile and a half up a side canyon from here. Working by the light of the moon, we spent four hours exploring and photographing the ruins. It was like taking a trip to the 12th century.

Average dispatches run three to four pages, and are supplemented with links to photos taken on the expedition. From these travelogues, students answer quiz questions supplied by their teachers. Students also have the opportunity to communicate with expedition members via e-mail, with which they can post messages giving their own theories to the Anasazi mystery. They can also post their suggestions on where the expedition team might head in the future to find further clues. The team bases its future travel on where students think they should go.

In addition to the communications and reading, students can guess at mystery photos of animal artifacts and natural landscape, and click on the team biologist’s link where she files daily lessons on the wildlife of the American Southwest.

“It’s kind of like an interactive thing,” concludes Dylan Capon, who is in favor of the project. “You can send [the expedition] quizzes and get a response.”

Dylan’s classmate, P.J. O’Dell, agrees. “You get to learn how to use the Internet, and learn about different places in the world, different people.”

Jeanne Bugay and the other teachers involved in this program have to laugh at the “sneaky” way they are introducing students to the wide varieties of reading. Students participate in the AmericaQuest field trip three times every week, with the ability to logon to the site at home to work on it further. The way the program is designed, the learning is put directly into the hands of each student, because each student can pick and choose which parts of the site he or she wants to visit and learn more about. Some students favor the daily animal dispatches, others like to read the message board, and still others like to take a guess at the mystery photo.

What is common in every session, say the teachers, is that students are getting hooked on reading, and they don’t even know it. The dispatches are longer than many things they would choose to read on their own, yet they do so because they feel like they are a part of the whole expedition. The teachers concede that most students would not bother to learn about this subject matter on their own, so not only does the AmericaQuest field trip help with reading skills, it introduces them to geography, natural and cultural history, and archeology.

For his part, seventh grader Tom Boccuzzi admits that he wouldn’t read about things like the Anasazi on his own, yet he has “learned about some theories of how and why they left.”

“[These fieldtrips] are a wonderful way to integrate reading skills across the disciplines,” remarks Pam Kohn.

Cathy Cincogrono, who comments that the program’s strength rests in the marriage of reading and technology, says that the purpose of having these students go on “virtual” fieldtrips is to hopefully reel them into reading more. “It’s a hook for reading, for even the most reluctant student.”

“You have them working on note taking, reading for information, technology, and writing,” she adds.

Indeed, the program is a good match for the multicolored computer lab at the rear of the middle school’s media center. The new computers offer the speed required to make the most out of “real time” sites like AmericaQuest.  And for those students who prior to starting these field trips didn’t have any real Internet experience? “It has brought in technology by using it in the classroom. It’s weird, because by going on the computer I have gotten more used to using computers and the Internet,” answers Lisa Grossman.

So for now seventh grade students here at the middle school will keep guessing as to what truths their expedition will uncover about the Anasazi, and teachers will begin to plan what field trip their students will go on next year.

Though many pecking away on the media center’s Macintoshes would rather get their hands dirty in the dry dirt of New Mexico, most are happy to replace a long bus ride with navigating instantaneously on the Internet.