The Great Wall of China - 360-degree Virtual Tour, Simatai

The Great Wall of China - 360-degree Virtual Tour, Simatai

I really enjoyed this virtual tour a lot. I let my boys' interest lead the way and be my guide. This guide goes through all the different parts of the Great Wall (which your really could not tour the whole thing). You can spend hours looking at the different cities and spectacular sights. We are more anxious then every to visit one day.

I must say I really loves these VFT's. They are great fun. These trips can be used to teach and reinforce lessons. I really think they can also be used for sheer entertainment. My 8 year old boys' can easily lose focus and get fidgety, it is tough to keep children on task. Using VFT's with a lesson can be very effective helping the lesson become part long term memory. These visual tours give meaning and relevance to the information.

It also occurred to me that that VFT' can be used for fun and reward good behavior. They have so many interesting topics. Things that children of all ages would find very cool. This site is an awesome creepy museum that the kids would love
http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/unmuseum.htm. What a great discipline tool it can be.

My boys also love everything related to space as displayed in their Star Wars bedroom theme. I ran into this site which was interesting and fun http://www.projectview.org/spacecenterhouston.htm

These VFT's are great way to teach history. What better way to learn about the history of the world then seeing what it was like. It can also help to prepare the students for actual field trips. I remember a field trip to Philadelphia seeing the Liberty Bell. It would have been so helpful to study and see it before actually going. This is the link to the site directly to the Liberty Bell but you can also look at all the other great sites to see in Philly. http://www.ushistory.org/tour/liberty-bell.htm.

My kids are also very into anything science. This link had many different trips (although not as fancy) http://www.tramline.com/trips.htm. I downloaded the volcano VFT. It had lots of other good stuff for history, nature and even cooking like making bread.

I have a question for my fellow students and professor. Several times I ran into an electronic permission slip. Is this a requirement? Do you need to get parental permission for a VFT? Interesting!

By the way I included a picture of The Great Wall of China!! (not an easy thing for me!!) I am not sure why I could not get it on the actually blog. It appears on the top of my page.

Rosanna