WHAT WORKS IN EDUCATION The George Lucas Educational Foundation

What's the best virtual field trip?

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Reader Survey 2008

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Editor's Note

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Editor's note: Thanks for your input. The choices listed here were the top vote getters in our annual Readers' Survey. We’ve inserted language to make that more clear.

Confusing terminology - These are WEBQUESTS

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What you are really referring to are Webquests. Virtual Field Trips has meant an interactive video conference (IVC) with a museum or content provider since about 1980. The Virtual Field Trips site squatted on the name, and Edutopia should know better. This category is "Webquests." Anything else is like saying that "Puffs is the best brand of Kleenex" instead of "tissue."

For Virtual Field Trips - of which you have NONE up there - Barrien County Intermediate does a Teachers Choice Award and recently completed their 2008 survey:
http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/dl/teacherschoice/2008.htm

Additionally, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) is probably the best recognized IVC Field Trip clearninghouse internationally. They have an extensive database, and work hand in hand with the US Distance Learning Association (USDLA) to hand out awards for National Distance Learning Week: http://www.cilc.org/c/misc/ndlw_nominees.aspx

It would be great in the future for Edutopia to support our distance learning communities by including a Field Trips category. But THIS category needs to be called "Webquests" and not VFTs.