Tuesday, 25 August, 2020 - 10:00
For many schools, excursions, incursions and camps are on the back burner for now. But just because you can’t travel doesn’t mean your students can’t enjoy some of Australia’s – and the world’s – most amazing experiences and sights.
Whether it’s Parliament House in Canberra, the Louvre Museum in Paris or even Mars, we have you covered!
Our guide of some of the world’s best virtual school excursions and school incursions include:
The Louvre Museum, Paris, France
The Louvre Museum is home to some of history’s most amazing art, including the infamous Mona Lisa. Louvre online resources include:
- One minute in a museum
- YouTubers at the Louvre
- Mona Lisa VR experience
- 800 years of history
- A closer look at Louvre artworks
Head to The Louvre Museum’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts for new materials every week.
Parliament House, Canberra
What makes up the Australian Parliament? How is the government decided? And who do you think scrutinises or holds it to account? You can learn this – and more – with ABC Education’s How Does the Australian Parliament Work? 10-part series. The series is suitable for Years 5 – 10 and is suitable for History and Civics and Citizenship subject learning.
Questacon, Canberra
The National Science and Technology Centre – Questacon – offers a range of engaging virtual workshops and events to schools across Australia.
Questacon Maker Project virtual excursions are available for schools with H323 video conference equipment (or compatible). The centre also offers its programs via online videoconferencing platforms. For example, Under the Sea, allows students to explore life in our oceans, how physical aspects of the deep sea make it hard to explore and the innovations and endeavours humans have taken to travel to our deepest ocean trenches. The free 1-hour virtual excursion is suitable for K-6 and is free. You can contact the virtual excursions team to make a booking.
Explore the Moon
NASA’s Curiosity Mission to Mars was undertaken in 2011-12 to determine whether the Red Planet was ever – or is – habitable to microbial life. The rover was the size of a small car and was equipped with 17 cameras and a robotic arm containing a suite of specialised laboratory-like tools and instruments.
Access Mars lets students explore a 3D replica of the Moon’s surface, recorded by NASA’s Curiosity rover - and travel from the landing site to Pahrump Hills, Marias Pass and Murray Buttes, located 14km from the original landing site! The WebVR Experiment was made with Google in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To take a tour, cut and paste accessmars.withgoogle.com into your browser.
The Colosseum, Rome, Italy
Take a virtual walk in 4K through one of the world’s most iconic landmarks, Italy’s Colosseum. Built of travertine limestone and brick-faced concrete between 70-80 AD, the Colosseum was the largest amphitheatre ever built at the time, and held up to 80,000 spectators.
You can almost touch, taste, hear and feel the Colosseum in this tour from Prowalk Tours. Students ‘arrive’ in the metro station outside the Colosseum, walk through throngs of tourists to join the entrance line and finally, reach the inside of this amazing historical site.
Take the virtual walk here.
The Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring 162.6 hectares. It was built by Emperor Suryavarman II, who ruled the region from 1113 to 1150, and is an expression of the architecture of power and the power or architecture.
The Virtual Angkor virtual exploration is a collaboration between virtual history specialists, archaeologists and historians and is designed to bring the Cambodian metropolis of Angkor to life.
Specially built for the classroom, it takes students into a 3D world and allows them to ask questions about Angkor’s place in larger networks of trade and diplomacy, its experience with climate variability and the structure of power that underpinned the city.
The tour can be accessed at www.virtualangkor.com
For more great ideas for school excursions including virtual excursions and tours visit https://www.schoolactivities.com.au/search-listings