Why We Need to Save Field Trips

Thanks to collaboration with educational publisher Eye on Education, Education World is pleased to announce the following blog post by Eye On Education editor Lauren Beebe.

As a student of a small eccentric private school in Southern California, I think it natural to be able to participate in ordinary classes and school-wide outdoor trips. I have wonderful memories, visit local history museums, learn to protect seaside plants and animal species, visit historical mission. I visited a sewage treatment plant

However, as many educators know, it is often difficult for public schools to find time and resources for field trips.

In the past 10 years, one child has never been abandoned as the number of field surveys has decreased. The National Association of Museums believes that the extracurricular lessons and all of the arts, science and social studies courses are focused on education of mathematics and literacy, as well as standardized tests. In 2008, the NPR reported that several museums were concerned about the reduction in student attendance and that they were working hard to design more exhibitions for course design. However, in the world of today's budget cuts, outdoor research is still decreasing.

They interrupt normal class hours, but the excursion is still worthwhile for students of all ages. In addition to giving them the opportunity to stretch out, there are many reasons why the field survey still has places in education today.

They offer students the opportunity to tie classroom lessons with real experiences and concrete deliverables.

They allow students to learn culture, history and art that may be excluded from regular classes.

In response to the inspection logistics challenge, Eye On Education author Larry Ferlazzo offered various resources for virtual tours. "Thanks to Web 0 technology, students can create their own virtual tours, which users can easily use virtual excursions that students can use to access, explain, and show their classmates online You can create it.

In addition, Reekah Stathakis, author of Eye On Education, explains how students in the Spanish language course explore foreign countries using virtual tools, plan holidays, and interact with tourists and travel companies .

Mike Caspal, senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, says: "The excursion is absolutely painful, especially in the case of financial crisis and budget cuts, more and more people are coming in." In order to carry out this solution, the National Park Foundation announced in October last year that student traffic We created a "passenger ticket" that provides means and lunch. To experience the excursion at one of the 400 Foundation parks at low cost. The program's target starting point is 100,000 children, and the cost allocated to the program is $ 250,000. Mulholland says that it brought about 40,000 students to their park.

Over the past 25 years, we have learned a lot about field trips and how effective they become learning experiences. This research has been translated into various publications and provides "best practices" for field survey. Now we need to do a lot of work to convert the concept of "best practices" into actual on-site experience, as the above problem shows, the focus of research can shift to implementation issues . We know what "good" field trip is, and we have found many obstacles that hinder ideal field trips. We now need to know more about how to overcome these obstacles.

Field trips can be used for a variety of purposes. In some cases, field surveys are required to conduct unit surveys or to compile everything at the end of the study period. Field trips can be used to stimulate interest in various topics and work, research areas. This allows students to create new inventions or to be interested in someday becoming a work of their own life. Did you wonder why so many public school classes do outdoor research in the spring? The students and teachers are tired of being trapped in the classroom all the year, are they just wanting to go out in fresh air? Normally, excursion is not even "education" you can think, but everyone in the class goes to school bus on that day. Therefore, I think we can add excursions for the above list - fun! The excursion is only for entertainment