Live From Mars was active July 1996-December 1997.
Familiar Domain
All teachers are familiar with the notion of Instructional TV (ITV).
Ideally, ITV is
educational programming with material and student/teacher interactivity,
serving a broader
criteria, a wider audience, a richer content of instruction than would
otherwise be possible.
A great example is a physics class taught to any high school student that
qualifies. A
district gets to offer a physics class in concert with all districts in a
region without moving
the limited, but highly interested, student population to the teaching
site.
Moving Toward a Working Definition of Electronic Field Trips
Start thinking about electronic field trips as an ITV model that works
out with weights 30
hours a week. You still get live television with a video tape option,
but the projects are
offered nationally and internationally, not just regionally. Because of
this national scope,
global and off-planet destinations are possible. Also, current experts
and resources are
brought to bear for the purpose of executing a sustained and more powerful
"field trip" than
any region could muster.
Print materials suggesting hands-on, in-class activities are available as
with ITV.
Additionally, Internet, online computer resources are created, referenced,
and supported,
for enhancing, expanding and enriching everyone's learning experience.
Resources created, referenced, and supported could be any and all of the
following list.
This is a working list, by the way, in no way intended to be all
inclusive. Resource
examples are such things as challenge questions; puzzles; question and
answer data bases;
ask-an-expert forums; collaborative science experiments; learning centers;
various email
tools and traffic; content; images (for analysis and aesthetic);
interactive lessons; and links
to related information archives and material. And, of course, as with ITV
most Electronic
field trips focus on curricular goals by grade range. So the current
field trip my school has
chosen to participate in, Live From
the Mars, targets the middle school grades.
Introduction to Electronic Field Trips
A Working Definition
Written by Scott Coletti, Middle School teacher
Crittenden Middle School, Mtn.View, CA.
Please send suggestions or comments to scolett@quest.arc.nasa.gov
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