A Live Virtual Field Trip to Ellis Island

Last week I received an email from Scholastic about a great virtual field trip opportunity. On March 29, 2012 Scholastic is hosting a live virtual field trip to Ellis Island. The field trip, for students in grades three and above, will be held at 1pm ET, 10am PT. The field trip will take the students on a tour of the island and the Ellis Island Museum. You can register for the event here.

Applications for Education
Scholastic has many good resources to help you prepare your students for the Virtual Field Trip to Ellis Island. The Stories of Immigration page includes the personal stories of children immigrating to the United States. On the same page you will also find this Interactive Tour of Ellis Island. For offline activities, Scholastic offers this activity and templates for graphing patterns of immigration.

On a related note, I recommend checking out the Interactive Virtual Tenement Museum.

Virtual Jamestown

Virtual Jamestown is a nice site for teachers of U.S. History who would like their students to explore some digital recreations of Jamestown. Virtual Jamestown features a mix of modern 3D tours (Unity browser plug-in required) and older static timelines, images, and articles. The video below provides a 3D fly-over of Jamestown Native American village (the video does not have sound).

Virtual Jamestown: The Paspahegh Site from Dane Webster on Vimeo.

Applications for Education
In addition to the 3D virtual tours, Virtual Jamestown provides teachers with ten inquiry-driven lesson plans about Jamestown.