The Upside and Downside to Virtual Tours

I downloaded, watched, and commented on the virtual tours of the following classmates:
1. Natalee Biggs
2. Brooke Stevenson
3. Audrey Sanders


I think that one major upside of implementing a virtual tour into an elementary school classroom is that the class will have the opportunity to visit a variety of places around the world that they would otherwise not be able to visit. Through a virtual tour, the students are able to see the physical features of important buildings, a variety of terrain, the continents and oceans of the world, and so forth from their desks in the classroom. Great learning opportunities become available to the students when tools such as google earth are implemented into classroom instruction and learning.

A downside to implementing a virtual tour into the classroom is the extra time it may take to create the tour. For many teachers, being able to navigate around google earth may not be their strong side. To these teachers, the excessive time it takes to learn how to create a tour and then effectively implement it into daily instruction may not be worth it. Other more simplified methods of instruction may be preferred by teachers because of the extra time creating a virtual tour requires.