Field trip to Jordan: No tickets required with Project Explorer
March 11, 2009
As budgets for field trips (and supplies and paper!?!) get brutally slashed in schools around the country, teachers are looking for alternatives. Okay, no, there never was any money for a field trip to Jordan, but Project Explorer gives the kind of information and experiences that replace — and even exceed in some ways — what you and your students might have found at that history museum that you suddenly can’t afford to go to.
Project Explorer, which was previously reviewed on Instructify, provides free, virtual field trips to global destinations for students at the upper-elementary-, middle- and high-school levels. They have recently added Jordan as a destination, which is filled with Project Explorer’s robust written, photographic, and video content about the nation’s history and customs. As with other destinations on Project Explorer, students are taken through Jordan by “tour guides.” Unfortunately, the tour guides are not a racially diverse bunch, which has two negative effects. First, it contributes to an overall sense of the outsider looking in on a culture that has little chance to represent itself with an insider’s voice. Second, it may be more difficult for students of color (now representing 44% of public school students in the U.S.) to identify with the guides and conceive of the notion that they too can become global explorers.
That said, Project Explorer provides a great way for students to explore Jordan, from key historical sites to cuisine to Middle Eastern music to more nuanced socio-political issues such as the experience of Palestinian refugees or Western stereotypes about Middle Eastern dress and terrorism. The video content is by far the most engaging part and there is plenty of it for your students to get access to the sights and sounds of Jordan. Accompanying lesson plans provide basic ideas that you can use as seeds for more robust lessons that link to key content for your students.
The new content about Jordan is a welcome addition to Project Explorer and we can look forward to planned trips to Singapore, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Greece and Italy, as well as content catering to the early-elementary level. More than an encyclopedia or a typical museum, Project Explorer gives kids the chance to explore the world…no buses or plane tickets required! -ABBY MARTIN
Related stuff:
Travel the world with Project Explorer
See the world, learn a language: Scholarships for students to study abroad
