Virtual school trips with Lyfta

Lyfta offers a simple way for students to continue to broaden their horizons, and ensure that they have experience of the wider world while the usual opportunities like visits, trips, outings and holidays are simply not possible.

A simple way to do this is to offer your students a programme of virtual school trips, inviting them to experience the sights and sounds of some fascinating spaces around the world from the comfort of home or school.

In each space (known as storyworlds) students can explore the 360 degree interactive space, listen to the soundscape, click and unlock rich media articles, and meet someone who lives or works there, through a powerful short documentary film.

Right now, you can build and launch a virtual trip using our quest tracker function. You will be able to send your students all the way to an Ethiopian village to visit a family home, the school or assembly hall, go behind the scenes at the Finnish National Opera, hop over to Malte's garden in Berlin to see how honey is made, join a litter-pick in Cornwall with Rob on the beach, and so much more.

Lyfta features a quest tracker in the student interface which guides students step by step through each lesson. The tracker features tasks and prompts set by the teacher, or pre-built when using an existing lesson plan. This feature allows students to work independently either remotely or in the classroom.

The quest tracker helps to structure virtual school trips and keeps the learner on track throughout the experience. Students access the interactive spaces via a simple passphrase generated by the teacher, so all they need is an internet-enabled computer, the url and passphrase - no need for student emails or logins. Teachers are able to review student responses in real time as they conduct the trip. Perhaps the class could even go on the trip together during a live class and discuss their experience together afterwards.

A virtual school trip lesson plan template is available on the platform and can be used as it is, at the click of a button, or very easily adapted to explore another location by switching the storyworld and amending some of the question and discussion points.

The trip template asks students to consider questions like what they should take with them on their trip, asks them to explore the space in detail and note what they see and hear, and invites them to meet and understand the person who lives or works there.

You could also create some excitement pre-trip by asking students to design a travel journal and a passport to keep track of where they have been, and what they have learned along the way. Perhaps you could extend the activity to include food, music, and more that are found in each place you visit. We would love to see examples of some of your virtual school trips using Lyfta!