CREATING A VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP
Electronic field trips are one of the most popular ways to use the Internet. One would generally visit a specified set of Web pages to see pictures and read about places, such as national parks or historic sites. This type of field trip is often an excellent substitute for an actual field trip, which may be logistically impossible.

ACTIVITY OUTLINE
Objective Take an electronic field trip to some national parks in the United States and Canada to find out what the natural landscape looks like in different parts of these countries.
Task Visit the Web sites below to see pictures of United States and Canadian national parks. Create multimedia presentations that showcase four of the national parks.
Class Time 2-4 class periods

1. Has anyone has ever been on a road trip across the United States or Canada. Where did you go? What was the scenery and weather like? What did you do?
2. Look at the physical map of the United States and Canada on page 103 and describe some of the major landscape features they see. What are the big mountain ranges, rivers, and lakes?
3. Imagine your class has been given some money, a bus and driver, and three months next summer to explore the continental United States and Canada. Focus on natural scenery, so visit some national parks.
4. Make a chart in a word processor or on paper with rows for the following fourteen national parks: United States: Acadia, Everglades, Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Olympic; Canada: Gros Morne, Jasper, Nahanni, Auyuittuq, Aulavik, and Grasslands.
5. Individually or in small groups, visit the provided Web sites. Look at the pictures of the parks and read information about the parks' plant and animal life and geology. List in each row of your charts three distinctive features of the natural landscape seen at each park. For example, for Yellowstone, you might list "geysers," "the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone," and "bison." (If there is not enough time to visit every park, we may divide the class into groups and assign each group several parks.)
6. As you go through the field trip, have label the national parks on blank outline maps of the United States and Canada.
7. Choose two national parks from the United States and two from Canada. The parks should be located in different parts of the countries.
8. Create multimedia presentations to serve as "electronic brochures" for the parks you visit over the summer. The presentations should focus on the scenery and physical geography of the parks.