Curriculum-Based Virtual Field Trips: Career Development Opportunities for Students with Disabilities

Many changes are taking place in our country. Technology continues to impact on the workplace، demographics are changing the face of our neighborhoods، communities، and work environments. Globalization is placing greater demands on the economy and on workers. Educators and employers must face the challenge of how to prepare learners for new roles that they will play in this ever emerging workplace. In this context، consideration must be given to how the U. S. education and training system can evolve to better meet the needs of the 21st-century workforce. Challenges from the private and public sectors will include improving educational outcomes at the primary and secondary levels and developing current and effective opportunities for career development. When paralleling workforce preparation curricula، field trips are valuable learning experiences in the career exploration process and can provide unexpected benefits where examples talked about in the classroom can be related to real-world situations. For individuals with disabilities، field trips can create challenges for students and educators، including medical issues، accessibility issues، behavior management issues، and processing issues. Virtual field trips (VFTs) are one example of a time-worthy career exploration tool that has been enhanced by technology. New technologies in the next 10 years will offer tremendous potential to revolutionize the way education and training are delivered in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness in learning. The locations that a classroom teacher can use with professionally developed VFTs are limited to those presently posted on the Web، and these may or may not correspond to the specific instructional needs of a workforce preparation curriculum or to the special needs of specific learners. Teacher-created VFTs offer a number of advantages to workforce educators and students. The general steps for creating a customized curriculumbased virtual field trip are outlined in this article.