What it is: Vista Zoo is a website where students can create incredible virtual tours of the world by combining pictures, video, audio, and objects in 3-D. The tours are uploaded and placed on a map. Tours can then be embeded into any website. Students can also sign up for their own Vista Zoo portal that they can customize and save their projects. Vista Zoo is also available on the iPhone and iPod touch (if you are so lucky to have a lab of them!)
How to integrate Vista Zoo into the classroom: Vista Zoo would be a neat way for students to display geography learning. Students could collect images in history or current images to embed in their maps to learn about a subject. Teachers can also create virtual tours for students to take individually or as a class with a projector or interactive whiteboard. This is a great way to teach geography and history, your visual students will love it! The ability to add audio and video makes these virtual field trips around the world pretty amazing. If your class has a pen pal class in another country, it would be fun for each group of students to create a virtual tour of their town for the pen pals to view.
Tips: Use Creative Commons images from Flickr or open stock images from a site like stock.xchng for images to embed.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Vista Zoo in your classroom.
