VIRTUAL FIELD EXPERIENCE OF STARVED ROCK STATE PARK FOR THE CLASSROOM

Bringing students into the field can be difficult for financial or logistic reasons. To help solve this problem, we are using photospheres and series of 360 degree images to allow students to experience field work while in the classroom. We made 4 photospheres of Starved Rock State Park in Oglesby, Illinois. The park is derived from a broken moraine that held meltwater from the Wisconsin glacier, approximately 16,000 years ago. The flood carved out cliff slides in the underlying St. Peter Sandstone and left glacially eroded landscape. Using the photospheres, students and teachers will have the ability to pan, zoom, and explore geologic occurrences in each geologically interesting area. Our virtual field trip is not limited to a computer screen; our technology allowed us to create a virtual reality that can be accessed through a virtual reality headset, or a cell phone. In conjunction with our photosphere, we have created a set of lesson plans that can be used for both middle and high school teachers in which students will be assessed on the features they observe as if they are truly doing a field study.

Presently, we are creating at least a week’s worth of lesson plans, experiments, and questions that will align with the virtual tours that will be shared with both students and educators; these lesson plans will be uploaded to the same website as the photospheres. As the field trip progresses, students will be taken to important geologic sites in Starved Rock State Park. Each stop will contain hyperlinks that ask questions, and show information and short videos about the park, as well as the geology of that particular stop. This will allow us to bring the the field to the classroom for those who are unable to access the location.