Did your district cut the field trip budget? Don’t worry, create your own museum and go on virtual field trips through Thinkport. Thinkport is a project funded by Maryland Public Television and The Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education. Thinkport offers much more than just virtual field trips and the create your own museum project. Thinkport offers lesson planners, activity builders, and videos for classroom use as well as numerous activities for students to use independently or collaboratively.

Applications for Education
Create Your Own Museum is a great way for students to share the findings of research projects. Students can add images and text to their museum and arrange the order of the displays. This format of sharing information is a nice change from creating a slide show or a wiki. Thinkport also provides a nice selection of virtual field trips with lesson ideas for teachers. Many of the field trips are based on Maryland, but there are some field trips that are universal. The field trip about money sucked in a student that I showed it to today. Finally, the Thinkport timeline builder is simple and easy to use and is a great way for students to organize history or plot developments in a story they may be reading.