The Norfolk Botanical Gardens has several virtual tours on their website. The first one is a general overview of the gardens including some history and their most popular exhibits. The site also includes a tour of the Japenese Gardens, the Azalea area, and finally the Green House Tour. The GreenHouse Tour is narrated by the director of the greenhouse and it’s very informative, but still short in length like the others.

The uses of virtual tours are perfect for both virtual and in-person learning. As a teacher, I can send links to tours and have students do a variety of work such as reflections and summaries. For librarian uses, virtual tours can be an excellent way to start students in research projects. For example, I could use the above Botanical Gardens virtual tour as the “grabber” for students to start a research project on plants native to Virginia (this would also cover several science standards of learning). The technology of virtual tours could also be used in library settings while studying different career paths. The students could watch the tour about Alice Austen and then research other authors using library resources.

With the recent COVID crisis, most field trips are being cancelled for the foreseeable future. I feel because of this, virtual field tours and trips are going to be the new way of life for educators to help students experience other places.