Virtual tour of The Great Wall of China

 

                                                                Photo by William Olivieri on Unsplash

My students were interested in visiting one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites on a virtual tour, to be able to explore a place of cultural or physical significance that would not normally be possible for them to visit. I decided to take them to a country that none of them had ever visited – China- and we set off to visit The Great Wall of China!

For this virtual tour I used quite a few different resources to give them the best experience possible. Several of these ideas were inspired by a webinar I have just attended as part of the excellent Macmillan Back to school series: Key Tools and Approaches to Hybrid Learning, on 12^th August. The presenter was the always amazing Russell Stannard.

I sometimes use Google Earth to set the scene and as Russell Stannard reminded us in the webinar, it really brings the place to life. So, we zoomed in on The Great Wall of China, and the learners had to guess where we were going and then say anything they knew about it. Not a lot of information was known, and that was ideal, as the next part of the lesson involved the learners finding out some basic facts, figures and general information and learning some new and useful vocabulary.

The resource I used was Kiddle Encyclopedia: Great Wall of China Facts for Kids. I like this as it is a simplified form of encyclopedia that allows the learners to read and understand the information without being unduly hampered by too much advanced vocabulary. The link was shared in the chat box, and the learners individually read the short amount of information in the ‘quick facts’.  After that, I checked their understanding in a fun activity that I stole from Russell Stannard . It was using the popular tool Wordwall I adapted the idea and made up an 'open the box' activity where they had to remember the information and match the question with the correct answer for the box they opened. This time we did it as a whole class activity on the shared screen for a bit of excitement and suspense. However, they can do it on their own, and the great thing is that the learners get immediate feedback on their performance. It is so simple to set up. The teacher just shares the link in the chat box, and the students can start straight away. It’s very motivating and also quite competitive to see who can get them all right. The teacher can also get useful feedback to discover the extent of understanding and clear up any problems. A really great activity. If you haven’t tried Wordwall before, you should definitely check it out – and it is free!! Additionally, I then typed some useful words in the chat box and the students had to use the context to work out the meaning and peer teach each other. Look at, and feel free to use the activity I made up here.

This was a really enjoyable activity on the whole, and it certainly got everyone involved, thinking and participating, with plenty of communication.

After we all had a good understanding of the topic in general, we next went on the virtual tour itself. For this I used Great Wall of China Virtual Tour for Schools where there is the opportunity to take a virtual tour (with a guide’s humorous commentary) to experience being on the actual wall for free. It is fascinating, and the experience definitely makes you feel as if you are actually there, as he speaks to the viewer like a friend. It's also very useful practice of hearing  accents other than British or American English. The students were instructed to think of a question which they would like to ask the guide. At the end we saw if any of their questions had been answered. At various points I paused the video and asked questions such as,  'What do you see now?' 'How does this make you feel?'

It was actually quite an exciting experience, and we felt this was in part down to the fact that this was somewhere that we would possibly never be able to visit in reality, as it seems so far away from where most of us are living. It  seemed like somewhere that you could only dream about visiting – especially in these times of restricted travel. This is one of the main highlights for me of doing these virtual tours. At the moment people are so restricted and our horizons are very small. It is an opportunity to briefly forget this and to actually travel the world again!

Finally, we ended with an activity which gave the students the chance to self -reflect on their learning. This is an activity about which I have previously posted on LinkedIn. You can see the post here . It involves making use of Twitter in a way that it would be genuinely used outside the classroom. The students are given three broad questions to guide them, which I wrote in the chat box. 1)What surprised you about what you learned today?  2)What was the most important thing you learned, and why?   3)What can/should you do with what you know now? They then have to write a tweet. They could also live tweet this if that is an option you think would be exciting and appropriate for your learners, although this is not necessary. I think it is just as effective to type it in the chat and then to leave time to read what everyone else has written. This also gives the teacher information which is useful for formative assessment purposes.

This was a really amazing virtual tour, and the guide leading us round was very informative and made the whole thing seem more authentic.