Key factors:
In my classroom, college students more and more ask for related content material. College students need to understand how what they’re studying in class pertains to the world past the classroom. They need to be engaged of their studying.
In truth, the 2025-2026 Schooling Insights Report vividly proves that college students want and need participating studying experiences. And it’s not simply college students who see engagement as essential. Engagement is broadly acknowledged as a key driver of studying and success, with 93 % of educators agreeing that pupil engagement is a crucial metric for understanding total achievement. What’s extra, 99 % of superintendents consider pupil engagement is likely one of the high predictors of success in school.
Creating extremely participating lesson plans that can immerse right this moment’s tech-savvy college students in studying could be a problem, however listed here are two easy-to-find assets that I can flip to turbo-charge the engagement quotient of my classes:
Digital area journeys
Digital area journeys empower educators to introduce college students to superb locations, new individuals and concepts, and noteworthy experiences–with out ever leaving the classroom. There are such a lot of digital area journeys on the market, however I all the time love those that Discovery Schooling creates with companions.
This fall, I plan to take my Ok-5 college students to see the world’s largest photo voltaic telescope, positioned in Hawaii, for a behind-the-scenes tour with the Nationwide Science Basis and Sesame. For these with older grades, I like to recommend diving into engineering and structure with the brand new Forging Innovation: A Mission Doable Digital Subject Journey.
I additionally love the digital excursions of the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past. Collectively as a category or individually, college students can dive into self-guided, room-by-room excursions of a number of reveals and areas throughout the museum from a desktop or sensible gadget. This digital area journey does embrace particular collections and analysis areas, like historic Egypt or the deep ocean. This makes it enjoyable and simple for lecturers like me to choose and select which tour is most related to a lesson.
Immersive studying assets
Immersive studying content material provides one other solution to take college students to new locations and join the broader world, and universe, to the classroom. Immersive studying could be simply woven into the curriculum to reinforce and supply context.
One immersive studying resolution I actually like is TimePod Adventures from Verizon. It options free time-traveling episodes designed to interact college students in locations like Mars and prehistoric Earth. Now accessible instantly by way of an online browser on a laptop computer, Chromebook, or cellular gadget, college students want solely web entry and audio output to start the journey. Guided by an AI-powered assistant and that includes grade-band particular lesson plans, these missions throughout time and area encourage college students to take management, discover unbelievable environments, and resolve advanced challenges.
Immersive studying content material could be overwhelming at first, however skilled improvement assets can be found to assist educators construct confidence whereas incomes microcredentials. These assets let educators rapidly dive into new and modern methods and instructing methods that assist enhance pupil engagement.
Taken collectively, participating studying alternatives are ones that present college students how school rooms learnings instantly hook up with their actual lives. With assets like digital area journeys and immersive studying content material, college students can dive into faculty matters in methods which can be enjoyable, contemporary, and generally otherworldly.
