Virginia+Virtual+Vacation_Lisa+Alconcel+and+Lauren+Calcutt,+Red+Mill+Elementary

VSTE Conference Attendees: If you attended our session at VSTE, thank you! We hope you will be able to use or adapt our **//Virginia Virtual Vacation//** idea to fit your needs. Also, thank you for sharing your ideas for integrating the science SOL's and using digital storytelling as a way to enhance our project. We do want to include both ideas in our project this year.

If you do decide to use this idea with your class, let us know how it goes. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Lisa Alconcel, Computer Resource Specialist (Lisa.Alconcel@vbschools.com)

=Virginia Virtual Vacation - presented by Lisa Alconcel and Lauren Calcutt:= The Virtural Virginia Vacation project was created two 5th grade teachers, Lauren Calcutt and Steve Strausbaugh, from Virginia Beach Public Schools. After studying the 5 regions of Virginia, students are given a Virginia highway map, project directions with web resources (http://www.redmilles.vbschools.com/VAProjectdirect.pdf), a trip tracker, and virtual vacation money ($2300). With the assistance of their teachers and the Computer Resource Specialist, Lisa Alconcel, students use laptops and classroom/lab computers for their research and projects. Students must “visit” several required sites such as a college, Civil War battle site, famous Virginian home, and state parks. The final product includes a PowerPoint slideshow of their travels and a highlighted road map of the state. Activities that take place during the unit include writing business letters to a college, keeping a spreadsheet of expenses (gas, admission tickets, hotels, etc), and designing postcards for some of the places they will visit. Digital cameras are used to take pictures of themselves to be placed in their slideshow. A variety of software used in this project includes, word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and simple graphic editing software. At the completion of the project, students will have covered several Virginia SOL objectives (see handout below). Hopefully, they will also learn the value of planning a vacation budget.

__Various handouts, samples, etc. are available in editable formats__.



 * Presentation slideshow** (links to **samples** will not work)