Students Use Phone Line to Take Virtual Field Trip to Zoo

Like any other class taking a field trip to the zoo, 20 elementary school students from the Norwalk-La Mirada school district gawked at the snakes and exotic insects they saw Tuesday.

But instead of having to pack a lunch, cram onto a bus and tramp about the zoo, the students got to eat cafeteria pizza, relax inside an air-conditioned district headquarters and watch the animals live on video.

Their hourlong trip through Georgia’s Zoo Atlanta was made possible by video conferencing technology they use to interact with students as far away as Kentucky and Texas. The zoo tour, however, represented their first virtual field trip.

“We got to meet some animals that we’ve never seen before,” said Steven Zurin, a fourth-grader at La Mirada’s Dulles Elementary.

The school district installed the two-way video hookup several years ago as a way of integrating ethnically diverse classrooms. By dialing another school’s telephone link, students can talk and share research projects.

“Instead of busing them physically,” district educational services administrator Richard Contreras said, “we bus their minds.”

He said the next step in applying the technology will be to establish a video conference with students in another country--so long as the other school is equipped with similar video equipment.

“It’s not that complicated anymore,” said GTE engineer Steve Swiecki, who helped arrange the conference. “It’s literally dialing up several phone calls.”

So-called distance learning has spread to more than two dozen educational networks at schools and universities across the nation, said Randy Senzig, sales manager for VTEL Corp., which supplies the school district with video cameras and monitors.

“As the kids get into higher education . . . they’ll be using the same technology,” he said. “It makes it a smaller world.”