Key factors:
In my classroom, college students more and more ask for related content material. College students wish to understand how what they’re studying in class pertains to the world past the classroom. They wish to be engaged of their studying.
The truth is, 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 necessary. Engagement is broadly acknowledged as a key driver of studying and success, with 93 % of educators agreeing that scholar engagement is a vital metric for understanding total achievement. What’s extra, 99 % of superintendents imagine scholar engagement is without doubt one of the prime predictors of success in school.
Creating extremely participating lesson plans that can immerse right now’s tech-savvy college students in studying is usually a problem, however listed below are two easy-to-find assets that I can flip to turbo-charge the engagement quotient of my classes:
Digital subject journeys
Digital subject journeys empower educators to introduce college students to wonderful locations, new folks and concepts, and memorable experiences–with out ever leaving the classroom. There are such a lot of digital subject journeys on the market, however I at all times love those that Discovery Schooling creates with companions.
This fall, I plan to take my Okay-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 Potential 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 system. This digital subject journey does embody particular collections and analysis areas, like historic Egypt or the deep ocean. This makes it enjoyable and simple for academics like me to choose and select which tour is most related to a lesson.
Immersive studying assets
Immersive studying content material presents one other method to take college students to new locations and join the broader world, and universe, to the classroom. Immersive studying will be simply woven into the curriculum to reinforce and supply context.
One immersive studying answer 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 straight by means of an online browser on a laptop computer, Chromebook, or cell system, 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 house encourage college students to take management, discover unbelievable environments, and clear up advanced challenges.
Immersive studying content material will 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 progressive strategies and instructing methods that assist enhance scholar engagement.
Taken collectively, participating studying alternatives are ones that present college students how lecture rooms learnings straight hook up with their actual lives. With assets like digital subject journeys and immersive studying content material, college students can dive into faculty matters in methods which are enjoyable, contemporary, and generally otherworldly.
