How will museums and historic sites continue to offer field trips to students? It’s a question leaders in Alabama’s cultural sector are asking.
Backstory is teaming up with Melissa Keck of Keck Drones to develop cost-effective ways to produce virtual field trips of museums and historic sites. (She’s a licensed drone pilot and she’s insured.)
Virtual field trips start with Keck producing a digital twin of your site. Melissa photographs 360 views, stitches them together and makes the photo navigable. The result is a virtual reality enabled platform. Melissa can then drop in links that will pull up all sorts of media: videos of docent, curators, or historic character actors — or still images objects, labels, or primary documents.
If you can’t produce your own media in-house, Backstory can help you produce the right medium to advance your messaging and reach young learners.
Virtual field trips can be placed behind paywalls but it's not just about recouping earned income. (It might be that sponsoring virtual trips makes the most sense.) School field trips may only constitute ten percent of a site’s annual visitation, but they can represent one hundred percent of your institution’s educational mission.
And there’s market share, too. You spent years, maybe decades, building your classroom visitation. Virtual field trips are an inexpensive way to keep your institution top of mind while we’re all figuring out how to move forward in the COVID age.
Email me at phil@backstoryed.com. Melissa and I will set up a call to discuss your needs and options.