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.
In reality, 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 vital. 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 consider scholar engagement is among the high predictors of success at college.
Creating extremely participating lesson plans that can immerse in the present day’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 subject journeys
Digital subject journeys empower educators to introduce college students to superb locations, new individuals 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 Doable Digital Area 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 displays and areas inside the museum from a desktop or good machine. This digital subject 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 select and select which tour is most related to a lesson.
Immersive studying assets
Immersive studying content material provides one other strategy 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 boost and supply context.
One immersive studying resolution I actually like is TimePod Adventures from Verizon. It options free time-traveling episodes designed to have interaction college students in locations like Mars and prehistoric Earth. Now accessible immediately via an online browser on a laptop computer, Chromebook, or cell machine, 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 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 shortly dive into new and modern strategies and instructing methods that assist improve scholar engagement.
Taken collectively, participating studying alternatives are ones that present college students how lecture rooms learnings immediately connect with their actual lives. With assets like digital subject journeys and immersive studying content material, college students can dive into faculty subjects in methods which are enjoyable, recent, and generally otherworldly.
