Novakid, an online English school where children between the ages of four and twelve can learn English, launches the Virtual Explorer, a special course that transports students on 60 virtual tours to the most incredible places in the world: a unique experience to explore different places and learn new English words!
With these special English lessons, children can observe penguins in the Antarctic, admire the cave paintings in Altamira in Spain, “buy” spices in the characteristic Indian markets, go around London on a skateboard, stroll through the most famous museums in the world, or even visit the sets of your favorite movies and TV series. During the tour the children will be completely transported to distant worlds and will talk about their experience together with a mother tongue teacher.
“Each lesson has as its objective the learning of new and specific words and expressions in English, which the children will have to use during their“ virtual journeys ”with the help of the teacher. We not only help our students to acquire new language skills, but also to develop critical thinking and creativity “, says Amy Kroveletskaya, head of Novakid’s education program.
The course Virtual Explorer by Novakid is based on the metodo CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), designed by David Marsh which involves the application of the foreign language to real experiences, such as travel. Thanks to 3D panoramic toursin fact, pupils can “travel” from the comfort of their desk: the 360 ° panoramic images allow them not to miss any detail of the place they are visiting.
“In this way, students no longer consider the foreign language as a simple school subject, but learn to use it as a tool to increase their knowledge and expand their vision of the world” he confirms Luca Piergiovanni, an expert in education technologies, who validated the method in the course of his studies.
The lessons are aimed and dedicated to students between 11 and 12 who already have an intermediate level of English.
“For the choice of topics for lessons, we like to take into consideration the individual peculiarities of pupils of this age, but the most important factor is the relevance of the chosen topic, for example environmental protection, a topic of great importance to globally and for this reason it is important for us to talk about it in some of our virtual tours. At the same time, when choosing lesson content, we always try to consider the cultural background of our teachers. Novakid is, in fact, an international community in which we share the different cultural characteristics, we treasure them and we also share them with our students “, he says Amy Kroveletskaya.
Every month Novakid creates new and exciting tours for their Virtual Explorer course. Some of these have taught the little ones the importance of environmental protection and the difference between ecotourism and mass tourism. To date, Novakid students have visited more than 8 countries: New Zealand, Iceland, Morocco, South Africa, Japan, India, Turkey and Brazil and there are numerous upcoming destinations on the program.
All the lessons of the Virtual Explorer course take place on the Novakid platform, so there is no need to install any additional software.