Ideas for virtual and livestream activities

There are a whole host of live streams, virtual tours and online entertainment which you can turn
into English practice. Set exciting homework or project work with these interesting online
experiences (sites work best when opened in Google Chrome):

• Online Museum tours

o The British Museum – A timeline tour of the museum with more information
(written and as audio clips) about the artefacts

o Louvre – Virtual tours of some of the Louvre’s exhibitions

o Smithsonian Museum of Natural History – 360 tour of the entire museum

o Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – 16 virtual exhibits to explore

o Rijksmuseum – Famous for its Dutch art, this museum has a full 360 tour

• Animals and Nature

o Explore.org – One of the best sites with hundreds of animal live cams

o Edinburgh Zoo – Watch pandas, penguins and more through these live streams

o San Diego Zoo and Safari – From elephants to butterflies, watch animals of all sizes

o Georgia Aquarium – Live views of Beluga whales, sea otters, colourful reef fish,
mystical jellyfish and more

o NASA Live ISS – International Space Station Live video from inside and outside the
station

• Cities around the world

o Oxford Virtual Tour – 360 photography allows you to explore Oxford City centre and
inside many of the buildings
Oxford - Broad Street – A live webcam from the centre of Oxford

o London – Live Stream Panoramic view of London skyline

o Venice – Rolling Live Cameras from different locations around Venice

May 2020 – Teaching Teenagers Newsletter – Oxford University Press

 o Tokyo – Shibuya crossing is one of the busiest junctions in the world

o New York – A live camera showing Times Square

• Shows and entertainment

o WhatsOnStage keeps an up to date list of free online theatre and shows

o The National Theatre at Home are publishing live theatre recordings online

• Google Expedition – From Mount Everest to the Louvre, there are over 900 VR (Virtual
Reality) and over 100 AR (Augmented Reality) Expeditions in the app for you and your class
to explore and bring to life.

And this is a short list of what is out there, a quick google can reveal plenty more online activities
you can incorporate into your classes.

These are all amazing resources (and you are going to spend hours enjoying
watching them yourself), but how can they be made into educational tools?
Here are a few ideas…

Give your students the role of the tour guides. Give them (individually or in groups) an exhibition or
location, and set some for students to explore and research it themselves. They can then present it
to the rest of the class and take you all on a virtual tour. Make sure to give them guidance about the
kinds of things you want to find out, like the history, dates, locations, interesting facts, funny stories.
You can choose to make this a formal tour or an informal tour, and ask students to think about
suitable language they might use.

Ask your students to find and share a live stream of their choice, perhaps a city they would love to
visit, or their favourite animal. Treat these as you would video exercises, think about activities and
questions for before, during, and after they watch.
Some questions you might ask:

Before: What do you think you’ll see? Have you seen it before? What would be a surprise to
see? What emotions might you feel? What would you like to learn from it?
During: What can you see? How many ….. can you see? Do you think this is usual? What do
you think happened before you started watching?
After: What did you see that was new? What did you learn? Would you watch it again?
What do you think happens after you stopped watching? What would be happening in 1
hour? What would you have done if you were in that location in real life?

May 2020 – Teaching Teenagers Newsletter – Oxford University Press

Live stream cameras provide an interesting element as each student will see something different
depending what time they watch them. This can provide a great opportunity for students to write or
speak about their personal experience and compare it to a partner or in small groups.

Choose an appropriate theatre show (think about the topic, if it’s age appropriate, the level, style,
and dialect of English it might be in) and tell your class you are all going to watch it. You can share
the URL link with them to watch at home, or set time aside to watch it in class. Before watching
provide your students with a synopsis, so they can follow the story. Ask them to look out for certain
things or answer a set of questions. For example:

• The language (write down new words, words you don’t understand, repeated phrases)
• The setting (where is it, when in time is it set, is it real or fictional)
• The story (who are the characters, what happens, how could it have ended differently).

After watching you can have some follow-up activities, such as writing a review, re-enact a scene,
give out characters and students role play as them, re-write the ending, re-write the story with one
major change, re-write the story in a different style (if it was on stage, how would it work for Radio,
TV, 3D cinema, a cartoon).

The possibilities are endless! We hope you and your classes have fun exploring widely.

May 2020 – Teaching Teenagers Newsletter – Oxford University Press