Ten Free Educational Travel Resources

My husband and I made the goal of visiting every US national park as a family before our children turn 18. We were distance learning for the bulk of this year, so had the opportunity to take learning to the open-road. We went to the Great Smoky Mountains, Pictured Rocks National Park, The Badlands, and Rocky Mountains National Park. ​

This goal was inspired by my school's travel program. I have been heavily involved in educational travel since I began teaching 13 years ago. I have taken groups of high school students to California, Hawaii, Colorado, Florida, Texas, New York City, Costa Rica, and more.

I have seen how travel can impact a person. Learning, relationship-building, character development and more emerge in a way that is entirely unique to travel.

I always pair travel experiences with student-led project-based learning. Each learner asks a driving question about their destination and explores that question while traveling. They organize authentic learning experiences, interview local experts, include the community, and so on. 

I offer a variety of project-based learning ideas to pair with travel experiences in this blog post based entirely on my own personal experiences and what I have seen from my students and children.

Grab my student-led project-based learning tool kit, a guide that helps students design, plan, and execute their own project-based learning experiences 

You can also get my FREE digital project-based learning portfolio where students can showcase all of their project-based learning experiences and outcomes.

10 Free Educational Travel Resources

1.  Educational Trip Planner

This resource is a guide to planning an educational trip. I work at a school that is student-led and project-based, so our students often play a large role in planning the trips. They use this guide to do so. It includes purpose, budget, itinerary, fundraising plans, etc.  You could also use this resource hypothetically and/or for family trips with your own children.

​2. Trip Project Proposal

A project proposal is a template for designing a project. Students ask a driving question or choose a topic of focus, determine research questions or categories, plan the use of community experts and authentic experiences, choose an innovative way to demonstrate learning, and more.

​3. PBL Cheat Sheet

This is a helpful tool for beginner project-based learners. It gives a few ideas for innovative final products and authentic presentations. This is helpful for any project-based learning experience, travel projects included. 

4. Community Expert Planner

An important part of project-based learning is connecting with real people with real expertise. This is especially pertinent when it comes to traveling experiences. It makes learning more meaningful; more personal. A community expert might be an interpreter at a National Park, a museum curator, business owners, or even locals of whatever destination you happen to be visiting. This resource is a guide to help students plan community expert meetups.

5. Educational Travel Reflection

This travel resource is one of my favorites. As an experiential educator, I find enormous value in reflecting on learning experiences, especially an experience as profound as traveling. ​​

​6. Travel Brochure Mini-Project 

this learning activity can be completed at home or at school. It does not require travel. Students create a brochure for one travel destination of interest. The intention is to get students excited about traveling.

7. Ecology Scavenger Hunt

This is another activity that does not require travel, but would be a great supplement to any nature trip, such as this family trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

8. Endangered Species Project

Yet another project that doesn't require traveling, but would be an awesome addition to an outdoor travel experience where students can connect with conservationists, naturalists, politicians, landowners, and more to learn about local endangered species and protection efforts. They might even collaborate with local experts. My family and I came across California condors on our hike through Zion National Park today. California condors have a long and complicated history and have been on the endangered species list for decades. If I were doing a project on this endangered species in Zion I could talk to the naturalists, hunters, landowners, park visitors, bird enthusiasts, and more to gather information from various interests. 

We don't have condors in Minnesota, so traveling to where they are and studying them in their natural habitat makes the learning experience more meaningul. 

9. Graphic Organizer for Student-Led Fundraisers

Get young travelers invested in the experience by asking them to play a role in fundraising. Traveling isn't cheap, which is one of the reasons my travel resources are free! Let students take some ownership by organizing their own fundraisers. They can use this graphic organizer to brainstorm ideas and organize details. 

10. Project-Based Learning Check-In Form

This free resource is a digital check-in form for project-based learning experiences. Students can communicate periodically with their instructors about project progress from home or from abroad. This feels especially important right now when distance learning families are hitting the road for vacations and/or remote learning, like my family is doing right now. Consider assigning students self-directed project-based learning to do while traveling, and use this check-in form to communicate their progress with you. 

Find many more PBL resources at Experiential Learning Depot as well as my PBL Toolkit with the necessary templates for unlimited student-directed PBL projects in school, in the home, out in the community, on field trips, traveling around the world and much more. 

​Good luck to you, and as always, feel free to reach out for questions or comments. ​Follow Experiential Learning Depot on Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.