Live tours go live!

Live tours are a fantastic way of bringing a topic to life by seeing the place in real time, introducing an exotic and exciting element to your classes. Your students can spend a lesson in the company of one of our expert local guides, as they walk from site to site cleverly bringing the destination into your classroom whilst at the same time transporting you and your students to the destination.

Our live tours are a superb co-curricular enrichment activity. The value for students of seeing the places they are learning about with their own eyes cannot be underestimated, particularly in a time where hundreds of thousands of students have missed out on school trips.

"Our Year 10s loved their live tour of Berlin. Our guide was engaging, entertaining and hugely knowledgeable and our students came away from their tour with a much closer appreciation of the significance of Berlin as a city and the way history has left its legacy on Berlin. We were able to engage seamlessly with our guide and our tour was a fantastic way to extend their interest in History as a subject.”

More live tour feedback here

How does it work?

Taking a live tour is very easy to arrange. We ask you to tell us a time slot that suits you best and then we connect your classroom with our guide at the agreed time. We will have emailed your tour requirements, questions and special requests to your guide prior to "departure" so they will be ready for you.

The tour can last up to 60 minutes, any time frame that fits within your lesson. There is no need to switch your camera on, your students will be able to see the guide, we won't be able to see you. Students can join the tour from home, from any device if remote learning - they don't need to all be in the same room at the same time.

The visual and audio quality of the live tours is excellent. Students will be able to ask questions at any time during the tour, or at the end. The guide may occasionally ask a question too and invite students to answer.

What live tours do you currently offer?

At the moment we can arrange the following live tours:

  • Berlin - the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernaeurstrasse
  • Berlin - the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and site of Hitler's Bunker
  • Rome - a walk around the Colosseum
  • Krakow - the Jewish Quarter
  • Washington DC - the Capitol Building, the Senate & the Library of Congress
  • Washington DC - Lincoln, Korean & Vietnam Memorials
  • Philadelphia - Revolution and Creation of Democracy
  • Philadelphia - Formation and Growing Pains of a Nation
  • Philadelphia - William Penn and Colony Pennsylvania

All these tours can be customised and tailored to your studies, so please ask if there is anything specific you'd like to focus on during the tour.

Our live tours are suitable for History, Politics, MFL and Classics departments.

Are you adding more destinations?

Yes we are actively working on adding live tours of Moscow, St Petersburg , Paris, London, New York City, the Battlefields and Iceland. We have even had a request for Cuba!

How much does it cost?

All our live tours cost just £5pp. We want to make these tours as accessible and available to as many students as possible, particularly whilst travel in person has not been an option. The guides who give the live tours are the same guides we use on our regular trips and so they are very used to our school groups and their requirements. If you would like to take several of our tours, or want to arrange them for a number of classes, we can discuss a reduced price option.

Can the live tours be given in different languages?

Absolutely! Our guides can give the tour in their native language, whether it be German, Italian, French, Spanish or Russian. We will let them know in advance what level to pitch it at, but we can always tweak this during the tour if necessary.

The language element was most important to us and our guide cleverly pitched it at the right level for our Yr 10 students.

More live tour feedback here

Benefits of our live tours

  • Valuable co-curricular activity
  • Quality enrichment
  • Affordable, inclusive, students can join from home if remote learning
  • Tailored to your studies, bringing them to life and whet students' appetites, extending their interest in their subjects
  • Interactive, your students can talk to the guide and ask questions
  • See the city and the sites as if you were there in person
  • Real time feel. There's something unique and exciting about seeing a city as it is in that moment. It really feels like you are there
  • Inspires and encourages students to travel / to go on more school trips
  • Screen-share historical photos side-by-side the live views to compare what sites used to look like
"The tour was very informative and engaging, it was an excellent way to build understanding of areas of historical significance that we would not otherwise have been able to see during our course.”

More live tour feedback here

To book your live tour with us or to find out more, email info@tcbcschooltours.co.uk