Virtual Voyages

Photograph by Ashley Wells

Sailing the world — and the World Wide Web — a New York charity is working to connect children in the city’s public schools to the universe beyond their own neighborhoods.

Since its founding in 1998, Reach the World has run two round-the-world voyages. Crew members serve as “eyes and ears in foreign ports” for students, describing on the organization’s Web site the places they visit and the things they see and do, while the charity’s employees in New York and interns from Teachers College at Columbia University help classroom teachers integrate technology and Reach the World’s online materials into their lesson plans.

Students communicate with crew members via e-mail, and their questions and classroom projects shape the travelers’ itineraries when they reach port. For example, in the Galapagos Islands, crew members visited the Charles Darwin Research Station to find the answers to a sixth-grade science class’s questions about giant tortoises and to photograph the creatures.

“Bringing journeys to life on the Web is a wonderful way to engage children in learning,” says Heather L. Halstead, founder of Reach the World. “Young children learn best from stories, from interacting with people, from having role models in the real world doing real activities.”

In five years, 70 teachers and more than 2,000 students from low-income families have participated in the program, which has taught the organization a lot about presenting expeditions on the Internet and working with teachers, says Ms. Halstead.

But, she says, as the organization looks to expand its services into the greater New York City area and eventually nationwide, it will be too expensive for Reach the World — which this year has a budget of $175,000 — to run enough voyages to allow the personal contact between students and crew members that she believes is crucial to making the expeditions come alive. In the future, the group plans to link classrooms with independent travelers who volunteer to share their experiences.

Here, Erin C. Myers, captain of Reach the World’s 43-foot ship, Makulu, stands at the craft’s helm in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. The ship will end its three-year, 30,000-mile journey around the world in New York in May.