Imagine visiting Mount Everest, the Great Wall of China, or the surface of the moon. Thanks to the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program, teachers at Northside Elementary School were able to take their students this month on virtual journeys from their classrooms to bring lessons to life.
Expeditions is a virtual reality platform built for the classroom that leads students on guided tours of places school buses can’t go. They are comprised of virtual reality panoramas and are led by a guide or teacher. Using a tablet, teachers can guide students wearing virtual reality viewers. Teachers can guide their class and point out highlights while referring to notes.
(Click link below to see promotional video of the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program)
Google worked with teachers and content partners from around the world to create 160 engaging journeys – ranging from museums to outer space –making it easy to immerse students in entirely new experiences.
“It’s basically virtual reality, “ Danii Roundtree, Google Expedition Team Member told WJLE. The teachers are leading the expedition in taking them to different parts of the world”.
“It’s a pair of Google goggles the students look through and then you have a phone because it’s an app that goes inside of the Google goggles and that’s how they are able to see the 3D technology,” said Roundtree.
“The teacher directs from a tablet what the students see through the goggles. Through the virtual expedition students have been able to see the world including places like Egypt, the Great Wall of China, under the seas, etc. Some of the teachers like to correlate what the students are seeing with a lesson plan or what they are presently learning in the classroom so it’s really cool,” Roundtree said.
“Last week Google came to Northside and they visited 20 classrooms. The kids loved it. They (Google) wanted to come back so that no one at Northside would miss out on it so today (Tuesday) they have finished up with the rest of the classes,” said Tammy Sims, computer lab teacher at Northside.
Sims said she learned about the Google Expedition Program last summer during tech training and later signed up Northside for a visit when Google came to Tennessee.
(Visit the Northside Elementary School Website by clicking the link below)http://nes.dekalbschools.net/
More information on the program is available at www.google.com/edu/expeditions.