Sara Harp Minter Elementary, Kedron Elementary, Rising Starr Middle, and Sandy Creek High are among a few select schools chosen to take part in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program, a project that pairs Google’s Cardboard Virtual Reality viewer with Google Earth technology to provide 360-degree panoramas of places around the world.
The Google Expeditions team will be at the schools on various dates throughout February to show teachers how Expeditions works, and to get feedback on the experience from teachers and students. Classes throughout the schools will participate in a number of expeditions related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as well as natural habitats and career exploration.
Students will take guided tours, led by their teacher, as they look through the hand-held cardboard viewers that give virtual reality panoramas of the places they are visiting. Teachers can pause the image to point out specific aspects, and switch to a different scene, all from the click of a tablet.
Google supplies teachers with a kit containing everything they need to use Google Expeditions. The kit contains smartphones, a tablet for the teacher to act as the tour director, an Internet router, allowing Expeditions to work without an Internet connection, and Google Cardboard or view-masters to turn smart phones into virtual reality headsets.
The schools were selected for the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program after submitting a request about how they would use Google Expeditions to support learning. Sara Harp Minter Elementary and Sandy Creek High were the first two schools to experiment with Google Expeditions.
