By Bonnie Adams, Managing Editor
Grafton – Grafton High School students took a number of tours on March 1 to places as diverse as Buckingham Palace, the Galapagos Islands, Chichen Itza, Greece and Mexico. But it wasn’t that the school’s students were physically at all of these places. Rather, they took the tours from their classrooms as virtual experiences, thanks to a new initiative, Google Expeditions.
Expeditions is a virtual reality platform that uses an existing smartphone set inside a special headset viewer called Cardboard. Students put the viewer up to their face and look through the lenses, while their teacher “leads” them on a tour using a tablet. An arrow on the Cardboard’s screen shows the student where to next look. The lenses make the images appear 3D and are completely 360 degrees; the images are so realistic that one has to remember not to walk and view at the same time.
Google is in the midst of testing Expeditions as a pilot program in schools across the country, according to Matt Murphy, an employee with the company.
“We’re just going to different schools, getting feedback and creating a buzz,” he said. “So far it’s been really positive.”
Cynthia Engvall, a technology integration specialist at the school, said administrators were excited about the chance to try out the Expeditions.
“It’s such an exciting way to show places to kids that they may never have the chance to visit,” she said. “One English as a Second Language teacher would like to use it to ‘take’ her class on a trip to Philadelphia.”
The students’ reactions were also positive, with many noting it was “cool” and “really fun.”
“I really liked it,” Ashton Carlson said of her virtual tour of Mexico. “It was pretty awesome to see the different things like caves and waterfalls.”
“It’s a fun way to check out a place first before you commit to going there,” Livi Fisher noted.
There is no set target date for full release yet, Murphy said.
