ONE COLD DAY this spring, I held a Google Cardboard headset to my face and joined a few dozen New York fourth-graders on a virtual field trip. We visited Independence Square, saw the Liberty Bell, and stopped by the house where George Washington and John Adams lived before presidents lived in the White House, though we went there, too.
If you could stand in the middle of Google Street View, but at a historical site instead of in the middle of the road, it might feel like this. Google’s lo-fi VR headset let the kids look up, down, and all around, giving many of them their first look at Philadelphia. If the teacher wanted to direct their attention to a specific landmark, she’d tap her tablet and make an arrow appear above it. That same tablet let her know what the children were looking at, and tailor the lesson if they fixated on something.
This is the VR-enabled future of classroom learning, as imagined by Google’s Expeditions Pioneer Program. The premise is simple: “What if we came up with an app that could take students to places where school buses can’t go?” says Jen Holland, who leads Google Apps for Education. The Expeditions Pioneer Program simulates visiting Philadelphia. Or the Great Barrier Reef. Or, possibly, anywhere Google has mapped, which is pretty much everywhere. Read More...