Google launches "virtual reality trips" for classrooms
Google has announced the launch of its Expeditions Pioneer Program, an initiative designed to bring Google's virtual reality kits, including virtual field trips, to schools across the globe. "Google says it will (supply) kits with everything teachers need to run a virtual class trip…This kit includes a tablet for the teacher, Cardboard or Mattel View-Master viewers, and a router that allows Expeditions to run offline if necessary," according to TechCrunch.com.  The New York Times calls Google's virtual field trip technology totally "immersive, completely different from the virtual opportunities to explore that came before...Expeditions uses 360-degree views that stitch together photographs from Google Street View, a product that displays images of roads. The company is also using a 16-camera system, built by GoPro, to create three-dimensional images for the virtual excursions," The Times said.

As part of a class last year on “Romeo and Juliet,” Jennie Choi, an English teacher at Mariano Azuela Elementary School in Chicago, took her sixth-grade students on a tour of Verona, the Italian city where Shakespeare’s play transpires.

During the excursion, Ms. Choi asked her class to examine the variegated facade of a centuries-old building, known on tourist maps as “Juliet’s House,” where the family that may have been the inspiration for the fictional heroine once lived. She also encouraged her sixth graders to scrutinize the deteriorated tomb where they could imagine the Juliet character had died.

But the students did not have to leave their Chicago classroom to take in the play’s Italian backdrop. Instead, as part of a pilot project for a new Google virtual field trip system for schools, Ms. Choi’s students tried out virtual-reality viewers — composed of cardboard and a cellphone — while their teacher used an app to guide them through stereoscopic vistas of the Italian town.

“It doesn’t work to stand in a class of 12-year-olds and just lecture,” said Ms. Choi, explaining that many students already had access to devices like smartphones, laptops and gaming systems and thus were accustomed to obtaining information immediately and visually. So Ms. Choi jumped at Google’s offer to collaborate on a virtual excursion to Verona for her students. “I think they gained a deeper understanding of the story,” Ms. Choi said.