Week 7 Critique | Google Cardboard
To continue my investigation of VR technologies, I have chosen the Google Cardboard VR platform for my Week 7 crit. I am interested to see how one can use this digital tool in the classroom environment to enhance students’ learning and motivate them to explore the world outside of their communities. This technology is great for this. Using Google’s cardboard viewers and any ol’ iPhone, you can transport yourself to the Great Barrier Reef and swim around to see the bleaching of the coral due to climate change; you can explore Machu Picchu; you can visit the international space station or float aboard a raft in the antarctic sea ice.
In terms of its use in the educational realm, Google claims it is a low-cost way to bring learning to life and send students on field trips to “virtually anywhere.” Using an app called Expeditions, teachers can lead students through virtual trips using the google cardboard viewers and a iPhone-like device. As the students look around in the virtual world, the teachers can point out places to investigate further with arrows on the screen, read short scripts that give more information about that spot, and lead students through a virtual adventure without leaving the classroom. Expensive school bus reservations — goodbye!
In the promotional video, the young boy lives in a small town in Iowa and wants to be an architect. But living in his town, he never gets to see buildings higher than three or four stories, let alone skyscrapers that excite him so. In class using the Google Cardboard VR Expeditions, he and his classmates get to visit the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Using the website by Google Expedition Kit partners, Aquila Education, one can search for trips according to grade level, subject matter, geographic location, and more. You are studying ecosystems and habitats, go to the Amazonian Rainforest to explore the habitats of the black howler monkey. You are studying the American Civil War, take a trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg. All of this using virtual reality technology. Sign me up!!
My students would go bonkers for this! At first, I thought you could view the videos on Youtube just by holding up an iPad and moving it around. But after more research, it seems that you do need the cardboard viewer and the iPod touch, iPhone, Android phone, etc. This is a bit of a bummer because, while it is relatively affordable at $14 for a cardboard viewer or about $9,500 to equip 30 students with viewers, devices, teacher devices, etc., that is still a lot of money for a low-income school. You can make your own with pretty accessible materials, aside from the very specific lenses one needs to actually make the homemade viewer work properly.
I’m sure there are grants one can write to get this technology into the hands of students at poorer schools like mine. I will keep an eye out for one.
In terms of contributing to the digital dialog using this technology, it would be really powerful to have students write their own narrations and scripts for each virtual trip using the information they learned through their research. They could lead their peers or families on tours of locations they visited and researched. There is so much possibility for learning and students sharing that learning through dialog and soliloquy using the Google Cardboard platform.
I am going to find a way to get these for my kids!!
