When was the last time a Colorado classroom visited the Great Wall of China? The moon?
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re-1 Valley teacher Kelsey Yearick is hoping to do just that by making the world (virtually) available to all re-1 classrooms 2nd grade and up through the Google Expeditions program. The program offers over 300 - and growing - locations for students to explore through teacher-guided virtual reality field trips.
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Students view the field trips through a device similar to a view-master. The teacher guides the class on a tablet device and is able to point students to certain educational elements by pressing on the tablet.
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Yearick, who is in her fourth year of teaching at Caliche, is gifting her time and energy into overseeing the program for district use. From training to kit scheduling, she has a vision of how to practically implement the tool across the district.
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According to Yearick, "I'm willing to spearhead this project because it is an opportunity that I feel the students absolutely need. Many of our students have no concept that there are other parts of the world besides Iliff, Sterling, and Crook. The more we expand their horizons and open them to the idea of the world as a whole, the more I feel like they will perceive their hopes and dreams to be limitless."
Before making the Expeditions kit publicly available, Google piloted the technology in classrooms around the world. True to typical field trip form, many students became a little too excited and were distracted from the lesson. Because of this, the company incorporated a feature that allows the teacher to see where each student is looking in the field trip. If too many eyes are wandering the trip can be paused for everyone to refocus.
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Yearick has been using her own personal viewer in class to supplement curriculum, but knows that the technology can have an even larger impact if students across the district can share the experience together.
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"Students' eyes just light up when they are given the Google Cardboard, and it's a constant battle to peel it off their little faces. We have done a few small videos like an elephant walk through the jungle. It truly transports the kids to a different world for a small period of time."
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Virtual reality can help bridge the student exploration gap that tends to exist in rural, low income classrooms - classrooms like ours.
Review from #MyGivingStory