Google Expeditions Augmented Reality
While Google Expeditions was still being tested, teachers, like me, could bring it to their school free of charge through their pioneer program. They are now offering the same opportunity with the new Expeditions AR Pioneer Program which, instead of allowing students to escape to another world through VR it allows teachers to bring the outside world into the room through augmented reality (AR). To understand the difference, think of VR as a means to escape elsewhere while AR is a way to supplement and improve your existing world. Some of the more popular AR apps include Pokemon Go or Google Translate. The benefit is that AR doesn’t even require a viewer.
My one major knock on the program might be the selfie sticks. Granted I am inherently biased against them and they did help with multiple students viewing the AR objects on one device. I think a better (less distracting) solution would be to use larger tablets that would still allow for group discussions. My fear of selfie stick sword fights didn’t come to pass, but there were a few moments where students had to duck when another group didn’t realize they were so close. Also, the app is still a work in progress. As such some of the categories/images are lacking for information so the teacher needs to be knowledgeable. Thankfully I was already quite familiar with cuttlefish and the Google facilitator (a former educator) was also ready to help.
There is still time for schools to get on board and sign up to participate in the testing Pioneer Program. If you have at least 300 participating students, you can have Google representatives come to your school with dozens of augmented reality devices synchronized to their new AR learning system to be used by students and teachers like I organized. There are currently 36 lessons that are available. My student’s favorites were dinosaurs, vertebrates and invertebrates, animal camouflage, forces of nature, and the solar system. The students were highly engaged and some were even startled when I brought the giant spiders and snakes to their screens. It allowed them to explore the creatures, planets, and other objects internally by walking closer. The physicality seemed to help some students to understand certain concepts that the struggled with in the abstract. Here are some photos I took from my school’s event.