Batavia 8th-graders take virtual field trips with Google Expeditions

About 485 eighth-graders at Rotolo Middle School took virtual field trips Monday from locations ranging from Antarctica to the moon.

Teachers Jennifer Duffy and Bridgett Schmitt were part of the Google Expeditions Roadshow. For the Roadshow, Google sends one representative along with two class sets (30 each) of smartphones loaded with the Google Expeditions app and Google Cardboard. Cardboard is a virtual reality viewer made almost entirely of cardboard that is similar in appearance to a View-Master. The virtual field trips last about 20 minutes.

Expeditions is a new Google product that allows teachers to take their students on virtual field trips that are comprised of 360-degree photo spheres, 3-D images and video, which are annotated with details, points of interest and questions to make them easy to integrate into schools' curriculum.

Rotolo students explored the Great Barrier Reef, the Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu as well as undersea environments and zoos. There are also issue-based tours on topics such as environmental change and career tours.