Students at West Essex Middle School took a virtual field trip using a Google Expedition Pioneer program.
Students at West Essex Middle School take a virtual trip using their Google cardboard viewers.< NORTH CALDWELL -- Visitors to the West Essex Middle School may have been curious when they saw the school's seventh-graders moving around their social studies classroom holding odd-looking contraptions in front of their eyes. What were the students doing? They were on an adventure.
Looking through a virtual reality teaching tool built by Google Cardboard, the students were taking part in a Google Expedition, a new program that allows teachers to take their classes on virtual field trips.
Schools participating in the program receive a tablet for the teacher and cardboard viewers attached to iPhones for the students. The viewers allow the students to become part of a virtual tour chosen by their teachers. The tours can take them almost anywhere, from an art museum to under the ocean. On this particular day, the West Essex students were on a virtual field trip to the North Pole and Mount Rushmore.
"This was a really cool thing and I was totally awed by the technology," said Louise Fredo, assistant to the director of curriculum & instruction.
To submit school news send an email to essex@starledger.com.