"Projecting" Students into the Future (By Russ Glenn, Environmental Sciences & Honors Inquiry Program Instructor)

In the “Black History in the United States” course, the VR system was used to take students on a field trip to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. Students viewed slave quarters and some of the aspects of life on a plantation. Students in the “State & National Parks: America's Greatest Invention” class have gone to The Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and the Kenai Fjords National Parks using the VR goggles. The “Cities in Space” students started off Winter Term with a tour through six of the modules of the International Space Station.

These tours, part of the Google Expeditions suite of VR experiences, enable our students to visit places and to see things in an immersive and unique way. In addition to virtual field trips, students have been able to use the system to learn about the physics of flight and to become a part of a comic book in the “Science of Superheroes” course. In the “Medical Mysteries” class, students were able to see the inner workings of the nervous system. The “Design and Building for the Theatre” students were able to visit the ancient theatres of Fourviere and go behind the scenes of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2017 production of “The Tempest.” The “Wilderness Survival” class used the VR headsets to go to the Yukon Territory in Canada to get a sense of the surroundings as they discussed how one would survive in a cold, inhospitable environment. 

While VR involves putting on the headsets and being immersed in images around you,  Google Expeditions also provides robust Augmented Reality (AR) experiences. In the “I Could Do That- Modern Art History” class students were able to interact with sculptures from Degas, Picasso, and Dali. In AR, the 3-dimensional images are projected into your environment and you can move around them to get new perspectives and the pieces. The “Cities in Space” class used the AR capabilities to investigate the Moon, Pluto, Saturn, Europa, Mars, and the asteroid Ceres. 

The VR/ AR “Pop-Up” has provided some amazing experiences for Winter Term. It will be exciting to see where the classes will go in the future!