All good things must come to an end, they say. This is exactly what happened to Google Expeditions. For years, we were able to transport learners from the classroom to Antarctica, the Roman Colosseum, under the sea, AND to outer space. Those possibilities no longer exist in an easy to access and deliver way. Many tours were moved to Google Arts and Culture, but being about to provide guided tours using VR headsets are a thing of the past. Sure, they can explore on their own, but we lost the ability to guide students through the exploration and discuss what they were seeing. With Expeditions we could also see that our students were with us using the targets and seeing all of the student icons in the target area. If you know, you know.
In my role as a creator of content, I am perhaps the most sad about the loss of the Tour Creator application that allowed teachers to create custom guided expeditions and learning experiences for students. An added benefit to this was that STUDENTS could also create those tours to show learning. It was a multi-faceted creation tool and was accessible for them! With the loss of Tour Creator, we lost an opportunity for students to move from consuming virtual reality content to creating it. With COVID-19 limiting in person virtual reality experiences due to shared equipment and some students lacking face-to-face access, the need for virtual travel has changed, yet in some ways, it has become more important than ever! Sure, there are 360 videos at YouTube - and it would be great to use those. BUT the YouTube app for iPads which would allow for viewing in a headset viewer, is 17+ in the app store. That means it is a big NOPE for our schools. Then there are the recent changes with age restrictions for YouTube videos and third party apps, so it is possible students wouldn’t be able to even view them if they did have access to the app. The struggle is real. The obstacles are always changing - just when you think you have one figured out, another gets thrown in your path. Well, not today! Currently, I am exploring VR creation tools for teachers to use - I have not found any robust ones for students - available for free - and that makes me sad. I put together THIS list. Here I documented tour creation tools for teachers that detail what each tool allows the creator to add. I covered Google Arts & Culture and YouTube for places to go to find and use ready made items (consume), but my focus in my October professional learning offering was on creation! I shared the following tools: Panoform, StorySpheres, 360schools, and Thinglink - whichis my absolute favorite! Granted, there are other tools such as Round Me that I like for creating 360° tours. However, in my current district, they have deemed the site risky since it is communicating with Russian servers. I can get to the site https://roundme.com/ but can’t log in. So the list above only contains sites that are accessible within our district’s filters. Here is my recent presentation on 360° of Engagement - Consuming & Creating 360° Experiences for Learners. Included in the Create section are links to samples created to demonstrate what each tool can do, So while Google may have dropped Expeditions, our journey has not ended. As with any good journey, we have to see obstacles as a chance to try something new. On to the next adventure!
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One of my goals this year is to move teachers and students from consuming content to creating it! I have been leading professional learning on creating 360° images for a few years now. I began with StorySpheres and its simple, straightforward interface, then progressed to RoundMe which allowed additional content layers. Then Google gave us Tour Creator. Now, each of these three tools does basically the same thing, but two things set Google's version apart from the others. 1) Google integration: All students in our district, K-12, have a Google account (email is only active 6-12 with parent consent) so using this with students is a breeze. It also makes the teacher creation of teaching materials easy. That leads me to my next points. 2) Tons of 360 images to choose from: When you open Tour Creator, you are given a map and a search bar - type in ANY location and drag the peg man to any indicator of 360° images on the map. Can't find just the right image? No problem! You can use Google Street View or you phone's camera to capture your own 360° images! Just upload them in this creation process and PRESTO! A customized learning experience can be created! I used this to upload 360° images from our community or from my travels which aren't extensive, but I am a history nerd lucky enough to live in a history rich town! 3) The creation LOOKS just like a Google Expedition: This means that the teacher can be the guide and take students on custom expeditions. Often, teachers say that they have to use two or three different Expeditions in order to meet their objectives for the lesson. Who has time for that?! Using the collection of images already crowd-sourced, you can make one complete tour with everything you need to share with learners AND it will be saved for use/modification later. The teachers that attended this training left ready to create their own...and have students do the same! Since this month seemed to be all about creating content, I also led professional learning this month on Book Creator - NOT the app. For years, I only heard about the app. Most schools used the free version. While it was within their budget, it was very limiting. Most schools do not have the money to spend on an app for each device for a tool that isn't used every day. I was pleased to learn that Book Creator online allowed for an affordable and easy to use option! And by affordable, I mean free. By easy to use, I was impressed that it also works within Safari on an iPad. Then, the option to have students join and create with a QR code? My heart was won!
Our district uses Reading and Writing Fundamentals and we are always looking for innovative ways for our young authors to share their work with an authentic audience. This tool enables that - the teacher manages the sharing! Participants in that workshop loved the versatility and ease of use with all of the features available in the free version. (Their basic not free version is VERY affordable for what you get, too.) We even went over logging out and how to manage using this webtool in a shared device environment. This is often overlooked as teachers hurriedly collect devices at the end of class. We discussed how this small action can - and should - become a habit. The participants left both of these sessions with something to take back and share and eager to use these tools with students. I can't wait to see what THEY create!
This last two months, it seemed like every seventh grade science class I entered was studying the circulatory system! Two schools - at opposite ends of the district - took top honors for the level of engagement I saw while there. Gone are the days of Slim Goodbody and the plastic anatomy model with removable parts that came standard in science classrooms of yesteryear. They've gone digital!
Both teachers I visited had created a series of stations for students to explore. Some of those stations involved technology, others involved pencils and paper, most were a perfect blending of both. At one school, students created a replica of the circulatory system and then used Ozocodes to program the Ozobots to "be the blood" - the colors, red and blue, indicated whether the blood was leaving the heart or entering the heart. The little robots simulated blood flow. More than one student was overheard saying it helped it all make sense.
At a station at the other school, students held a heart in the palm of their hands! Using Anatomy AR and Mr. Body, and some Merge cubes, students explored the circulatory system in an entirely different way. They were able to see layers and dig in a bit more. The teacher had them capture their responses to questions and reflections in their science notebooks. Additionally, teachers in our district are using the Virtuali-tee by Curioscope to help students understand body systems. They use the app to scan the tee shirt - which is essentially a giant QR code - that launches a virtual anatomy torso like I had in the science classrooms of my youth. It even comes with a tour guide, Dr, Glover, who narrates your journey if you select that feature. My FAVORITE feature is the heart rate tracker. Students can make the heart on the virtual model beat to their rhythm. Also, this app would be awesome for EL students or even foreign language learners. It can translate and even read aloud in several images. You even have the ability to show text in one language and read aloud in another! That's pretty amazing! HERE is a guide I made for teachers in our district about those features.
So as we think about today's learners, it's important to realize that the technology has the power to engage our students. It is within our power to make sure the lessons we are teaching stick with them long after that end of the year test.
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AuthorJeannie Timken Archives
March 2023
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