Google Cardboard and Associated Apps (Blog Post 9)

Google Cardboard and Associated Apps

When reading about Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality this week, I was fascinated to learn about Google Cardboard.  This is an amazing and very affordable tool that uses an existing cell phone in order to allow students to engage with a virtual reality experience.  There are a number of apps that can be used with Google Cardboard.

Google Expeditions is a free app with an educational focus.  When using the app on a mobile device through Google Cardboard, students can take ‘field trips’ to various locations in the past and the present.  These virtual reality expeditions would appeal to a variety of ages, with trips like ‘visiting a farm’ which likely would appeal to young children, to ‘ancient Greek art’ and ‘anatomy of a migraine’ which could be used with much older students.  Google Expeditions also offers augmented reality expeditions with topics like ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and the ‘human olfactory system’.  A particularly interesting option is the ability for teachers to create their own virtual reality tour for students – older students may use the tool to create virtual reality tours as part of an assignment.   

National Geographic offers a free app that provides virtual reality video content similar to the virtual reality expeditions described above.  As an aside - this article mentions, National Geographic is making strides in the virtual reality arena, and has created what sounds like an amazing Oculus Touch experience searching for penguins in Antarctica.  Definitely something to check out, although perhaps a bit much for classroom use.  NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory has created an augmented reality app  puts 3-D models of NASA’s robots onto any flat surface. The same link describes a number of fascinating apps NASA has created that may be interesting to use in the classroom.  The New York Times’ virtual reality app provides 360-degree virtual reality experiences for mobile devices – notably, this app can be used on the iPhone as well as androids.  

This LITA blog post describes some ways that Google Cardboard can be used in the public library, but would easily be adapted to the school library – for instance, creating a virtual reality tour of your school library or your school.  Perhaps for students going into middle school, they could create a virtual reality tour of the elementary school for younger students or a virtual reality tour of their new middle school to be more comfortable with the new surroundings.  The School Library Journal gives some tips on incorporating children’s books that are enhanced with augmented reality or virtual reality.  These hardcover books have associated virtual reality/augmented reality content, and using Google Cardboard with a mobile device allows the students to access both the book and the virtual content.  This post from Public Libraries Online gives several excellent examples of how virtual and augmented reality can be used, the most important of which is the opportunity for patrons (or in our case, students) with disabilities to experience reality without having to make accommodations for any special needs.  We may think of virtual and augmented reality as a fun and interesting way to engage students and add to educational content, but students who have disabilities may never have been able to experience reality in the way they are able to by using virtual or augmented reality options.  The ALA has an interesting page discussing augmented and virtual reality, and emphasizes how libraries have historically served as a way to teach the public about new technologies – the school library in a unique position to provide children with these experiences, and using tools like the free apps listed above and the relatively inexpensive Google Cardboard allows educators to incorporate those tools without a huge expense.