Budding explorers were thrilled today when global technology giants, Google, visited our school armed with Google Expedition viewers that gave the students an immersive trip they will never forget.

A member of the Google Expeditions team, Andrew Whittingham, came in after several schools  around the UK were selected across London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff along with some smaller towns.

Google brought a complete Expeditions kit with them with everything teachers needed to take students on journeys to virtually anywhere. Andrew demonstrated to St Bon’s teachers how Expeditions works and helped set it up before the classes arrived. Using a tablet, teachers guided their students using virtual reality viewers called Google Cardboards.

Expeditions is a virtual reality app,  a new product that allows teachers to take their classes on virtual field trips, immersing students in experiences that bring abstract concepts to life and giving students a deeper understanding of the world beyond the classroom. 

The trips are collections of virtual reality panoramas — 360° photo spheres, 3D images and video, ambient sounds — annotated with details, points of interest, and questions that make them easy to integrate into curriculum already used in schools.

Everything needed to travel: a tablet for the teacher and Cardboard viewers and phones for every student was brought into the classroom. Next, the teacher selected a destination, and the entire classroom jumped there automatically.

Today at St Bonaventure’s staff chose to explore The Seven Wonders of the World and there were gasps when the first Year 7 class stood at the top of the world above the Great Wall of China and Christ the Redeemer at Rio de Janeiro and looked down at the scary drop and the magnificent landscapes.   They also spent time in the Congo and delving beneath the Caribbean Sea. Teacher, Mrs Racon, oversaw the exciting lessons and added: “We are so pleased to have been selected to take part in the innovating Google Expeditions Pioneer Program. Our students had never seen anything like it. The clarity was out of this world and it will really help them understand the world and get to see places they might never otherwise ever get to see. Today they became real pioneers. It was so exciting.”