field trips

Connecting the learning from an international context to a local context in geography fieldwork via Google Expeditions

Photos: Students looking at Google Expeditions during the field trip to a local nature reserve

Authors of this blog-post

Mrs Melanie Collins, Pipers Corner School, High Wycombe, UK, Dr Ana-Despina Tudor, The Open University, UK and Professor Shailey Minocha, The Open University, UK

The project and Google Expeditions

The Open University (OU), UK, is conducting a school-based research project (funded by Google and the OU) on the potential use of mobile virtual reality via Google Expeditions in science and geography in school education.

Google Expeditions is a mobile virtual reality (VR) which is being promoted by Google in schools globally. Google Expeditions are guided tours (field trips) of places that students experience on a smartphone through a virtual reality viewer called Google cardboard

An expedition in the Google Expeditions (GEs) app comprises of 360-degree photospheres of places and events - for example, Buckingham Palace; The Great Barrier Reef and the coral bleaching in the Reef due to climate change; the Borneo Rainforest and the International Space Station. These visualisations enable students and educators to experience places that may be hard or even impossible to visit in real life.

There are simulations too in the GEs app - for example, the respiratory or the circulatory system in a human body, the solar system, the activity in volcanoes during eruption, or the process of pollination. These simulations are virtual representations of otherwise invisible concepts, processes and events.

The GEs app (available for Android and iOS platforms) has over 700 expeditions.

Using a tablet and via the GEs app, the educator guides the students to look at the scenes of an expedition. The students use the app in the ‘follower’ mode and experience the GE/VR through the smart-phone embedded within a VR viewer.

In the Figure below, (a) shows a tablet and a Google Cardboard VR viewer with the phone slotted in; in (b) the tablet is in ‘guide’ (or educator) mode and the phone is in ‘follower’ (or student) mode. On the tablet, the educator selects a point of interest (the circle). The setup requires a local wireless connection which can be provided by a router.

Figure: (a) Tablet and Google Cardboard viewer with the phone slotted in; (b) The tablet is in ‘guide (educator) mode and the phone is in ‘follower’ (or student) mode.

Connecting international context to the local context

In this case study, we describe how a virtual field trip in the GEs app was used during outdoor geography fieldwork to help students draw comparisons between the local area they were visiting and locations in the rainforest in Borneo. The simplicity of the equipment associated with the mobile or smart-phone-driven VR of GEs

(as compared with VR headsets tethered to high-spec machines) enabled us to use VR in the field. We were able to power the router (for creating the wireless network between the Tablet and phones) with a battery. The equipment was set up on a picnic table in the nature reserve.

Use of Google Expeditions during a physical field trip 

Sixty-eight Year 7 students explored the GE of ‘Environmental Change in Borneo’ during their field trip to a local nature reserve in the Chilterns area of South East England.

The aim of this virtual field trip was to help students understand the impact of deforestation, land clearance and development of buildings on nature, and to sensitise them to the potential magnitude of impact on their local nature reserve that may be caused by the development of a High-Speed (HS2) railway nearby.

Together with the educators, the researchers showed them the following scenes from the ‘Environmental Change in Borneo’ Expedition:

  • “Pristine Rainforest” – describing the plant and animal diversity in Borneo
  • “Land Clearance and Deforestation” – showing how the forest is cleared and how former forest areas turn into fields
  • “Land Encroachment” – showing how land is being cut through to create space for new real estate development
  • “Sandakan Development” – showing modern touristic coastal developments at the beach

Geographical inquiry before and during the field trip

In order to set the context for the VR activity in the field, before the field trip and in the classroom, students were asked to write down questions that they would like to ask with regard to the impact of large-scale developments on the local nature reserve. These are some exemplars:

“If they build the HS2 will animals/wildlife still live there?” (environmental impact)
“Will they get the people that live there to move?” (social impact)
 “Would everyone stop visiting [the Chilterns]?” (social and economic impact)

The questions generated at this stage appear to be general questions about the possible impact.

During the field trip and after a 10-minutes tour of the GE, students were required to fill out two written activities:

I. Write down how the virtual field trip made them feel differently about the large- scale development planned near the local nature reserve.

The tour of the Borneo rainforest in VR enabled students to compare and contrast the local area with the areas explored in virtual reality. These are some examples of student quotes:

“It really opened my eyes to what the beautiful Chilterns might be transformed into […] and how bad it would be for the environment”.
“It made me think that so much can change in so little time.”

II. Write down the questions they would like to ask about how places like the nature reserve are changing/might change in the future.

These are some examples of students’ questions:

 “What will happen to animals?”
 “Is the chalk [of the Chilterns] ever going to show under the grass”
“How big of an impact would the HS2 have?”
“How much of the world is affected by this?”

Compared to the questions the students asked before the field trip, the questions generated in the field after having seen the Expeditions appear to be more focused on the natural reserve area. Also, they appear to relate the content of the Expedition such as biodiversity loss or land encroachment (at international level) with similar threats to the local natural reserve (at local level) and even other places around the world.

Post-field trip Reflections 

After the field trip students had a debriefing session for 30 minutes in the school where they reflected on the field trip virtual reality activity. They were asked to comment on how virtual reality helped them to understand about the potential impact of large-scale developments on the Chilterns.

Students were able to connect their understanding and relate the changes in Borneo rain forests to their local nature reserve and to map the broader context of infrastructural development and its impact on nature:

“It is very helpful to see what we are trying to understand, because it’s quite hard to comprehend what would happen to the Chilterns if HS2 were to happen and seeing the jungle [in Borneo] and what happened to it was unbelievable and should never have happened.” [student]

Google Expeditions support Geography fieldwork education

The affordances of GEs such as 360-degree visual authenticity, 360-degree navigation, 3D view, and single-user handling enabled students to familiarise themselves with the 360-degree space and see beyond what a flat view in a video or a book or a photograph may provide. This perception of space contributes to their spatial understanding and sense of scale of the context that they are visualising in an expedition – and, in this case, the scale of the environmental change caused by human interventions.

Students explained this experience of scale and understanding the extent of change via the GE:

“It showed me all different things and how things like HS2 can really impact. You could see it on a large-scale, so you got to see things on an overall scale” [student]
 “It was useful. It made you understand how habitats can change from human technology and wants. It gave you a before and after picture and it was scary how it can change” [student]

In post-field trip group-interview of educators who had accompanied the students to the field trip, an educator elaborated on the visual impact that the virtual reality had on students’ understanding of environmental change and how it helped to contextualize the knowledge from an international context (Borneo) to the local one (The Chilterns):

“I think they saw the whole Borneo thing in a kind of context of what we were looking at there [in the field], which is I think was the purpose [of this activity].” [Geography educator, leader of the field trip team].

Conclusions

This case study demonstrates that Google Expeditions can help in extending students’ knowledge and understanding by drawing comparisons between various locations – in this case the environmental change at international setting seen in virtual reality and local areas that might be affected by large scale development plans.

Other scenarios could make use of Google Expeditions to explore the same place as the visited one in the field, but at different times of day, seasons or even historical times.

Through preliminary analyses of students’ inquiry before and during fieldwork and their reflections after the field trip, we are finding that mobile VR as in GEs helps to:

  • bridge virtual fieldwork with physical field trips;
  • facilitates inquiry-based fieldwork, and experiential and contextual learning; and
  • improves the value of geography fieldwork education.

Connecting the learning from a local context to an international context via Google Expeditions

Tracy-our-blog.jpg

Authors of this case study

Tracy Tyrell, Irchester Primary School and Ana Tudor and Shailey Minocha, The Open University, UK

Case study

This case study demonstrates how Google Expeditions can help in extending students’ knowledge and understanding from a classroom setting of seeing and feeling rock samples, to experiencing them in a local cemetery in a physical field trip, and to the use of rocks in well-known international locations.

THE PROJECT AND GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS

The Open University (OU), UK is conducting a school-based research project (funded by Google and the OU) on the potential use of Virtual Reality via Google Expeditions in science and geography in school education.

Google Expeditions is a Virtual Reality mobile application being promoted by Google in schools globally. Google Expeditions are guided tours (field trips) of places that students experience on a smartphone through a virtual reality viewer called Google cardboard.  

Google Expeditions comprise of 700 photospheres of places and events - for example, Buckingham Palace, The Great Barrier Reef and the coral bleaching in the Reef due to climate change, Borneo Rain Forest, and the International Space Station. These visualisations enable students and educators to experience places that may be hard or even impossible to visit in real life. There are simulations too in the Google expeditions app - for example, the respiratory or the circulatory system in a human body, the solar system, the activity in volcanoes during eruption, etc. These simulations are virtual representations of otherwise invisible concepts, processes and events.

Connecting local context to an international context

The Science educator of Grade 4 students of a primary school used Google Expeditions to link virtual field trips with physical fieldwork.

The learning outcomes of a set of lessons were focussed on understanding different types of rocks and their usage. The educator structured this topic in the following lessons:

  1. Introducing the different types of rocks in the classroom through a sample of rocks kept in a rock-box in the school. The rocks were sketched and initial observations made as to appearance, texture, etc.
    • Investigating how rocks are formed by looking at the rock cycle and then creating sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks from Starbursts. Observable features of the different rock types were then related back to the rocks children had observed – which type of rock did they think they had and why?
    • Testing the rocks for hardness and permeability using a scratch test and water. The testable features of the different rock types were then also related back to the rocks children had observed – which type of rock did they think they had and why?
  2. After introducing the rocks in the classroom, the educator organised a field trip to the local cemetery where the students could see and discuss the different types of rocks.
  3. In the third lesson and continuing with the theme of rocks, the educator took them to several locations around the world with two Expeditions (“7 new wonders of the World” and “Egypt”):
    • City of Petra in Jordan
    • Taj Mahal
    • Machu Picchu
    • Pyramids in Giza in Egypt

Through the rock-box in the school and in the physical field trip, the educator focussed on the experiential aspects of the topic and the physical trip. She wanted the students to see the different kinds of rocks, feel them with their hands, and analyse their varying characteristics such as hardness, lustre and crystal structure.

The discussion in the local cemetery focused on looking at rocks, how they are used locally, and how they had weathered. The educator reflected in her post-physical field trip conversations with us (the research team):

“we were talking about which was the most common [rock], why do you think there are a couple of [rocks] that [are] completely different there and why? Why do some [rocks] look as if they’ve aged better and lots of questions about what they could see or what they could feel.”

This is how the educator introduced Google Expeditions in the lesson that we observed:

“We did go on a little tour of the graveyard to look at how rocks are being used in the churchyard and in the church, so this [Google Expeditions] is going to be taking you to places where I can’t actually take you because it’s too far and it’s too expensive”.

In each of the expeditions and their scenes, the educator gave students a brief background of the location, the history, the types of rocks and their characteristics, and the structures and buildings made from those rocks. She prompted them to see the connections between the local site that they had visited in the previous lesson and the international locations they were now seeing in virtual reality:

“This is the main tomb where the emperor and his wife are buried, and what do you think that rock is covering the whole mausoleum? Thinking about yesterday and the gravestones we looked at, which rock do you think covers the Taj Mahal?”

High-order questions in students' questioning

The eduactor noticed that her students expanded their thinking towards rock usage and asked high-order questions in their written activity sheets in the lesson such as:

“How did the Egyptian people get the rocks to make the Great Pyramid?” or “How [do] the rocks stick together?”

In their post-lesson reflections, students wrote that Google Expeditions helped them to see that in other countries rocks can be used for tombs”. Also, it helped them to understand that rocks are important all over the world:

“It made me understand how much the world needs rocks. It also helped me understand how much progress we’ve made.”

Reflections

This case study shows how Google Expeditions or virtual reality-based field trips can be used as an extension of a local field trip to locations that may be difficult to visit. In this particular lesson, Google Expeditions enabled comparisons and contrasts between local and the international contexts; how different kinds of rocks are found and used in different parts of the world; and the significance of rocks in history. 

Google Expeditions and virtual field trips to Jordan, Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and Egypt helped to extend the understanding of rocks from a classroom to a physical field trip locally, and to an international context.

The educator has explained the case study in her own words here: Google Expeditions - Irchester Primary School.

Project team

Professor Shailey Minocha and Dr Ana-Despina Tudor at The Open University, UK 

Dr. Matthew Kam, Google Education Products Team

The project partners in the UK are:

Field Studies Council (Dr Steve Tilling and Mr Dave Morgan);

Association for Science Education (Mr Richard Needham and Ms Marianne Cutler); and

Geographical Association (Ms Becky Kitchen).

Google Expeditions: Comparing the "explorer" experiences on Tablets and Virtual Reality viewers

iPads set-up for students ("explorers") and educator ("guide") ahead of a lesson using Google Expeditions (Photo courtesy: Dr. Ana-Despina Tudor) 

THE PROJECT AND GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS

The Open University (OU), UK is conducting a school-based research project (funded by Google and the OU; July 2016 - June 2017) on the potential use of Virtual Reality via Google Expeditions in secondary school science and geography.

Google Expeditions is a Virtual Reality (VR) approach being promoted by Google in schools globally. Google Expeditions are guided tours (field trips) of places that students experience on a smartphone through a VR viewer called Google cardboard.  

GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS KIT

When we have been visiting schools as a part of our research project, we have noted that the main obstacle for adopting Google Expeditions in schools is the cost of the equipment, and especially the constraint of not having 1:1 smartphones for their students.

In January 2017, we worked with a school which has 1:1 iPads for its students from Year 4 onwards, to investigate student and educator experiences of Google Expeditions on iPads, and how the experiences compare with using smartphone driven VR through VR viewers.

HOW iPads FARED IN COMPARISON WITH SMARTPHONE-DRIVEN VIRTUAL REALITY?

These are some of our reflections:

  • Students normally use the iPads on stands. They found that iPads (with their protective covers) were heavy to move around to view the Expeditions. “I liked the virtual reality [VR-viewer] because it was lighter to hold and it’s smaller.”
  • Some of the students reverted back to keeping the iPad on the stand and using the fingers to swipe through the screen – a mode of interaction that they are used to. For these students who reverted to a stationary iPad, the 360-degree experience was different and less engaging due to moving restrictions. Another student remarked: “I prefer the virtual reality [VR-Viewer] because it wasn’t hard to use. The iPads [the scene] wouldn’t move when you moved it, but the virtual reality [VR viewer] did.” 
  • The educator felt the students were more distracted in the iPad lesson as compared to the VR-viewer lesson. Once the VR-viewers are close to the student’s eyes, they have an individual focused experience and are not so much affected by others in the room and events around them.  The educator said:“it [VR-viewer-lesson] was much more self-directed. There was a lot less low-level disruption. They were looking and taking to their partners, but it was on task as compared to just spinning randomly…”
  • The sense of presence – or the sense of being there was perceived to be more in the VR-viewer lessons by the students: “because it looks more realistic and you can hold it to your face... and so it feels like you are there…but you can’t with the iPad.”
  • Moreover, students could zoom in and out on the iPad – an interaction which also comes naturally to Tablet users.
  • If the students were pointing to a particular aspect of the Expedition for clarification by the teacher, the educator found it easier to address that in the iPad classes as she could walk over to the student and look at their iPad screen.
  • The educator suggested that having both iPads and VR-viewers in the lesson could be helpful: VR-viewers facilitate self-exploration and immersive ‘individual’ experience of the expeditions. iPads could be used for group-work, discussion in pairs, for accessing other Apps, and for discussions that involve the entire class - when the teacher uses the iPad to display the expedition using the classroom projector. Students also pointed out that that both technologies can be helpful: “Both of them helped me learn because [on] the iPad I saw it in detail and the VR [virtual reality] was getting the experience better.”
  • Some students preferred the larger screen of an iPad: “it [iPad] gave the picture larger. You didn’t have to put the iPad on your face. It gave me the full look around and gave the chance to move [within the scene] with nothing on me. Sometimes my eyes got fuzzy with virtual reality [VR viewer] compared to the iPad. You could see the bit she [the educator] was talking about clearer and nice and big [on the iPad].”

The educator, after having reflected on the activities that the students carried out in the lessons, concluded: “They do both [iPads and smartphone-driven VR viewers] help learning, but you do get a bit more from the VR experience. However, as a compromise, if you haven’t got the VR [equipment], you could do it with iPads.”

With over 400 expeditions, the Google expeditions App provides a very rich resource for teaching and learning, and for virtual field trips. The educator added: “if you have a small group [of students], have a few iPads out… they can explore something [in the expeditions] even just to enhance their awareness of this technology…start planting the seeds of how will that [VR] work.”

The Project team

Dr. Matthew Kam, Research Lead, Google Education

Professor Shailey Minocha and Dr Ana-Despina Tudor at The Open University, UK

The project partners are: UK's Field Studies Council (Steve Tilling and Dave Morgan), UK's Association for Science Education (Richard Needham and Marianne Cutler) and Geographical Association (Becky Kitchen).