Fort Mill students can travel the world as long as they stay seated

Everest guide Hope Figuero couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

Maybe it was the symphony of vowel sounds. Maybe the occasional hiker wandering out of his chair. Maybe they were smiling, too. Hard to tell with the cardboard contraption attached to the kids’ faces.

“I just wanted to run with the animals,” confessed Jonatan Taboada, recalling watching wildebeests and hippos on his virtual layover in Kenya. “I also wanted to jump inside that great lake.”

Students weren’t supposed to leave their seats in the library last Wednesday, but several had a hard time remembering they were in seats. Sugar Creek Elementary School is one of 10 district schools helping Google beta test a new virtual reality field trip app. Phones slide into cardboard viewers to create a 3-D, 360-degree view of wild and exotic locales such as Mt. Everest, the African savanna and the Galapagos Islands.

The app could be available to the public by the end of the school year.

Figuero, who is a second grade teacher when she isn’t leading virtual alpine excursions, beamed brighter than the smartphone screens.

“Places that a lot of these kids are never going to see, they can visit,” she said.

The program is called Google Expeditions. District technology staff found out the company would come to Charlotte for testing. The district pitched Fort Mill. And because of that hundreds of students from second grade to high school will get to virtually cycle through places such as coral reefs or World War II battlefields.

“They’re here to offer our students the opportunity to go somewhere that school buses can’t take them,” said Megan Mongelli, district technology integration specialist.

Sugar Creek was just the third local school to test the app but, in true Google fashion, trends already were emerging.

“The feedback is pretty unanimous at this point that this is something that our teachers and students love, and they can’t wait to bring it to their classrooms,” Mongelli said.

Conner McFadden looked down at the Everest stop but didn’t see his feet. He saw snow. At another stop he watched herds of animals migrate.

“I liked that you could be there and when you turned around it looked around, you could walk around,” the second-grader said. “It was really cool seeing it and not just seeing it from a book.”

Classmate Charlotte Jeskey also gave Google high marks.

“If I could rate it 1 to 10, I would probably give it an 11,” she said.

Paige Thomas liked how one Expeditions lesson was on the same subject as her class studied recently, so students got to see the difference with and without the tech.

“We actually got to see it and not just hear about it,” Thomas said.

Thomas is already seeing the high potential for the immersive technology. Like with the annual cultural fair at the school.

“Maybe every year I would want to see my country,” she said.

So, what’s next? Virtual permission slips? Virtual sack lunches?

Educators say the technology isn’t a replacement for teachers, or for real field trips local schools can take. It’s meant to enhance. Teachers leading virtual lessons can highlight spots they want students to see, and a small arrow in each viewfinder steers students that way. When students aim their eyes to the arrow, a smiley face pops up on the teacher’s screen.

The district doesn’t have set plans for using the app once it becomes available. But it wouldn’t be expensive. The idea behind the cardboard viewers – $15 to $25 each; some folks online make them from Happy Meal boxes with do-it-yourself instructions – is to make virtual reality more accessible to more people. Most folks already have a smartphone and just about all are compatible.

Teachers and technology leaders can’t get over how lifelike the lessons are. To the point someone may have to start taping students to chairs.

“It feels like you’re there,” Figuero said. “It could totally add to the classroom experience.”

This story was originally published March 14, 2016 at 12:26 PM with the headline "Fort Mill students can travel the world as long as they stay seated."