Congratulations to Dr. Paul Jackson and Bethany Batting-Ramseur. They were co-authors of a winning Palmetto Electric Grant - Exploring the World with Google Expedition which was awarded on Monday, October 23.
Google Expeditions is a new free technology and service provided by Google, expanding on their prior projects to map the globe in fine detail (Google Earth) and to provide virtual images of the world as seen from roadways (Google Street View). Google Expeditions provides fully three-dimensional views from an ever-increasing library of landmarks and areas of cultural significance, while also providing the means for guiding a classroom full of students in a joint immersive experience in which the teacher can direct students to certain elements within view and narrate context critical for deeper world language instruction. Students will then be able to further pursue their own interests and passions in a variety of follow-up projects and assignments to demonstrate increasingly higher levels of knowledge, cultural acquisition, and understanding.
With advances in technology, new means are emerging which allow us to bring students to distant places in a virtual environment. These technological advances, in the form of Google Expeditions accessed via Google Cardboard, immerse the student in the visual and auditory experiences of cultural landmarks around the world, which create invaluable contexts from which to acquire cultural knowledge.
One goal in providing Google Cardboard to our students would be to allow them easy access to this free Google Expedition technology in an academic environment conducive to furthering deeper thought, consideration, and development of their own ideas, interests, and talents. Henry Miller wrote, "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." Our ultimate goal is to provide our school community with a new way of seeing the world and therefore becoming better, more informed world citizens as a result.
