Clark County students taking virtual field trips

BATTLE GROUND — A physical education class at Chief Umtuch Middle School on Thursday morning traveled to a World Cup soccer stadium in Brazil, went under the sea to observe sharks, and headed to the moon. The virtual field trip, courtesy of Google technology, was a hit.

Students from Guy Brown’s boys’ PE class filed into the school library and sat down at tables, where cardboard viewers rested in front of each student. The cardboard held a smartphone loaded with the Google Expeditions app. Throughout the day, about 500 Chief Umtuch students tried out the app. Three Battle Ground schools are participating in the pilot program to field test the cardboard viewers and virtual field trip app.

“The video games these kids play are all 3-D, but this is a 360-degree view,” said Evyan Wagner, the education technology coordinator for Battle Ground Public Schools. “The teacher controls what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it.”

Before the students were allowed to pick up the viewers, Wagner laid out the two rules. First, hold them with both hands, she told them.

“Rule two,” Wagner said. “Do not stand up. Do not get up and walk around. You might drop them. You might get dizzy. You might vomit. I don’t want to clean up your puke. Are you ready to rumble?”

Students peered into the viewers. The first image their teacher, Brown, chose was an empty soccer stadium in Brazil. Brown is a soccer fan. The kids looked forward, up, down and all around. Every direction they moved offered a different view.

“Oh, my gosh! There’s a dog! Right there! Where I’m pointing!” exclaimed Blake Haggerty, 13, whose arm was extended as he tried to touch the virtual dog.

A few minutes later, the teacher changed the image to sharks. The decibel level in the room rose markedly.

A boy turned around in his chair, first one way and then the other.

“Whoa! It’s right next to me! That’s the main reason I don’t want to go into the ocean,” he said.

“Can anyone tell me about what kind of sharks these are?” Brown asked his students.

“Great white sharks!” one boy cried.

“Do you want to see reef sharks?” Brown asked.

“Dude! Look under you!” said a boy who was looking down toward the floor — where virtual sharks lurked.

After Brown pointed out more specifics about the sharks offered by a script provided by Google, he said, “Now we’re going to go from as low as you can go to as high as you can go. We’re going to the moon.”

“Really?” one boy asked.

A moment later another boy said, “I see the moon!”

Wagner directed the students to look at the continent looming large on their screens.

“Can you tell me what continent that is?” she asked.

“Africa,” one boy answered.

“Good. Yes,” Wagner said. “Now look. You can see the Milky Way. We’re getting closer.”

A few minutes later she said, “This one is a different view. Look around you. We’re on the surface of the moon.”

One boy stretched out his arm.

“Does anybody know why astronauts leave footprints like this on the moon?” Brown asked.

“It’s very soft?” one boy ventured.

“Yes,” Brown answered. “The soil is soft and space dust has settled on the surface.”

Wagner directed the students to follow the arrows on their screens.

“They take you to the lunar rover,” she said. “And look at the craters. This one is called the Shorty Crater. Astronauts found orange soil and other colors of soil on the moon. Before this, scientists thought the soil was all one color. They found mountains too.”

Then Wagner changed the students’ view again. This time it was an image of the moon with a futuristic city on it. That led to a discussion of whether people would ever inhabit the moon.

“I don’t see that happening,” said one boy. “Not in my lifetime.”

Wagner congratulated the boy for thinking in terms of what scientific discoveries were possible in his lifetime.

“Our world is changing rapidly,” Wagner said. “Think about your phones. Ten years ago, the stuff my cellphone can do wasn’t possible. Now our smartphones are computers. What do you think about this experience today?”

“Awesome!” and “Cool!” rang out around the room.

“Why do you think that?” Wagner asked.

“We got to see things we’ve never seen before,” said one boy.

“Yes. And places we’ll probably never visit — like the moon,” Wagner agreed. “It’s the most realistic experience you can have right now without actually going to the place.”

As the students stood up to leave, Wagner added, “And nobody vomited!”

The virtual field trip app isn’t available yet to the public. Google plans to roll out the program later this year.