Making and Leading Virtual Tours With Expeditions Pro
Many of us lamented the loss of Google Expeditions because it was a great tool for leading students on virtual reality tours of all kinds of interesting places around the world. Similarly, many of us were disappointed when Google shuttered Tour Creator because it was a great tool for students to use to create their […]
Five Virtual Tour Creation Projects for Students
Google’s old VR Tour Creator offered a great way to create virtual tours that could be viewed in your web browser and or in the Google Expeditions app. Unfortunately, Google shuttered both the those programs last year. Fortunately, there is an alternative available in the form of Expeditions Pro which I reviewed a couple of weeks […]
How to Create Your Own Virtual Reality Tours
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about and gave a video demonstration of how to lead students on virtual reality tours with Expeditions Pro. In that video I mentioned that Expeditions Pro can also be used to create your own virtual reality tours. This morning I recorded a video about how do that. Watch […]
Expeditions Pro – Guide Students on Virtual Reality Tours
Last year many of us were disappointed when Google announced the closure of their Expeditions program. Shortly after that announcement a new company popped-up to offer an alternative to Google Expeditions. That alternative is called Expeditions Pro. It launched in beta last June and is now available for anyone to install on iOS and Android […]
How to Create VR Tours of Local Landmarks
I live near a little ski mountain called Mount Abram that is totally geared toward being family-friendly, affordable (seriously, my kids ski the whole season for $20!), and community-oriented. During the weekends when my kids are in lessons I like to skin up the mountain. By skinning I burn a lot calories and I get […]
How to Find Sharks and More in VR
The closure of Google Expeditions at the end of June was a real disappointment for many teachers. Google has pushed Google Arts & Culture as the alternative to Expeditions, but it’s just not the same. That’s left a lot of people to look for more alternatives. YouTube’s VR imagery is one alternative that I’ve mentioned […]
Expeditions Pro – A Replacement for Google’s VR Tour Creator
Sadly, at the end of June Google is closing the doors on Tour Creator. I’m bummed about it because it is one of my favorite creation tools. Fortunately, there are some companies working on making alternatives to Google’s Tour Creator. One of those companies is Expeditions Pro. Expeditions Pro is still in beta but I […]
The Differences Between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
One of the ten big topics to be covered in detail during the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp is how to use augmented reality and virtual reality in education. It’s important to note that while these topics are similar, there are some distinct differences between them. The biggest of those differences being how the […]
A Handful of Alternatives to Google Expeditions
As I mentioned on Friday, Google is shutting down Tour Creator at the end of June. They’re also shutting down Google Expeditions at the end of June. For some teachers that is the bigger loss. And while I haven’t yet found any alternatives that have the same capability as Expeditions for teachers to guide students […]
Tour Creator is Closing – Here Are Some Alternatives
Like thousands of other people, this week Google sent me a reminder that Tour Creator is shutting down at the end of June. I’ve enjoyed making virtual reality tours with it since the first day it was available. I’m disappointed that Google is shutting it down, but there’s no sense crying over spilled milk so […]
An Easy Way to Find 360 Videos to Use VR Headsets
Last week Google announced that June 2021 would be the end of the Google Expeditions app. I published a short list of alternatives to Google Expeditions. One of those alternatives was to simply use YouTube’s search refinement tool to find 360 videos to view in your Google Cardboard or other virtual reality headsets. If you’re […]
Alternatives to Google Expeditions
Last week’s announcement from Google that Google Expeditions will be discontinued in 2021 was disappointing news for many of us. Since then I’ve answered a handful of questions from people who are looking for alternatives to using the Google Expeditions app. Here’s a summary of what I’ve been saying and suggesting to those looking for […]
Journey Into the Deep Sea – Neat Nat Geo VR Experience
Earlier this year I featured National Geographic’s fantastic playlist of 360 degree immersive videos that can be experienced with or without a virtual reality viewer. Recently, National Geographic added another excellent video to that collection. That video is Journey Into the Deep Sea. Journey Into the Deep Sea is a nine minute underwater tour of […]
50 National Geographic 360 Videos
Watching 360 degree videos is probably my favorite thing to do with my Google Cardboard viewer. A lot of people don’t realize that a Cardboard viewer can be used for more than just Google Expeditions. For example, National Geographic’s YouTube channel contains fifty 360 videos featuring things like Mount Everest, glaciers in Iceland, elephants, sea […]
Expedition Everest – 360 Video from National Geographic
National Geographic has one of my favorite YouTube channels. I’ve been fascinated with Mount Everest for as long as I can remember That’s why I was excited yesterday when Nat Geo published a new 360 video about a scientific expedition to Mount Everest. Expedition Everest: The Mission is a five minute overview and introduction to […]
Now You Can Share a Link to Jump to a Scene in Google Expeditions
In a Tweet yesterday afternoon Google announced a neat little addition to Google Expeditions. You can now share a link to a specific scene within an Expedition. Previously if you wanted to get all of your students onto the same scene at the same time you had to guide them through the whole Expedition. Now […]
Three Ways to Create a Virtual Tour of the Tour de France
Every July the Tour de France winds through the countryside before arriving in Paris. Every year the course takes a different route. One of the things that I always enjoy about watching the race is seeing all of the historic places the riders pass. NBC Sports is usually pretty good about sharing some history of […]
Virtual Reality Smells
Virtual reality tours like those available through Google Expeditions (check out an exciting update) provide students with the opportunity to experience the sights and sounds of far away places that they may never visit. But there is one thing missing from virtual reality tours. That thing is smell. No one has figured out how to […]
The Best Apps & Sites for Learning According to AASL
While ISTE’s annual conference is the place that all of the big ed tech companies showcase their new developments for the coming year, AASL’s annual conference is featuring best apps and websites for teaching and learning. The American Association of School Librarians annual conference was held over the weekend and that’s when they revealed their […]
Google Expeditions is Now Available on Chromebooks!
Google Expeditions is probably the most popular virtual reality app for use in classrooms today. One of the things that has kept it out of some classrooms is that it requires the use of a compatible phone or tablet. That is going to change this summer. As announced at the ISTE conference, Google is adding […]
AR, VR, and Bowling – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining to start this Memorial Day weekend. We’re going to Maine Wildlife Park, riding bicycles, and playing outside for as long as we can put with the black flies this weekend. I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you can get outside too. Before I head […]
Five DIY Virtual Reality Projects for Students
Google’s VR Tour Creator offers an excellent way to create virtual tours that can be viewed in your web browser and or in the Google Expeditions app. Google’s Street View imagery is the backbone of the VR Tour Creator. To start creating a tour you have to identify a location using the built-in connection to […]
Four Ways to Create Your Own VR & AR Experiences
Observing and interacting with augmented reality and virtual reality content is nice, but after a while students will get bored with the pre-made commercial content. You can combat some of that boredom by putting students in charge of picking the AR and VR experiences that are of most interest to them while also being relevant […]
7 Good Apps for Getting Started With AR & VR
One of the components of this year’s Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp (a few seats still available) is time to explore how augmented reality and virtual reality can be used in a variety of classroom settings. The following is by no means a comprehensive list of AR and VR apps that can be used in classrooms. […]
5 Tips for New Google Expeditions Users
Image copyright: Richard Byrne Google Expeditions is often the first educational virtual reality tool that I introduce to teachers who come to one of my workshops. Here are five tips that I frequently pass along to teachers who are preparing to use Google Expeditions for the first time. If you have never used Expeditions, you […]
Webinar Next Tuesday – Introduction to AR & VR in Your Classroom
Next Tuesday at 4pm ET I’m hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar designed to introduce you to how to use some augmented reality and virtual reality tools in your classroom. The webinar, Introduction to AR & VR in Your Classroom, will show you how to use tools including Google Expeditions, VR Tour Creator, Metaverse, Merge […]
Check Out the Periodic Table of iOS 12 Apps for Education
Mark Anderson, known as ICT Evangelist on Twitter, recently published a handy guide to educational iPad apps that are updated for iOS 12. The guide is arranged in periodic table format. Rather than featuring elements, the table features iPad apps. The guide is further arranged into eight categories. The categories of apps on Mark’s Periodic […]
Introduction to AR & VR in Education
Worlds Are Colliding: Introduction to AR & VR in Education was my first presentation of the day today at the 2019 MACUL Conference. This presentation has been updated a bit since I gave it four weeks ago at a conference in Vancouver, B.C. The updates weren’t so much about the slides (although there were a […]
Now You Can Use Your Own VR Tours in Google Expeditions on iOS
A couple of weeks ago I published a video about how to use your own virtual reality tours in the Android version of Google Expeditions. In that video I mentioned that support for doing the same in the iOS version of Expeditions was coming soon. As of today the wait is over. As Google announced […]
How to Use Your Own VR Tours in Google Expeditions
Google’s VR Tour Creator is probably my favorite new tool of the last year. I love being able to make my own virtual reality tours and share them with others. Recently, Google added support for VR Tour Creator tours to the Android version of Google Expeditions. This means that you can create your own VR […]
What is Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality?
Go to any educational technology conference or ed tech blog today and you are bound to encounter augmented reality and virtual reality products. They’re the hot topics of the day in the educational technology industry. Every week I answer questions from readers about AR and VR. One of the patterns I’ve discerned from answering those […]
Immersive Reader in Virtual Reality
Immersive Reader is one of my three favorite Microsoft products (the others others are Hacking STEM and Flipgrid). Today at the BETT Show I got to try a new implementation of Immersive Reader. That implementation is in virtual reality. Immersive Reader in VR is a beta product. In fact, I was told by representatives of […]
Students Can Create Their Own Tours to Share in Google Expeditions
Googles’ Tour Creator launched last spring and since then has become one of my favorite tools for history and geography classes. One of my few complaints about it was that while students could easily build virtual reality tours, it wasn’t always easy to share those tours with their teachers and classmates. That is about to […]
Vizor 360 is Now Free for All – Create Interactive 360 Imagery
Vizor offers great tools for creating interactive 360 imagery. I’ve previously covered their Patches program for creating animated VR because that was the free service that they offered. Now their core product Vizor 360 is available for free too. Vizor 360 lets you upload a series of pictures and then stitch them together. After you […]
Best of 2018 – How to Use Google’s VR Tour Creator
This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from May. A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free […]
Six Resources for Learning About the Science of Flight
Yesterday marked the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first successful airplane flight. That reminded me that I have a bunch of interesting resources for learning about the development of and science of flight. The Wright Brothers – The Invention of the Aerial Age is another good timeline for teaching about the developments made by the […]
Introduction to Using Google Expeditions in Your Classroom
Google Expeditions is one of my favorite virtual reality apps for students and teachers. The app provides hundreds of virtual reality experiences for students. There are VR experiences that can be used in social studies, science, and art classes. The guide mode in Expeditions is fantastic for pacing activities inside of the app. Rather than […]
Sites in VR – The VR App for Those Without VR Headsets
Sites in VR is a free Android and iOS app that provides a 1700 virtual reality views of significant landmarks around the world. The app is a good one for those who would like to experience a bit of virtual reality without having to use a virtual reality headset. Sites in VR provides imagery that […]
Black Friday Sale on Practical Ed Tech Webinars
One of the ways that I keep Free Technology for Teachers running is through the sales of professional development webinars on my other site, Practical Ed Tech. In the last year I hosted more than three dozen professional development webinars on that site. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday I’m offering the six most popular […]
Slides from my CECA/CASL Presentations
Yesterday and today I had the privilege to speak at the CECA/CASL conference in Connecticut. It was an honor to be invited back to speak at a conference in my home state. Thank you to everyone who came to hear me speak. It was a pleasure to meet many of you throughout the conference and […]
VR, AR, Video, and the Best of the Web – Slides from Today’s Presentations
Good evening from the Pittsburgh International Airport where I’m about to board a flight home after a great day presenting in Morgantown, West Virginia at the Archdiocese of Wheeling-Charleston’s Teachers Convention. I had the privilege to give three presentations there today and meet some fantastic teachers too. The slides from the presentations that I gave […]
How to Share Your Google VR Tours With Students
Over the last few weeks I have received a lot of emails from readers who had made virtual reality tours in Google’s VR Tour Creator but then ran into difficulty sharing those tours with their students. To answer those questions I made the following video that demonstrates how you can share your VR tours with […]
5 VR Projects for Students
Google’s VR Tour Creator is one of my favorite media creation tools. Since its launch in May of this year I have shown it to hundreds of teachers in-person and even more in videos and webinars. I love it because it empowers students to make their own virtual reality experiences rather than just consuming virtual […]
Slides from ESC-20 Library Resource Roundup
Today I had the pleasure of giving four short presentations at the Texas ESC-20 Library Resource Roundup. It was a great day! Thank you to everyone who came to my presentations. And a special thank you to those who came for multiple presentations. As I always say, the best compliment that I can get is […]
Virtual Reality Book Tours
In 5 Multimedia Projects for Social Studies Classes I included the idea of having students make their own virtual tours of historic and interesting landmarks. The concepts used to make a virtual tour of historic landmarks can be used to create virtual tours based on the books that students read. This is easier to do […]
How to Use Google’s VR Tour Creator
The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]
An Easy Way to Find 360 Videos to View in Google Cardboard
Google Expeditions offers lots of 360 content that your students can explore in Google Cardboard viewers. But Google Expeditions isn’t the only source of 360 content that you can use in your Google Cardboard or other virtual reality headsets. There is a lot of 360 content available on YouTube. For example, take a look at […]
New Metaverse Tutorials – Build Your Own Augmented Reality Games
Over the last year Metaverse has become a popular tool for creating your own augmented reality games. Many teachers have used it to create digital breakout games. Like many other tools that quickly rise in popularity, Metaverse has made some changes to make it easier for new users to get started. To that end, this […]
How to Create a Virtual Tour That Includes Audio Narration
One of the many things that Google announced to coincide with the ISTE conference was the addition of an option to add audio to virtual reality tours created with Google’s VR Tour Creator. This is an update to the VR Tour Creator that was launched just a couple of months ago. This update lets you […]
A Spreadsheet of Phones That Do and Don’t Support Google Expeditions
Yesterday, I answered an email from a participant in my recent Intro to VR & AR webinar. She was having trouble getting Google Expeditions to work on one of her phones. I did a little research and found that the phone she was trying to use Expeditions on didn’t have a gyroscope. The absence of […]
Join Me Tomorrow for an Introduction to Using AR & VR in School
Thursday at 4pm ET I am hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar all about using augmented reality and virtual reality in your classroom. In Introduction to VR & AR in Your Classroom you’ll learn the difference between AR and VR, how to find AR and VR experiences to use in your classroom, and how to […]
Google Expeditions Updated With New Augmented Reality Content
Since its launch Google’s Expeditions app has been a hit in many schools. What started out as a somewhat canned teacher-led virtual reality experience has morphed into a tool that students can use to explore and discover new things on their own. Last summer Google added the option for students to explore the VR expeditions […]
How to Add Points of Interest to Virtual Reality Tours in Google’s Tour Creator
Last week Google introduced the new Tour Creator for making virtual reality tours. I published a tutorial last week that shows you how to create a basic tour. Today, I made a new tutorial that shows you how to include featured points of interest within each scene in your tour. Those points of interest can […]
How to Use Google’s New VR Tour Creator
A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser. Tours are created by selecting locations in Google Maps and then selecting 360 degree Street View imagery. There’s also […]
Blue Whales in Virtual Reality
Blue Whale VR is a free virtual reality app that provides a 360 tour of a blue whale’s anatomy. The app isn’t terribly interactive. The only interactive element is that students can move around the whale during the tour. If you don’t have VR viewers, you can access the tour through this YouTube video. The […]
5 Good Resources for Health Teachers
Yesterday afternoon I ran into one of my old colleagues who asked me for some recommendations for tech tools that she could use in her health classes. One of the suggestions that I made was to try the Cardio VR app. I also promised to come up with some other suggestions. In this video I […]
LinguaPracticaVR – Learn English in Virtual Reality
Update August 2019: This app is no longer available. As I walked around the BETT Show last week there seemed to be a vendor selling a virtual reality product at every turn. LinguaPracticaVR is one of those VR products that I tested. LinguaPracticaVR offers free English lessons in a virtual reality context. LinguaPracticaVR builds short […]
Create Your Own Google Expeditions
To coincide with the BETT Show Google announced a new beta program that will enable schools to create their own Google Expeditions. The latest iteration of the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program will provide schools with all of the equipment required to capture 360 images and to create their own immersive Google Expeditions. The announcement didn’t […]
A Periodic Table of AR and VR Apps
At the start of the BETT Show Mark Anderson and Steve Bambury announced the release of their new Periodic Table of iOS Apps for AR and VR. The table is an interactive Thinglink image that links to AR and VR apps. The apps can be used to address topics in STEM, creativity, geography, storytelling, art, […]
Patches – Create Your Own Virtual Reality Environments
In the past I’ve featured Google’s Cardboard Camera and Street View apps as tools for creating simple virtual reality imagery. Those tools are great if you want to capture immersive images of physical environments and share those images with others. But if you want to create completely drawn and animated virtual reality scenes, then you’ll […]
VR Hangar – A VR App from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
VR Hangar is a new virtual reality app produced by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. This free virtual reality app is available to use on Android phones and on iPhones. VR Hangar contains three virtual reality tours that feature landmark moments in aviation history. Those moments are the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Chuck […]
The Differences Between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
This morning I received an email from a reader who was wondering what the terms AR and VR mean. I get that question on a fairly regular basis these days. That’s why earlier this year I recorded a video and posted a short slideshow that outlines the differences between augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed […]
This Is Augmented Reality, This Is Virtual Reality
The difference between augmented reality and virtual reality is one of the things that I get asked to clarify on a fairly regular basis. This post has an example of each. Earlier this year I featured a fun app from PBS Kids called Plum’s Creaturizer. It’s a free augmented reality app that lets students create […]
How to Create Virtual Reality Panoramas
A couple of years ago Google launched the Cardboard Camera app for capturing your own virtual reality panoramas. At the time that it was launched it was only available on the Android platform and it didn’t include a mechanism for sharing your panoramas with others. Both of those things have since changed. You can now […]
Explore Street View Imagery With Your Voice
This afternoon at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp we spent some time exploring and talking about ways that Google Maps, Street View, Google Earth, and virtual reality can be used in classrooms. One of the things that seemed to engage everyone was Speak To Go With Google. Speak to Go is a Google WebVR […]
DIY VR Viewer
The post immediately preceding this one featured the new “solo” mode for Google Expeditions. Expeditions is the mobile app that allows users to experience virtual reality tours when they place their phones into virtual reality viewers like the Google Cardboard viewers. If you can’t buy VR viewers for your classroom or you just like DIY […]
Students Can Now Guide Themselves In Google Expeditions
On Wednesday Google released an update to Google Expeditions that allows students and others to guide themselves on Google Expeditions. Expeditions are Google’s Virtual Reality experiences that can be viewed through the Expeditions app on phones placed in Google Cardboard Viewers. The new “solo” mode in Expeditions (currently only for Android) lets students view Google’s […]
Practical Ed Tech Live – Episode #11
This afternoon my daughter and I recorded the eleventh episode of my almost weekly series, Practical Ed Tech Live. In every episode I answer a handful of the questions that I’ve received from readers. The recording of the episode is embedded below. The list of questions and my recommended resources can be found in this […]
4 Virtual Reality Videos About Antarctica
Virtual reality is giving many of us the opportunity to see places that we may never visit in a level of detail that could never be experienced through print or even 2D video. For example, thanks to The New York Times VR app (available for iOS and Android) we can now experience parts of Antarctica […]
Augmented Reality vs. Virtual Reality
Yesterday, I was asked about the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality. I made the following video and short slideshow to further explain the differences between the two. Click here to learn more about the AR app that I mentioned in the video.
Two Free Apps for Capturing Immersive Imagery
In 5 Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About World War II I mentioned that I captured some photospheres at the WWII Museum in New Orleans. I created those photospheres for use in virtual reality viewers. The tools that I used for creating those photospheres were the Google Cardboard Camera app and the Google Street […]
Speak to Go – Explore the World With Your Voice in Virtual Reality
Speak to Go is a new Google WebVR experiment. Speak to Go lets you explore the world in virtual reality by just speaking the name of a place. Speak into Speak to Go and you’ll be shown Street View imagery of that place. For example, I spoke the word “Maine” and I was quickly taken […]
Explore National Parks for Free In Person or Online
Entry to national parks in the United States is free each of the next two weekends. If there is a national park near you, go out and explore. Bring your phone to take some pictures. Otherwise put it down and take in the experience. Better yet, skip the phone all together and use a good […]
Don’t Forget the Greater Context on Your VR Trip
During last week’s Practical Ed Tech Live episode (join me this Thursday at 4pm EDT) I was asked about virtual reality, specifically Google Expeditions. The point that I tried to emphasize in my response was that it’s important that we don’t lost the greater physical geographic context when we take students on virtual reality trips. […]
Virtual Reality in Education
This afternoon I joined Greg Kulowiec for a Google Hangout on Air discussion about virtual reality in education. We had a dozen or so people join us in the live chat during the Hangout. If you weren’t able to watch the live session, you can now view it as embedded below. The resources that we […]
Virtual Reality in Education – A Conversation With Greg Kulowiec
Virtual reality has the potential to provide our students with great learning experiences. It is still in its early stages of adoption in schools and there are lots of questions about how it works and how it can be used in classrooms. On February 27th Greg Kulowiec from EdTechTeacher and I will host a Google […]
Make Your Own Virtual Reality Headset
On Saturday afternoon I saw Hall Davidson give the closing keynote for the Fort Worth ISD Technology Conference. In his presentation he spoke extensively about the possibilities for use of virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence in the classroom. One of the things that he mentioned was that you don’t need to spend a […]
Take a Virtual Tour of Petra In Google Cardboard or In Street View
Last year Google added a virtual tour of Petra to its collection of landmarks that you can see in-depth in Google Maps Street View. This week that tour was updated for viewing in Google Cardboard VR headsets. Much of the imagery used in the tour was captured by a Street View Trekker camera. Take a […]
Google Expeditions Will Soon Be Available to iPad Users
Last week Google released another round of updates to their Expeditions program. Expeditions is the virtual reality program that lets students experience immersive views of more than 200 places including the International Space Station, coral reefs, the Taj Mahal, and the White House. Currently, to experience Expeditions you must have a Google Cardboard viewer and […]
A Crowd-sourced List of Google Cardboard Apps & Videos
During the ISTE conference this year I met Jack Bosley who is an educational technology teacher in Kentucky. He introduced himself after the panel discussion, hosted by Samsung, about virtual reality in education. Jack shared with me a Google Form that he created to crowd-source a list of apps and videos to use in Google […]
Three Interesting Studies on Virtual Reality in Education
This week at ISTE 2016 Google and Samsung had large booth displays devoted to virtual reality headsets. The proliferation of virtual reality headsets has been the catalyst for some good conversations about the value of virtual reality in education. Many have wondered if it is a novelty or if could have a meaningful impact on […]
Explain VR Virtual Zoo – Animals in Virtual Reality
Explain VR Virtual Zoo is a free iPhone app that is designed to work with Google Cardboard. The free app features ten animals in virtual reality. Some of the animals featured in the app include giraffes, elephants, tigers, and bears. Each animal appears individually and students can see them move in virtual reality. Audio in […]
Tour Buckingham Palace In Virtual Reality
Last week Google opened up a beta program for schools that want to use Google Expeditions on Android devices. If you get into that program or if you already have Google Cardboard viewers, you might want to take a look at the latest addition to the line-up of virtual reality expeditions. Students can now tour […]