Monday 15 July 2013

The Virtual Field Trips - Virtual School Trips Resource Page with Case Study: Hangouts in History

Update on 29 Jan 2014 Google Education launched Connected Classrooms on 4 Nov 2013 with a website and a Google+ Community (there are 4,369 members as now).

In many ways Virtual Field Trips became #connectedclassrooms.

This post will still serve as a resource page, but I have a new one for the UK as Tesco launched the Eat Happy Project (which will use connected classrooms). This is the first time in the UK, a large org has stepped up with real time video with schools.


On 4 June 2013, Google+ released a two minute video which easily summed up two years work with Hangouts.

I'm making this page as a resource to explain how social interaction meets education across a distance - bring the world to the student's desk.
View full screen album from Tom Uglow

As I'm in the UK, I've looked at Google Trends where the phrase School Trip is more popular than Field Trip. I've embedded the chart at the base of this post.

This is just the start, so there are many bumps in the road to flatten out. More posts will follow. This project is not about technology, that's already done - Google have done all the heavy lifting for free.

This project is about Social Interaction and will appeal to all - just as there's a computer, webcam and a microphone does not make it ICT in Schools (Information and Communications Technology). I'm saying that now to get it out the way.

I don't need to write loads of here, the videos explain the concept beautifully. At this stage watch, learn and think. If you're a UK School or Organisation then you know this makes sense.

Part One - Virtual Field Trips - Google+ (2 mins to watch)



Part Two: A - Hangouts in History - The Black Death (2 mins)



Part Two: B - Behind the Scenes (4 mins)



Part Two: C - Entire Educational Hangout (33 mins, starts at 7:09 when class arrive)



29 Jan 2014 .. There is now www.hangoutsinhistory.com with a new google+ page https://plus.google.com/101367062522404839994/posts and the videos available at the Hangouts in History YouTube Channel.

Google Trends - Field Trip compared to School Trip for the UK

Links to Google+ People and Pages mentioned in this post: +Tom Uglow from Google Creative Labs, +James Boyce from Grumpy Sailor and the  +Google Australia blog post 11 July 2013.

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