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S p o n s o re d b y
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TSP E C I A L
Using VR to Bring the World to Your Classroom
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 2
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
From deep-space exploration to a deep dive into the
signing of the Declaration of Independence, virtual
reality field trips are gaining traction in K-12 schools.
Augmented by detailed lesson plans aligned with
learning objectives, VR trips offer an immersive
experience that actively engages students and gives
them more control of their learning.
Using VR to Bring the World to Your Classroom
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 3
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
It is a common sight in Paris: A teacher leadings a gaggle of American students through Notre Dame,
stopping to point out architectural details. Occasionally, she asks them a question in French about the
building's history. Once atop the cathedral towers, though, she simply lets the students drink in the
magnificent views of the City of Light.
It sounds like an expensive study-abroad program, but these particular students aren't even in Paris. In
fact, they never left the classroom. The images of Notre Dame—so realistic that some students reach out
to try to touch a gargoyle—are part of a virtual-reality field trip that students experience through
inexpensive hand-held viewers.
Years after virtual reality became a commonplace training tool in medical and military environments, VR is
finally making inroads in K-12 education, as teachers pivot away from the talking-head instructional
approach. "Lecturing at the podium is not the way to teach Social Studies," said Geraldine Stevens,
Product Marketing Director for K-12 Social Studies at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which has launched 73
virtual HMH Field Trips to support its World Languages, Science, and Social Studies programs, with plans
to release additional trips covering World History and World Geography in 2018. "It's about making
connections, seeing patterns, and using an inquiry-based approach to study new content. The virtual
HMH Field Trips really allow teachers and students to do this in new ways that didn't exist five years ago."
“It’s about making connections, seeing
patterns, and using an inquiry-based
approach to study new content. The
virtual HMH Field Trips really allow
teachers and students to do this in new
ways that didn't exist five years ago.”
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 4
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
The platform for most of these virtual excursions is Google Expeditions, a growing repository of more than
500 free trips developed in partnership with an array of organizations, including HMH, NASA, the
National Park Service, and the American Museum of Natural History. Students experience the expeditions
through inexpensive headsets—cardboard or plastic—that hold a smartphone loaded with the free
Google VR app. Teachers use a tablet to lead
the trips and monitor where students are
within the VR environment (see "How Virtual
Field Trips Work," on page 8).
Active EngagementThe trip possibilities are enormous, giving
teachers a chance to take their students to
the furthest corners of the earth, back in time,
through the human body, or on a mission to
Jupiter. While most virtual reality trips cover
subjects where traditional videos are readily
available, there's one key difference: Watching videos is entirely passive, whereas virtual field trips involve
active participation. "The VR experience gives more agency to learners, because they can decide where
they want to explore," said Dr. David Dockterman, Lecturer on Education in the Technology, Innovation,
and Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "VR gives you a level of agency and
ownership that other technologies do not allow. We want to build the capacity for kids to become
stronger, more independent learners."
By turning their heads or looking up or down, students can explore the virtual environment around them
and focus on the elements that interest them most. "It really is all driven by student curiosity," said Heidi
Bernasconi, a teacher at Clarkstown High School North in New York state, who uses Google Expeditions
in her biology, marine biology, and business classes. "Whenever you pique students' curiosity, they're
going to learn better. They ask so many more questions."
Bernasconi recalled her experience with a ninth-grade cohort that was struggling in her Living
Environment class. She had created a lesson plan around the development of the fetus to accompany a VR
field trip on pregnancy. "I thought we'd all focus on the fetus, but my students were looking at everything
else and asking, 'What's that?'" she said. "It's a powerful question that kids don't ask enough. It was
amazing. You just don't get that emotional connection with a two-dimensional picture."
“Whenever you pique students’
curiosity, they're going to learn better.
They ask so many more questions.”
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
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USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
Stevens believes that much of this connection stems from VR's immersive nature. "When students wear
the goggles, they are literally right there on the streets of Mexico City or Paris," she said. "Virtual reality
immerses students in a way that a video screen across the room simply cannot do."
It's a message echoed by Bernasconi, who's had a student literally scream when she turned and came
face to face with a gorilla. "With VR, there are literally no distractions: There's nothing to write down,
you're not looking at what anyone else is doing," she said. "It's just you in this world."
Curriculum IntegrationWhile there's little doubt that VR field trips have the power to excite students, veteran educators also
recognize that cool technology is of limited value unless the experiences translate into actual learning. "VR
definitely has the wow factor, but that doesn't mean it's going to work," said Dockterman. "Kids will get over
the coolness of it, just as we all got over the coolness of movies once. Its real value lies in how you use it, how
you integrate it into a more intentional kind of learning experience. You don't take away the autonomy, but
you need a plan for leveraging those student-driven experiences if they're really going to matter."
“The HMH Teacher Guides take what could be bell ringers
or fun concluding class activities and expand them into
true 45-minute lessons or even two-day lessons.”
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 6
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
Bernasconi couldn't agree more. After some early missteps, she now creates lesson plans to accompany
all the Google Expeditions trips she uses in her classes. In her experience, it's a big mistake to let students
loose with the viewers without any scaffolding. "A teacher can use Expeditions horribly if they put their
kids in these viewfinders for 45 minutes: Kids get dizzy and they won't learn anything," she said. "There
have to be breaks, there have to be other activities, and there has to be conversation that's student-
driven. A teacher guide gives you that: What should students know before you go to this image? What
should you be doing after you look at this image? If your kids aren't asking questions, what are some
questions that you can ask?"
The need for lesson guides to accompany these field trips is well understood by publishers, too. HMH, for
example, provides detailed HMH Teacher Guides to support each of its virtual HMH Field Trips, and the
HMH Teacher Guides are, in turn, tightly integrated with the corresponding HMH programs.
"The HMH Teacher Guides take what could be bell ringers or fun concluding class activities and expand
them into true 45-minute lessons or even two-day lessons," said Stevens. "Now, virtual reality moves from
being an engaging hook to being the central focus of larger inquiry-based activities."
For his part, Dockterman sees the HMH Teacher Guides as the modern equivalent of the way teachers
used to prepare students for field trips back when he was in school. "Field trips were fun partly because of
the social experience—the novelty of getting out of school, getting on a bus, and all that," he said. "But
the educational value of the trip really depended on all the lessons and activities that were designed to
build on that experience. Integrating a field trip into the curriculum is how you get bang for the buck.
That's always been the case."
Addressing Accessibility IssuesBack in the day, students simply scrambled onto a school bus to go on a field trip. Virtual field trips, on the
other hand, require a smartphone for each viewer, which does raise issues of accessibility. While most
students today carry the devices, schools cannot take their presence for granted. Plus, students lose
access to their phones for all kinds of reasons: They forget them, they break them, or their parents
confiscate them as punishment for poor behavior.
The easiest solution is to purchase a Google Expeditions kit from a vendor like Best Buy. Available for
classes of 10, 20, or 30 students, kits come with a teacher control tablet, smartphones preloaded with the
Expeditions app, and a router that allows the Expeditions to operate over its own local Wi-Fi network.
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 7
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
A cheaper option is to build your own kit, which Bernasconi decided to do. While most of her students do
have their own phones, she needed a collection of additional phones to give to kids who, for whatever
reason, come to school without one. "I ask teachers and parents not to trade in their old phones but to give
them to me instead," she said. "I'm trying to make a collection of old cell phones that kids can borrow for the
period." She also lends her own phone to kids to use in a viewfinder. If necessary, kids even share them.
By contrast, the viewfinders themselves are much cheaper and easier to come by. Cardboard viewers cost
$5-$18 each, while plastic ones tend to run $15-$40. In Bernasconi's case, the money to buy the viewers
and the router came from local grants.
For Bernasconi, making the effort to build her own kit was well worthwhile, but she's encouraged to see
that her school district recently purchased two additional kits and hopes that it's the beginning of
something more ambitious. "Our smartest people have been using virtual reality for a long time: Our
doctors use it to perform surgery, our astronauts use it before they go into space, and our pilots use it to
learn how to fly planes," she said. "Isn't it about time it entered the mainstream classroom?"
"Our smartest people have been
using virtual reality for a long time…
Isn't it about time it entered the
mainstream classroom?"
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 8
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
How VR Field Trips Work
Google Expeditions offers more than 500 virtual field trips in
partnership with a wide range of developers and publishers. The trips
themselves are free—as is the app used to access them—but users do
need a smartphone and a viewfinder (usually cardboard or plastic).
The smartphone fits inside the viewfinder, which together give users a
detailed 360-degree view of an image in the expedition. Users see
different aspects of the image simply by turning their heads, turning
around, or looking up and down.
The majority of expeditions consist of five or six 360-degree images.
Teachers use a tablet to control which image students see within an
expedition. While kids can look in any direction within a particular
image, they cannot move on to another image without teacher
permission. Teachers can also use the tablet controls to pause a trip,
which turns the student viewfinders black.
Each student appears on the tablet as a smiley face, allowing the
teacher to know where the entire class is within the virtual world. If a
teacher wants to direct students' attention to a particular feature, she
can pin that spot so students know where to look. During a tour of Fort
Mandon with Lewis and Clark, for example, a teacher might gather
students around the fireplace to discuss how the explorers kept warm,
how they cooked their food, and how technology has changed the way
we now live in winter.
If a teacher wants to direct students' attention
to a particular feature, she can pin that spot so
students know where to look.
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
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USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
Just as likely, though, students are the ones who will want to share what
they have discovered. "Kids often ask, 'What is this over here?'" said
Bernasconi. "At that point, I bring them my tablet and they find it for
me. We'll then pin that spot and it becomes a teachable moment."
In the case of the Google Expeditions trips developed by Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, each HMH Field Trip also comes with its own HMH
Teacher Guide, which offers ideas on how to lead the trip as well as
ways teachers can incorporate what students see into a broader lesson
plan. The free guides are part of the online teacher resources available
upon adoption of HMH Kids Discover Social Studies, HMH Social
Studies, Science Dimensions, Science Fusion, Bien dit! (French), or
¡Avancemos! (Spanish) programs.
• HMH Field Trips
• HMH Science Dimensions
• HMH Science Fusion
• HMH Kids Discover Social Studies (K-6)
• HMH Social Studies (6-12)
• HMH World Languages: Avancemos! (Spanish)
• HMH World Languages: Bien dit! (French)
For overviews and testimonials about some of theHoughton Mifflin Harcourt programs that integrateVR Field Trips, click on the following links:
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
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USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
Tips for Using VR Field Trips
Bernasconi has been using VR field trips in her classes ever since Google Expeditions launched. In fact,
she helped pilot the program. Here, Bernasconi gives teachers her top tips for incorporating VR field trips
into their classes.
Build in Extra Time. "I find that lessons with Expeditions take twice as long," said Bernasconi. "In a
regular class, I could go over the phases of fetal development, for example, in one period or show
students a 15-minute YouTube video and call it a day. With the addition of a VR field trip, though, it
becomes a two-period lesson where we pause, we talk about it, and students ask me questions. The
questions from Monday get researched on
Tuesday. It becomes a student-centered
lesson that takes longer but is more valuable.
Students get more out of it." Bernasconi also
advises teachers to build in enough time to
distribute the viewers and phones and then
inventory them at the end of class.
Involve the IT Department. Even teachers
who are technically proficient should solicit
help from IT to configure the Wi-Fi connections
needed to ensure that Expeditions operates
smoothly. Purchased kits come with their own
routers, but DIYers would be well advised to
obtain one as well, according to Bernasconi. "Before I bought my router, we were all connecting to one
particular network, but my kids kept getting kicked off because the network would occasionally run slowly,"
she noted. "Even if you bring in your own router, you still need to let your IT team know. Some districts have
really strict network policies that will simply shut down a rogue router. Talk to your IT guys and tell them what
you need to accomplish."
Have Patience. "The first time you use Expeditions, you will have to do some troubleshooting," said
Bernasconi. "Plus, you have to give your students time just to explore. You can't give a kid a new toy and
say, 'Ok, this is how I want you to play with it.' They need to look up, look down, look all around. They
really need to learn how they're able to explore. At the same time, don't let students spend too long
looking through the viewers without taking a break. You don't want them getting dizzy or throwing up!"
“It becomes a student-centered lesson
that takes longer but is more valuable.
Students get more out of it.”
A n e S c h o o l N e w s
R E P O R TS P E C I A L
www.hmhco.com 11
USING VR TO BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR CLASSROOM
About HMH
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a global learning company dedicated to changing people’s
lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. As a leading provider of pre-K–12
education content, services, and cutting-edge technology solutions across a variety of
media, HMH enables learning in a changing landscape. HMH serves more than 50 million
students in over 150 countries worldwide, while its award-winning children's books,
novels, non-fiction, and reference titles are enjoyed by readers throughout the world.
Learn more at www.hmhco.com
This special report was produced by eSchool News, a leading publisher and producer of
K–12 educational technology publications and events, dedicated to the advancement and
wise use of technology to improve teaching and learning for all. eSchool News offers ed-tech
decision-makers a range of products—including magazines, white papers, websites,
newsletters, webinars, and other products—that provide in-depth coverage of the latest
innovations, trends, and real-world solutions impacting the education community.
Explore more at http://www.eSchoolNews.com.
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