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Exploring and learning outside the classroom at Grandview Heights School

Thu, 24 Oct, 2013

On Thursday Grades 4 and 5 students at Grandview Heights School went on a virtual field trip to polar bear country! This opportunity was made possible by Google and Polar Bears International teaming up to collect Google Street View imagery of the polar bear. You can view the whole session here.

Students got to tour the tundra vehicle “Buggy 1”, including the roof where the Google Street View Trekker backpack has been mounted. They also got a behind the scenes look at the project and had an opportunity to ask questions to the Google and Polar Bears International teams, as well as polar bear and snowy owl experts.

The students participated on the field trip via Google+ Hangout. This is a free video chat service that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats by using sophisticated technology to switch the focus to the person currently chatting.

This is not the first time students at Grandview Heights have used Google+ Hangout in an innovative way. A few weeks ago, teacher John Chase and his Grade 9 class met with a graduate student at Harvard University through the service.  Their hour long conversation about genetics and immunology was subsequently posted to the Harvard student’s blog on the Scientific American website.  The blog and the video can be seen here.