The Week Virtual Reality Came To Van Meter!

This week something new has captured the attention, curiosity and conversations of our students, teachers and community.  

We have added Merge goggles and...

 ...Apple iTouches to the district bring lots of new adventures and opportunities to our students.

With the opportunity to visit the design process of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from YouTube 360 videos with the Merge googles after reading....

....Balloons Over Broadway....The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet. 

You can read all about this project in this first post from my blog last week too. 

On Monday, Staci Braun and her 2nd graders focused on....

...Balloons Over Broadway, 

as they...

...listen to my friend Rocco read the book on KidLitTV.  

We then explained virtual reality and showed them the four Macy's tours in New York City they could take with their friends and the Merge goggles. All they had to do was go to the board and scan the QR codes on this slide.  

It would pop up in the YouTube app and they were set to visit the design studio too. 

Today, the excitement continued as we had another awesome day of using the Merge googles and visiting the Macy's Day Parade again!

First, I visited Tracy Ferguson's 2nd graders.  

Tracy printed off the slide which was perfect because we took them down to the Collaboration Space.  This was the perfect spot because the tables can be moved out of the way to allow them to have a large space to roam around with the goggles. 

As you can see, there were very excited and loved exploring the tours. 

 

Second, I popped into Megan Algreen's 5th grade classroom.  Megan has such a great flexible space, which was really awesome for the activity.

She put the slide up on her board as we explained virtual reality and the Merge goggles to them too.

It was wonderful watching them work in pairs as they explored the tours and showed lots of excitement for the new technology and opportunities at Van Meter.

It was wonderful watching them work in pairs as they explored the tours and showed lots of excitement for the technology and opportunities at Van Meter.

We can't wait for all of the new adventures and how virtual reality will take us around the world!