Affordable Virtual Reality in Classrooms

“Life is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page.” I love this quote. While some kids are fortunate enough to travel from a very young age, a few other people start when they are much older and there are still some who have never stepped out of their houses even at 80. Travel makes you richer than a stable job and the experiences and people you encounter teach you much more than any classroom lesson. Just like field trips!

But what if you don’t have the budget for travel or the resources to organize a field trip?

Enter Virtual Reality through Google Cardboard- the cheapest way to augmented reality. With just 5$ and a smart phone you can walk on the streets of London, visit the Eiffel tower in Paris, see some oriental buildings in Tokyo, take a tour of an art exhibit at the Louvre and take a stroll on the sandy beaches of Indonesia, without stepping out of your classroom.

You don’t even need to buy google cardboard but can make it from scratch with an old cardboard box as Google makes its blue prints available for free on their website to encourage its use. The only extra items you need are 35mm convex lenses and a magnet.

Ebase is about making learning fun, interactive and keeping updated with the new technology out there. We used Google Cardboard in our Ebase classroom and the results were quite amusing. To see kids experience a roller coaster for the first time in their lives in 360 degrees, brings a smile on your face as it does on theirs. Some of them even experienced vertigo, and couldn’t take it after 2 mins of it. Some of them tried to grab onto things around them with the cardboard on. Everyone at school loves the Cardboard as even teachers fight over their turn to use it.