Google on Monday launched a new education initiative that brings virtual reality technology to classrooms and allows hundreds of students to take virtual field trips to locations across the globe.
The project, which Google calls Expeditions, officially rolled out in six states in the U.S. as well as Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The tech giant said that the program will launch in other areas as the school year progresses.
The virtual trips aren't limited to one country, or even Earth. More than 100 trips are currently available, including the Great Wall of China, Yosemite National Park in California and Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Students will be able to even tour the surface of Mars.
“Virtual reality gives teachers a tool to take students places a school bus can't,” David Quaid, a Google software engineer behind the project, said in a statement announcing Google Expeditions.
To create the content, Google is joined by high-powered partners including the Public Broadcasting System, textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, famed British documentarian David Attenborough and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
First lady Michelle Obama is also uniting with Google Expeditions for her Reach Higher initiative by using VR to take students on virtual college tours.
Google will provide students Asus smartphones and either the inexpensive Google Cardboard headsets or the recently released Mattel View-Masters. Both products turn smartphones into VR headsets. Teachers will be provided with a tablet to control the tour and a special router that can run a tour without an Internet connection.
Google Expeditions is the latest in a series of education programs to come out of Silicon Valley. In 2014, Google released Classroom, a free app for teachers that develops student assignments.
Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it is working with California educators to create software to build a learning experience tailored to individual students.
