Last week, we took our first extended road trip as a blended family. My husband and I and our two children left central Indiana early Saturday morning and had a very pleasant, long drive (listening for part of the journey to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Big House in the Little Woods) to the southeast side of South Dakota, arriving at dinner time. After a few days visiting family, we journeyed further westward to the Black Hills, stopping at Wall Drug and Badlands National Park along the way.
We had a wonderful two-day stay at a cabin in Custer and day trips to see Mount Rushmore and Devil's Tower (another 2 hours west into Wyoming)
This was truly a magnificent, unforgettable, family experience -- our Western adventure.
Just before the trip, I had a chance bring home a Google Cardboard viewer on loan from my job at CIESC so that I could investigate how to incorporate it into a professional development session. We didn’t bring it with us, but thankfully my son remembered to take a few pictures using the Google Cardboard Camera app on my Android phone. Here is one example you can download and view if you have a Cardboard viewer:
I wish now that we had taken many, many more images with the Cardboard Camera app. With the conversion of the panoramic photo into a 3D experience, it is a more lifelike (though a little blurrier and lower resolution) reproduction of the memories, since you can experience the the whole 360 degree viewpoint - and even hear a snippet of sound recorded while the picture was taken.
Not familiar with Google Cardboard? Here are some videos:
Seeing Cardboard in use
What you can see through cardboard
Virtual Reality is on the cusp of changing how we experience the world around us -- a $15 viewer and a free app (iOS and Android) along with the smartphone you already have are a proof point that it can be available to the masses. But it really can’t replace being physically present somewhere -- using all your senses to take in information at once. Sometimes, though, for reasons of time or geography, you just can’t take the journey yourself.
Laura Ingalls Wilder used beautiful imagery in her writing that helps you picture the daily tasks and special events throughout a full year living in the wilderness - including many exciting stories relayed by Pa that she didn’t see for herself. In her early years around 1872, if you couldn’t directly experience something, the only way to re-live it was through storytelling (cameras were invented in 1888).
In my youth, we had pictures (but you had to wait until the film was processed) and portable video recorders (that sat on your shoulder and had video cassettes and would record for up to three hours and unless you were very skilled or determined were never edited and if you wanted to find just one segment meant you had to rewind and fast forward the tape). In my children’s youth, we have instantly accessible pictures and video, recorded and edited and shared with a single device that you carry with you nearly constantly. And 3D photos with sound (two senses at once!) and virtual reality.
What a blessing to have a tangible (digible?) record of our adventure, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything...
By the way, did I mention that we traveled out West and back in a Toyota Prius? And that we drove 18 hours straight to get home?
Laura Ingalls Wilder used beautiful imagery in her writing that helps you picture the daily tasks and special events throughout a full year living in the wilderness - including many exciting stories relayed by Pa that she didn’t see for herself. In her early years around 1872, if you couldn’t directly experience something, the only way to re-live it was through storytelling (cameras were invented in 1888).
In my youth, we had pictures (but you had to wait until the film was processed) and portable video recorders (that sat on your shoulder and had video cassettes and would record for up to three hours and unless you were very skilled or determined were never edited and if you wanted to find just one segment meant you had to rewind and fast forward the tape). In my children’s youth, we have instantly accessible pictures and video, recorded and edited and shared with a single device that you carry with you nearly constantly. And 3D photos with sound (two senses at once!) and virtual reality.
What a blessing to have a tangible (digible?) record of our adventure, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything...
By the way, did I mention that we traveled out West and back in a Toyota Prius? And that we drove 18 hours straight to get home?
It would have been easy for those last two statements to overshadow the rest of the experience, but it really didn’t (which surprised me greatly, since I had been dreading the car ride, fueled by many memories of endless childhood road trips).
We have, in fact, already started planning our next adventure, this time East -- including lots more Cardboard Camera photos!
Lessons for education?...the best we can offer our students is in-person experiences...field trips, hands-on investigations, nature walks, internships in the community. The next best thing is to bring those opportunities into the classroom using technology tools, like Skype or Google Cardboard.
We have, in fact, already started planning our next adventure, this time East -- including lots more Cardboard Camera photos!
Lessons for education?...the best we can offer our students is in-person experiences...field trips, hands-on investigations, nature walks, internships in the community. The next best thing is to bring those opportunities into the classroom using technology tools, like Skype or Google Cardboard.