In Focus – Tools for Student Engagement
In the first of a series of posts highlighting various tools for student engagement, today I introduce you to Google VR Tour creator!
Google has released a free tool called Tour Creator which allows you to create a tour of destinations / places in the world for your students to view – or for your students to create a tour for YOU to view!
Using Tour Creator, anyone can build an immersive 360-degree tour from their computer. In addition, if your students have access to VR headsets, they can take an asynchronous guided virtual tour of any destination found within Google Street View, as well as any 360 degree videos you have created yourself. A VERY easy tool to use that is both fun and immersive for your students.
One of the things I love about this tool is its ease of use. I introduced this tool during one of my classes this year, and within no time, many of my students had created some excellent tours with varying subjects. One student created a world tour of incredible waterfalls, whilst another created a tour of the regional town where she was born. No students asked for any help!
Some key features – the ability to add 360 degree images (from Google Street view or of your own creation), voice narration, points of interest and text descriptions. No special software is required as it can be created for free, online – and only a link is required to share it.
Many of our subjects here at Tabor could utilise this tool – for example:
- Locations and scenes within a novel or fictional work
- A tour through significant places within Rome, Israel, Adelaide!
- A biographical tour of significant places in someone’s life
- A work health and safety tour of a worksite
Here is a link to hundreds of examples: https://poly.google.com/tours
I’m giving a 30 minute demonstration next Friday 27th July at 11.00am online in Zoom if you would like to know more. See the Professional Development section below for registration details.
Please send me yours if you decide to create one – I’d love to see it!
Did you know?
Did you know… our Tabor Online Subject Checklist is a great way to make sure you have included everything you are required to include on your Tabor Online subject site. The ultimate goal though is to have a subject site that is both easy for students to navigate AND completely relevant to them. This can be tricky to achieve if you are trying to include LOTS of information on the same page. Come along to our PD session Useful Tips for Subject Setup / Creation next week to hear some tips about how to manage this. See registration details below.
General News
We are pleased to announce eleven new professional development and training sessions available NEXT WEEK over three days – Wednesday 24th, Thursday 25th and Friday 26th July. Two of the sessions will be face to face in Adelaide, however all other sessions will be online to enable our Perth colleagues and ALL of our adjuncts to more easily attend.
Note that for each session there is an option to add it to your calendar. Please do this so that 1. You won’t forget to come, and 2. It will be placed in your calendar in your own timezone.
REGISTRATION LINK FOR ALL SESSIONS
Sessions available include:
Useful Tips for Subject Setup / Creation
Google Drive: Collaborative Editing Suite & Cloud Storage
Gradebook set up and Course completion
Google Sheets
How to use the Green Room
Introduction to Zoom
Introduction to Slido
Creating a Google Form
How to use the new Lecture Room PC/TVs
All your Alfresco questions answered!
Google VR Tour Creator
So if you have made it down this far, good on you, and thanks! That’s all for now but I’ll write another blog post in the coming weeks! Feel free to leave a note in the comments if you’ve used any of the tools I’ve discussed so far!
Digital Learning 