The majority of the tech industry agrees that virtual reality is the next big thing in consumer electronics, and Google is no exception. In recent years, the Alphabet-owned company debuted VR products like Google Cardboard and Google Daydream, but also invested in related initiatives such as Google Spotlight Stories and Google Expeditions. Now, the latter is a program for creating and delivering VR experiences to educational organizations, mostly elementary schools. It debuted back in 2015 and had been steadily rolling out worldwide ever since then. In addition to bringing Google Expeditions to an increasing number of schools all around the globe, the Mountain View-based company was also hard at work developing new VR experiences suitable for this program. Earlier this week, Google announced two new additions to Google Expeditions.
The first Expedition allows students to visit the Victorian London described by the Ghost of Christmas Past and Tiny Tim. More specifically, this VR experience takes place in the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street in London. This address is now the only remaining London location where Dickens lived as an adult and wrote most of his famous novels, and today, the said home has been turned into a museum dedicated to what many consider the greatest novelist of the 19th century. The museum showcases thousands of exhibits that were either owned by Dickens or date from the era he lived in. Google’s latest Expedition allows students to visit this museum and explore the life of the famous author.
The second VR experience Google debuted earlier this week is called Santa’s Journey Expedition and lets viewers visit Finland, the North Pole, and a couple of other places related to Father Christmas. The experience was designed to help students explore Christmas traditions, as well as myths and science that influenced them. Among other things, this holiday-themed Expedition will shed some light on Santa’s favorite means of transportation and allow students to see the famous Northern Lights, as well as visit Santa’s post office in Lapland, Finland. Both of these VR experiences are already available in the Google Expeditions Android app. In addition to them, Google also recently debuted an online exhibit of Judaica artifacts kept by the Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center. The said digital exhibition was launched to help students learn more about Judaism just in time for this year’s Hanukkah.
