Foundation grant helps kids explore the world
Going on school field trips can be expensive and time-consuming, but a teacher at Bluff Park Elementary School plans to take advantage of a Google program that allows children to take virtual field trips around the world while sitting in the classroom.
Bluff Park second-grade teacher Amanda Walker is using a $1,840 grant she received from the Hoover City Schools Foundation this year to purchase a Google Expeditions kit for a project she is calling “Traveling the World from the Comfort of School.”
The Google Expeditions virtual reality program allows children to put on a pair of “goggles” and view scenes from locations all over the planet with a 360-degree view. As they turn their heads up and down or side to side, their view of the scene changes as if they were there in person.
“When children are wearing the devices, it kind of submerges them in wherever we want to take them,” Walker said. “When you put on the goggles, it feels almost like you’re there.”
Google has created at least 500 virtual reality field trips for people to experience, including trips to Antarctica, the Taj Mahal in India or the depths of the ocean.
“It looks like you’re literally in the water and fish swimming all around,” Walker said.
Instead of a teacher just talking about a place, the Google goggles make the experience more real, she said. “Today’s kids are immersed in YouTube and everything else, so just showing them a picture doesn’t really engage them in it,” she said.
The student devices are basically smartphones attached to cardboard or plastic goggle cases. A device for teachers allows the teacher to see where the students are looking and relate facts about what the children are seeing.
Walker’s grant will allow her to buy a kit with six pairs of goggles, a teacher device, storage container and chargers, she said. Google also sells kits with 30 pairs of student goggles, but they cost $10,000, and the Hoover City Schools Foundation grants were limited to $2,000 each.
“It’d be amazing to have 30, but I will take six,” Walker said.
That will allow her to work with groups of six students at a time, she said.
She’s hoping to have the kit delivered by the time school starts this month and in the meantime will be looking over the list of field trips to see which ones best align with her second-grade curriculum, she said. The second grade studies national monuments, so virtual field trips to Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty are possibilities. Other potential virtual trips include Monticello (the primary plantation owned by President Thomas Jefferson) in Virgina and a trip that allows children to look at the inside of a volcano, she said.
Walker said other classrooms and/or grades may be able to use the Google Expedition kit as well. She hopes school officials like the kit so much that they will order more, she said.
This is Walker’s second time to get a grant from the Hoover City Schools Foundation. Last year, she received a grant to buy coding supplies for her school, she said.
This spring, the foundation awarded 14 grants totaling $22,000, said Janet Turner, the foundation’s executive director.
The foundation also this summer started a SeedLAB grant program that is designed to help Hoover educators find solutions to problems they face in the classroom. The foundation will pay for groups of teachers to attend workshops together to brainstorm ideas to solve a particular problem.
Groups of teachers submitted applications in June, and up to 12 teams of educators will participate in “shark-tank”-style pitches Aug. 31, Turner said. The SeedLAB advisory board and selection committee will pick up to five teams to receive $3,000 grants, she said.
Between September and May, the teams will have monthly workshop opportunities at businesses and the school system’s central office, working their way to a final showcase and presentation in May 2018, Turner said. The foundation will pay for them to have substitutes on two school days to give them dedicated time to work on their project, she said.
The foundation has budgeted up to $41,000 for this year’s SeedLAB program, Turner said. Some of the money was left over from the foundation’s regular spring grant program for teachers, and other money came from donations, she said. The foundation is applying for grants to help make up the difference, she said.
The SeedLAB program is based on a similar program in the Richland County School District 2 outside Columbia, South Carolina, Turner said.
Two leaders of the Hoover school system’s technology department, Bryan Phillips and Kelli Lane, learned about the program at a Google conference and thought it would be good to implement in Hoover, she said.
SPRING 2017 GRANTS
► Girls Engaged in Math & Science (GEMS): Led by Geri Evans at Bluff Park Elementary; to improve math and science concepts through projects and empowerment — $1,350
► Green Hour: Led by Nancy McGowan at Bluff Park Elementary; to provide an environment in which grade-level mathematics skills can be applied — $2,000
► Traveling the World from the Comfort of School: Led by Amanda Walker at Bluff Park Elementary; to use virtual immersion to improve student learning, retention and understanding of complex concepts — $1,840
► Communities Family Literacy Program: Led by Katie Collins at Gwin Elementary; to improve literacy skills of students and parents who speak English as a second language — $2,000
► Drumming Up Success: Led by Erica Farnham at Gwin Elementary; to decrease behavioral issues, improve student engagement and increase classroom performance — $2,000
► Engage, Enhance, Extend: Learning Through Legos: Led by Jill Foshee at Gwin Elementary; to improve math skills in fraction concepts, terminology, statistical concepts and modeling — $400
► Beads for Needs: Led by Jennifer Vann at Hoover High; to improve special needs students’ business skills in management, marketing, communications and finance — $1,535
► Dashing Through the Curriculum: Led by LaRue Frederick at Riverchase Elementary; to use robotics to increase student understanding of data collection and analysis while improving coding skills — $1,960
► Getting “Series”ous About Circuits: Led by Alice Turney at Riverchase Elementary; to investigate the transfer of energy between energy forms such as sound, light, heat and electric currents — $1,850
► Listening for Learning: Led by Alice Turney at Riverchase Elementary; to create an environment that aids listening-impaired students — $2,000
► Reading in Nature: Led by Alice Turney at Riverchase Elementary; to implement an outdoor language and literacy area that will enhance science, technology, engineering, arts and math education — $815
► Growing Communications: Led by Rebecca Crow at Trace Crossings Elementary; to improve verbal skills in non-verbal and minimally verbal students — $1,980
► STEAM-majigs: Led by Amanda Stone at Trace Crossings Elementary; to use Rigamajigs to enhance writing skills in grades 2 and 4 and math and science principles in grades 3-5 — $2,000
► Integrating Sensory Tools to Increase Student Success: Led by Julie Smith for Trace Crossings and Deer Valley elementary schools; to assist special needs students in improving sensory attributes — $565