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Educators love Google Expeditions – it lets them take their students on virtual field trips across the world and through time right from their classrooms by way of virtual reality. They can experience different cultures and learn about history in a magical way and it’s been a tool that’s transformed education into an engaging and tangential learning experience. Sadly, the Expeditions app will no longer be available for download after June 30, 2021, but there is a good reason for the decision to shut it down and an even better silver lining – Google Arts & Culture.
Arts and Culture is Google’s free initiative to bring the world’s art and culture online. Users can explore museums, heritage sites, and wonders of the world right from their classrooms and homes both with and without VR headsets. Most of the 360 tours provided in Google Expeditions will be migrated over to Arts and Culture and will be accessible not only from its Android and iOS apps but also from the web. This opens up the ability for anyone to experience these tours from any device. Google seems to have decided this so that it would become more accessible during the pandemic and with the massive shift in hybrid learning technology that this year has brought about (read: at-home learning, virtual classrooms through video meetings, and most likely the surge in Chromebook sales).
Google says they hope that the transition of Expeditions to Arts & Culture will provide educators with a bridge to continue to use immersive content to transform their classrooms and enrich the learning experience for their students. I’ve long since been a herald for Google Arts & Culture and today’s news provides me with the opportunity to give you a list of incredible reasons you should check it out. While others have been off playing with core Google services, I’ve always enjoyed taking the time to dig through the site and find interesting and unique things, and today I want to share some of them with you. Be sure to check out these 50 incredible Google Arts & Culture experiences and share them with your students. (Note: Some will require the app while most work on the web. Not all will be linked, but feel free to explore and be sure to turn the site into an icon for easy access!)
- Use a camera filter based on an iconic art style
- Virtually visit museums near you
- Use Google Arts & Culture in VR with daydream
- Explore Harry Potter in the British Library exhibition
- listen along as art comes to life
- Answer art trivia
- transform yourself into an Artwork
- collect art that you ‘like’
- Color in the Pyramids
- learn about culture in-depth
- find museums near you to visit post-COVID
- Take a selfie and see which artist you resemble
- guided tours of museums
- discover art based on color
- Get a weekly dose of culture
- get a street-level view
- paint a Jackson Pollock with paint and string
- guess the famous artwork
- Color famous paintings
- do a visual crossword
- compare cultural moments in time
- Solve artistic jigsaw puzzles with family and friends
- explore headwear from around the world
- see the homes of famous artists
- read stories about literature
- learn about artist’s lives
- Read stories of the past, present, and future of sports
- explore outdoors with 360 videos
- explore space in 360
- see dinosaurs come to life in 3D and AR
- discover classic fashion trends
- (Try to) read historic documents up close
- Open a fantasy map and navigate through an ocean of books
- compose melodies like a maestro
- Fill your favorite painting with your colors!
- Travel around the world with a pesky penguin
- Explore the CO2 footprint for individual foods and diets in the US, France, and the UK
- Dive into an acidifying ocean
- Explore what-if scenarios for climate crisis
- Witness glacial retreat over 140 years
- Decode Egyptian Hieroglyphics with Machine learning
- Enjoy an orchestra in 360°
- Discover what happened today in history
- Project art portraits into your house
- Sketch to discover inspiring artworks
- Discover extraordinary details in Japanese scrolls and screens
- Create your own dance
- See historical connections between pieces of art
- Discover historical events
- Experience shadow art through technology (coming soon)
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