Google ‘Tour Creator’ Lets Anyone Build VR Tours Using Streetview And Their Own 360 Photos
Google launched Tour Creator a few days ago. The web-based tool lets you build a VR ‘tour’ using Google Street View imagery and the bonus is that you can even add your own 360 photos, if you have that available.
The interface is designed with educators and pupil in mind and is all simply drag-and-drop. The flexibility of tour creator is that you can choose any points of interest within the Google Street View maps and add extra texts, or points of interest if you like.
I gave it a try for the area I live near and came up with this in 15 minutes of quick playing around....
With the Virtual Tour you can save any tour you have made and also publish it, for public or private use. The ability to import tours to the Google Expeditions app is not available yet but will be very soon states Google.
Being able to create an Expedition and share it with a classroom of pupils is a great opportunity for technology being able to bring people closer, to understand other people worlds. Not every pupil will need a VR headset as this can be created and used on a laptop attached to an interactive whiteboard, but for those that are lucky enough to have a class set the sense of immersion and engagement would be outstanding I think.
I am a huge proponent on VR as we are lucky enough to have purchased the PlayStation VR last year and have used it in numerous lesson. The level of engagement and excitement is palpable when the technology is bought out to enhance the lesson and many examples can be seen in the links below.