Five Virtual Tour Creation Projects for Students

Google’s old VR Tour Creator offered a great way to create virtual tours that could be viewed in your web browser and or in the Google Expeditions app. Unfortunately, Google shuttered both the those programs last year. Fortunately, there is an alternative available in the form of Expeditions Pro which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. 

360 imagery is the backbone of creating tours in Expeditions Pro. To start creating a tour you will need to capture your own 360 imagery or find some online that is Creative Commons-licensed or in the public domain. 

Expeditions Pro lets you add 360 imagery and audio to each scene and point of interest in your tour. The audio has to be recorded outside of the Expeditions Pro and then uploaded to the scenes or points of interest. Any MP3 file will work in your tour. Vocaroo.com and TwistedWave.com are a couple of simple tools for creating an audio recording.

Completed tours can be shared publicly or privately. Your tours can be viewed in your web browser and in the Expeditions Pro app. The benefit of using it in the Expeditions Pro app is that you can guide your class or you can let students guide the class through the tour.  

5 VR Creation Projects for Students

• Virtual reality tours based upon students’ favorite books. (On a similar note, VR to illustrate stories that students have written.)
• VR tours about places students study in geography / history lessons.
• VR tours to illustrate examples of math and science used in the design and construction of landmarks. 
• VR tours to illustrate examples of types of landforms, rocks, waterways, and bodies of water.
• VR tours to illustrate examples of an animal’s natural habitat and range.

Expeditions Pro Tutorial

How to create a VR tour.

Ten Ideas for Building Virtual Tours With Google's Tour Creator

Google's VR Tour Creator makes it possible for anyone who has a Google account and a computer to create their own virtual reality tours to view and share in Google Expeditions. Depending upon how in-depth you want to make your tours you can include many points of interest, narration, and ambient audio. It's a tool that I've been using for a couple of years and recommend to anyone who wants to try their hand at building a virtual tour. Here are ten ideas for tours that you and or your students can build using Google's VR Tour Creator.

1. Tours based on books students have read.
This is a great alternative to a traditional book report or book trailer project.

2. Tours based on stories students write.
Students could even write their entire stories in VR Tour Creator.

3. Tours of historic sites students have researched.
This is one that I particularly enjoy because it gives students the opportunity to get a better understanding of where in the world an event took place.

4. Tours of places students want to visit someday.
Inspire some wanderlust in your students.

5. Tours of examples of math in the real world.
Have students record narration to explain examples of math that can be seen in famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tour or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

6. Tours of examples of geological features.
Jump from place-to-place in Yellowstone explaining geysers and hot springs.

7. Tours of examples of ecological features, floral & fauna diversity.
There is more "off road" Street View imagery appearing all the time. Use that imagery in a tour of a forest.

8. Tours of the range of a species of animal.
This one might be a little tricky,  but you could create a tour of the southernmost and northernmost ranges of a species. Use narration and imagery in the tour to explain why the range ends where it does.

9. Tours of ocean features.
Yes, there is even Street View imagery under water.

10. Tours of things students just find interesting. 
After all, one of the great things about Google Maps and Google Expeditions is just sparking curiosity about new-to-you places.


This one of the topics that we'll explore in more depth during the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. Registration is open now!

My Top 5 Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of special education and corporate training thrown in for good measure. It's teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. That's why I always get excited when readers send me questions like the one I got on Monday from a teacher who was looking for ideas about using G Suite and Google products in his classroom. That question inspired me to make a video and send him the following ideas.


VR Tour Creator
This is Google's free service for creating virtual reality tours. In a social studies classroom students can use it to record virtual reality tours of historical landmarks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, or unique geographic features that spurred the development of civilizations. A playlist of VR Tour Creator tutorials is available here.

Google Earth
Google Earth is available in two versions. The Pro version is the version that you can install on your desktop. That's the version that I prefer if given a choice because it includes more features that the web browser version. Google Earth Pro can be used by students and teachers to record narrated tours and to layer historical imagery on top of current map views. You can find a playlist of Google Earth tutorials here.

Google Books
This is an often overlooked search tool. Google Books provides students with access to millions of free books and periodicals. Google Books really shines when you start looking for work that was published in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. One of the best features of Google Books is the ability to search within a book for a phrase or keyword. Learn how to use Google Books by watching these tutorial videos.

Google Expeditions
This is Google's free virtual reality service. Students can use it to go on more than 800 virtual reality tours. You can either guide students through the tours or let them guide themselves. Take a look at these videos to learn how to start using Google Expeditions.

Google Keep
Google Keep is a bookmarking and note-taking tool that students can use as part of their G Suite for Education accounts. It's a convenient tool to use to save bookmarks with notes. Students can add labels to their bookmarks to make them easy to organize. The best feature is that students can access their Google Keep bookmarks and notes from Google Docs to insert their bookmarks and notes directly into the papers they're writing. Here's a set of Google Keep tutorial videos.

Now You Can Use Your Own VR Tours in Google Expeditions on iOS

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about how to use your own virtual reality tours in the Android version of Google Expeditions. In that video I mentioned that support for doing the same in the iOS version of Expeditions was coming soon. As of today the wait is over. As Google announced on Twitter about an hour ago, you can now use your own VR tours in the iOS version of Google Expeditions.

To make your own VR tours to use in Google Expeditions you will need to use Google's VR Tour Creator in your web browser. To learn how to use the VR Tour Creator, watch this video.



In the following video I demonstrate how to use your VR Tour Creator tours in Google Expeditions.



Watch this video for an overview of how to lead students in Google Expeditions.

How to Use Your Own VR Tours in Google Expeditions

Google's VR Tour Creator is probably my favorite new tool of the last year. I love being able to make my own virtual reality tours and share them with others. Recently, Google added support for VR Tour Creator tours to the Android version of Google Expeditions. This means that you can create your own VR tour then play it back and share it in Google Expeditions. You can even lead other people on your tour through Google Expeditions. In the following video I demonstrate how to use your VR Tour Creator tours in Google Expeditions.


To learn how to use the VR Tour Creator, watch this video.


Watch this video for an overview of how to lead students in Google Expeditions.

Students Can Create Their Own Tours to Share in Google Expeditions

Googles' Tour Creator launched last spring and since then has become one of my favorite tools for history and geography classes. One of my few complaints about it was that while students could easily build virtual reality tours, it wasn't always easy to share those tours with their teachers and classmates. That is about to change. Yesterday, Google announced that the updated version of the Expeditions Android app (iOS support is coming soon) will allow sharing of tours that students build in Tour Creator.

If you haven't tried Tour Creator, take a look at the following tutorials that I created.

How to Use Google's VR Tour Creator (The Basics)



How to Add Points of Interest in Tour Creator


How to Include Narration in Tour Creator


Applications for Education
In addition to making tours for history and geography lessons, students can use Tour Creator to build VR tours based on their favorite books. My detailed directions for that process are available here.

Best of 2018 - How to Use Google's VR Tour Creator

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I'm going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here's one from May.

A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser. Tours are created by selecting locations in Google Maps and then selecting 360 degree Street View imagery. There's also an option to upload your own 360 degree imagery.

This afternoon I made a couple of tours with the VR Tour Creator. The process of creating a tour in the Tour Creator is straight-forward one. Watch my video embedded below to learn how you and your students can create virtual reality tours in Tour Creator.


Updated videos since this post was originally written:

How to Include Narration in a VR Tour:

How to Add Points of Interest in a VR Tour:

How to Share VR Tours With Students:

5 VR Projects for Students

Google's VR Tour Creator is one of my favorite media creation tools. Since its launch in May of this year I have shown it to hundreds of teachers in-person and even more in videos and webinars. I love it because it empowers students to make their own virtual reality experiences rather than just consuming virtual reality content. Here are five ideas for VR creation projects for students.

5 VR Creation Projects for Students

• Virtual reality tours based upon students’ favorite books. (On a similar note, VR to illustrate stories that students have written.)
• VR tours about places students study in geography / history lessons.
• VR tours to illustrate examples of math and science used in the design and construction of landmarks. 
• VR tours to illustrate examples of types of landforms, rocks, waterways, and bodies of water.
• VR tours to illustrate examples of an animal’s natural habitat and range.

Google VR Tour Creator Tutorial Videos

Tour Creator basics.

Adding points of interest to tours.


Learn more about how to use VR tours in social studies by taking my online course, Teaching History With Technology. 

250 Google Tools Tutorials for Teachers

A few years ago I decided to start making video tutorials for the many Google tools that I write about on this blog and feature in some of my professional development workshops. This week I created my 250th Google tools tutorial. All of my Google tools tutorial videos can be found in this YouTube playlist. The tutorials in the playlist cover a wide range of features of Google tools for teachers and students. I've embedded a few of the highlights of the playlist below.

How to Record Audio in Google Slides


How to Measure Distances in Google Earth


How to Create Comic Strips in Google Slides


How to Use Data Validation in Google Forms

How to Use Google's VR Tour Creator

The new school year will be here soon and I haven't taken a break all summer. I'm taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I'll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I'm gone I'll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. 

In May Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser. Tours are created by selecting locations in Google Maps and then selecting 360 degree Street View imagery. There's also an option to upload your own 360 degree imagery.

The process of creating a tour in the Tour Creator is straight-forward one. Watch my video embedded below to learn how you and your students can create virtual reality tours in Tour Creator.

Join Me on Tuesday at 4pm for a Webinar on Google Earth, Maps, and VR Tours

Tomorrow, July 24th, at 4pm Eastern Time I am hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar all about Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google's VR Tour Creator.

During Tuesday's webinar you will learn:
1. How to create multimedia maps.
2. How to build virtual tours.
3. How to collaboratively create multimedia maps.
4. How to map data.
5. Options for multimedia mapping with students who don’t have email or Google accounts.

Click here to register!

About this post: The sale of my professional development online courses and my on-site professional development services provides the funding to keep Free Technology for Teachers running. The resources that I feature in my online courses and webinars are free. However, there is a significant cost associated with creating, hosting, and managing the courses and webinars which is why I am not able to provide them for free.  

More Ways to Add Content to Book Creator Projects - Coming Soon!

Thanks to Amy Burns I just learned about a great, new feature that is soon to be available in Book Creator. The new feature will let you embed content from third-party sites into your Book Creator books. Some of the many third-party sites that will be supported in this new feature include Desmos (an online graphing calculator), Google Maps, YouTube, Vimeo, Google VR tours, and Flipgrid!


Applications for Education
Book Creator was already one of my two favorite tools for making multimedia ebooks. This new feature makes it even better in my book. I can see using this feature to have students include VR tours that they make with Google's VR Tour Creator in the stories that they write in Book Creator.

How to Add Points of Interest to Virtual Reality Tours in Google's Tour Creator

Last week Google introduced the new Tour Creator for making virtual reality tours. I published a tutorial last week that shows you how to create a basic tour. Today, I made a new tutorial that shows you how to include featured points of interest within each scene in your tour. Those points of interest can include image overlays and text explanations. As is demonstrated in my video, adding an image overlay lets you highlight a detail within a scene.

How to Use Google's New VR Tour Creator

A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser. Tours are created by selecting locations in Google Maps and then selecting 360 degree Street View imagery. There's also an option to upload your own 360 degree imagery.

This afternoon I made a couple of tours with the VR Tour Creator. The process of creating a tour in the Tour Creator is straight-forward one. Watch my video embedded below to learn how you and your students can create virtual reality tours in Tour Creator.