World Trip ~ By Shannon

World Trip!

A few days ago Glenbrae School had gone on a world trip. Let me explain it to you soon. For our world trip we went to Room 3, Maru had come to our school, we were the 28th school they had visited out of the thousands of schools in New Zealand, so we were very lucky.

When we arrived, we could see a cardboard view master with a smartphone inserted. Mrs Parker and Maru explained what we had to do like hold it from both sides so the phone doesn't fall out and when we press the cardboard “button” down, it would zoom in. Mrs Parker controls the phone on a tablet, so where ever she presses on the tablet, we go there. When I put on the “Google goggles”, I didn't know it would look 3D, I thought it’ll just look like a normal smartphone screen, but no, it was 3D, because there were some glasses in there. Maru said that they’re still deciding if they want to release the app or not, so we kinda got a sneak peek and just to let you know they are real life photos… so we couldn't go to the other planets like Jupiter, Saturn and the others.

After that, Mrs Parker told us to carefully grab one and wait for her to take us to our destination. We first went to the Volcanoes, I got so scared, because it looked like I was standing in lava. It look SO REAL! We went to so many places, but I especially liked the Slovenia caves and space. I really liked space, because we I learnt that the Milky Way goes all around our galaxy. As I said before we went to so many places, but I can only write about two so let's talk about space now!

In space we saw the Earth’s atmosphere, the Sun, the Moon, Mars and the Stars/Milky Way. On Mars it was just grey and students were asking why it was that colour, because we all knew that it was a bright colour. Mrs Parker said “Because it is night time, during the day time it’s bright.” We also went on the Moon, and saw Neil Armstrong. It was really scary, because we were kinda like flying and it was really high.

After a few places, we went to the Slovenian Caves in Slovenia, near Italy, but I've been to the Caves somewhere in New Zealand. It looked really similar, but there were glow worms.

To read more of Shannon's work go to her personal blog gbsshannonw.blogspot.co.nz

Google Expedition ~ By Luisa

Google Expedition

Has there ever been a time where you want to go to somewhere but plane tickets are expensive. Well, Google HQ created a special type of technology that can take you to different places without actually going. Room 7 took a world wide tour to amazing places with spectacular views. We used Google goggles called Cardboard viewmasters with a smartphone inserted. Out of those amazing places my two favourite places we visited was the Slovenian caves and the Great wall of China.

The Slovenian caves were mind blowing. Throughout the tour of the cave Mrs.Parker explained the different informations about the cave and how she had visited the cave three years ago. Turns out the cave is over ninety million years old, it’s even older than the dinosaurs. Some of us tried to get closer to the cave but just bumped into each other. We discovered that the cave creates these type of rock statues made by a special type of liquid. The caves were very large but had such low entrances with Stalagmites and stalactites hanging over which also create the rock statues.W

My second favourite place we had visited was the Great wall of China.  We visited the Great Wall of China when we were looking at the Seven Wonders of the world. As we were standing from a distance the view of the Great Wall of China was spectacular. The Great Wall of China was built 2,220 years ago and the wall is about 5,500 miles which would take a long time to walk from one end to another.

What a fabulous experience that was. To put on the view masters and going to all those places were so surreal. A couple of times I tried reaching out to touch the objects in front of me but was actually just waving my hand in front of myself. This a experience of a lifetime that I hope I can try again.

Read more of Luisa's work on her personal blog gbsluisam.blogspot.co.nz

World Tour with Google Expeditions

Today Glenbrae School went on the trip of a lifetime.... except we didn't really go anywhere. 
We stayed right here at school. But we each were given a viewfinder, with a Google Expeditions app loaded. Using the teacher console we were able to explore amazing places all around the world. We got to stand in a lava flow on the famous Russian volcanoes. We went deep into the 90 million year old Slovakian caves. We explored the Battleship Missouri and the Hiroshima peace memorial in Japan. We went out into the earth's atmosphere, and even further into Space. We landed on the Moon and looked back at the Earth and the Milky Way. 
It almost seemed real.... "We had a good experience using the google viewers Going to Mars and going to the moon" 
"It felt like I was really there but it was in my imagination, I'm thankful that Google provided this for us" ~ Charlie
"I loved learning about different layers of the Slovakian caves and how the stalactites and stalactites were made" ~ Charlie 
"Being above Earth was surreal" ~ Luisa