Google Cardboard is here to stay. RMIT has produced 5000 RMIT branded Google Cardboards to provide a virtual orientation day for country students who otherwise won’t make it to open day. Called Discover RMIT it’s a pretty cool app with an embedded quiz to help students find their way to appropriate programs. You can download the apps on itunes or the play store.

But wait there’s more…

We have heard that there is another project afoot giving 100,000 cardboard sets to prospective students. If prospective and new students are going to be turning up with Google Cardboards, we think it is important that staff are prepared as well. We have some sets to give away. All you have to do is let us know, in the comments below, your idea for what you think Cardboard could be used for in learning and teaching.

Yesterday I gave a presentation to our library staff on Libraries and Innovation. I asked for their ideas on how they might use Cardboard. Here are some of their ideas.

I am thinking about students using Google cardboard to browse picture books, develop games, combine a variety of curriculum materials to create innovative lessons etc.  Possibilities are probably endless. June Frost

Use google 360 / cardboard to highlight items from the Library’s special collection. Joanne Gillespie

Your ideas please

What are your ideas for using Google Cardboard for learning at RMIT? You can check for ideas here or here. If you are staff or a student place your idea in the comments below and we will send you one.

Feedback

The following feedback has been carried over from our previous site. Please add your comments using the comments form at the bottom of this page.

1. A research project investigating the short and long term impact these probably have on eyesight.

   • Yes a good idea. I wonder if Oculus Rift or Google are researching this

2. What a great initiative! Well done – I teach imaging as well as 3D packaging and this product is such a great concept, I cant wait to show the students

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   • Thanks Meredith.

3. Perhaps a neat little adverty thing in which you get, say 3 students, to show neat or favourite things about, for example:
   i) Their uni;
   ii) Their favourite nook in the city, or the neatest thing about studying IN the city;
   iii) Perhaps them interviewing a favourite lecturer about what makes their degree special/cool/etc

   • Good ideas thanks Julian. I like how cardboard might personalise one’s experience.

4. Howard, i could see an immediate use for cardboard in conjunction with the orientation program, or preferably first year first semester courses, for students to get to know each other virtually before they arrive on campus. I’ve just been playing with VTime which is a virtual social space and thinking it could be used or adapted so students can connect with other RMIT students.
   Also, Patricia Dawrish from the library mentioned last week that Leon Levin and Peter Singer from BUSM1311 – The Entrepreneurial process, might be interested in using cardboard in their course.

5. I agree with Jo Cramer’s comments (in the google+ group)
   – use it to create virtual tours of facilities, campus and also capture the student experience or ‘day in the life’. Each student / applicant / parent will have a different take on what matters and what they want to see, so a few versions would be good

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   • Thanks Claire.

6. I have 50 cardboard viewers lying around for my class – but I need more content.

   It would be great if RMIT could invest in good spherical video cameras that we could borrow and take out to the construction sites we visit. We can then bring the construction site experience into the classroom. We could use that to also develop immersive advertisement material, e.g. for Open Day to show interested applicants what Construction Management is about.

   Another idea that these cameras could be used for: Create a spherical video showing the “life of a student at RMIT”. E.g. show what classroom activities look like for the different programs. So, if we have new students coming from a different country, they already have a better understanding how we teach here and how it may be different from what they are used to at home, because they were able to “experience” some of this through an immersive, spherical video.

   If we overcome privacy issues, we may even allow our students to experience recorded tutorials/workshops with this technology.

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   • Terrific ideas Frank, particularly as we will become more involved with the Collaborative Online International Learning program (COIL)

7. Looks interesting Howard. I’m not sure how it works to provide comment on what to do with it, sorry. I’m intrigued though…if it is Virtual Reality I personally find it a little scary as I have suffered BPPV a form of vertigo in the past and wonder how it would affect someone like me? All up for innovation though but there needs to be alternatives for people like me 🙂

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   • Interesting to know. I wonder if the factors built into the Oculus Rift which allow for those factors that cause dizziness and vertigo to be corrected. They have partially solved it. I watched the Samsung diving with whales and dolphins 360 video recently. It was great for to be travelling in a boat and not feel seasick. And I will send you a cardboard for a play.

8. From Paul Gough: Schools day at NGV; a possible RMIT sponsored day where pupils enjoy a game, exhibition app designed at DSC RMIT and is linked to an NGV RMIT sponsored event?

9. In terms of an audience of prospective regional students, there are lots of ways they could be visually introduced to RMIT. I’m thinking of “a day in the life” style video where students enrolled in different areas stepping folks through typical parts of their day. From different learning spaces (studios/social learning spaces/wet labs/SAB) to living at the rmit accommodation to getting off the train at Melbourne Central. When I helped a contact from regional Australia planning to leave home for uni, she wanted to understand the logistics. Helping prospective students to imagine themselves into the life would be a big help.

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10. Yes it would be great if students could have more of an “inner map” before they arrive.

11. Great idea Howard! VR is being used increasingly to treat a range of psychological disorders. Could we use Google Cardboard to help students in relevant disciplines get a sense of what these types of treatments involve?

12. Mark Smithers recently told me about VR being used with fear of flying. I am sure Google Cardboard and other VR could be helpful for practicing exposure for all sorts of scenarios. Thanks for the contribution.

13. We have a new project emerging around Wikidata, which is a way of creating and handling datasets of just about any kind. Wikidata makes it possible to display data in useful ways across all the language versions of Wikipedia for example, and Open Street Maps for another example. I’m curious to find out how spherical images and video might be handled in such database, and presented in projects like Wikipedia and Open Street Maps.

    • Interesting comment Leigh and I look forward to seeing where your curiosity leads!