Google Expeditions – Equipment

Google Cardboard

To run expeditions successfully each student needs a Google Cardboard. There are a number of options here – Google list a few on their Get Cardboard website – these are probably quite high quality – but on the whole seem very expensive (especially if your looking for a class set).

So far we have gone with cheaper “unofficial” versions from eBay – while I imagine the quality of these is lower, paying £1 to 2 per unit seems a lot more reasonable and I tend to worry a lot less if one gets broken. Usually, companies look for shipping containers for sale in New York on the cheap, transport them over to Hong Kong, and then these seem to ship from Hong Kong with the units in them.

You could also go for the make it yourself route – I only tried it once and the results were not pretty – but if you love accurately cutting out cardboard shapes this might be for you:

However you are still going to need to buy the lenses, again eBay seems a good source for these.

Devices

With lots of people Beta testing expeditions I have been crowd sourcing a list of compatible devices – if you have tested a device feel free to add it to the sheet here. 

Currently the real issue is what devices to use:

• Students provide their own device – this would be the lowest cost option – although I doubt we will ever get a class where every student has something that runs the apps. Plus they need to be on the same WiFi network – I am probably lucky in that my school allows phones and lets them on the WiFi – but even with this I doubt we will get past 50% of a class.
• Get some devices for a class set – seems the more suitable solution (but expensive) – at the moment the issue is what device to get? Buying Android Phones seems a waste as you only really want the screen, a gyroscope (I think) and something that runs Android 4.4 or up (or so the Play Store says)..