It seems to be somewhere in between a total loss and simple site move but The Google Expeditions app will be no more after June 30 2021. Expeditions enabled students to take virtual field trips on 360 tours in significant historical or geological locations via Daydream
While the app will go away MOST of the content is said to be moved over to Google Arts & Culture app as 360- degree experiences. The good new is that it will still exist unlike (unlike Scott Pilgrim vs. the World : The Game is getting a updated rerelease after being delisted for the last 6 years ). The bad news is that it’s unclear how accessible in VR the content will be. Google Arts and Culture is a fee app and web destination that gives users access to art and cultural pieces for viewing from the comfort of their personal computer or smart device.
The reasons being listed for the discontinuation are the covid related. Google’s Jennifer Holland dropped the news on Friday in this blog post “Engaging students in the classroom has taken on an entirely different meaning this year,” Holland wrote. She later added: “We’ve heard and recognize that immersive experiences with VR headsets are not always accessible to all learners and even more so this year, as the transition to hybrid learning has presented challenges for schools to effectively use Expeditions.”
Makes sense. It does seem like this would have been something that would’ve just been in the one A.P. class that could never get into. With kids being stuck at home and technology leaping over Google Cardboard this incarnation of educational VR may have just been wrong time at the wrong place.
Hopefully Google Arts & Culture can build on the goals of what Expeditions started as far as interactive educations. Google Arts & Culture is continuing to expand its augmented reality (AR) content using interactive camera features, such as Art Filter and Art Transfer, that help you learn about cultural artifacts in new and engaging ways that would otherwise not be possible to create in the physical world.
See you in class
