This grant was for the purchase of six Google Expeditions kits for youth to experience "field trips" to places they likely will never be able to go. The library uses them regularly for their Tuesday and Thursday after school program.
"The 3-D images really capture the attention of the kids," says Dan Gehring at the library. "They look forward to the 'field trips'. They may say when they come to the library, 'Where are we going today?' We have 'gone' to the International Space Station, New York City, the Northern Lights, the underwater Florida Keys, the Egyptian pyramids and Great Sphinx, polar bears in the Arctic, the Amazon, Petra, rock climbing in Corsica, and more. The leader of the expeditions, that's usually me. With the tablet computer, [it] does not see a 3-D image, just a regular image; but, in addition to the image, a script appears on the screen that explains about what's being seen. I'm learning a lot from these 'field trips' and so are the kids. We only have a small group for our after school programs. Right now, the 6 viewers are adequate to meet our needs. It's working out very well. The Google Expedition we do is only a few minutes. It settles the kids down and after that we move right into our main activity."