Day 3, Big Ideas

Another long and exciting day in Mountain View. It is late and I'm overwhelmed and exhausted so I'm going to just highlight the areas that peaked my interest the most today. Among sessions on Android Wear and App Building, I attended a session called Daydream in the Classroom. This was focused on using Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence in the K-12 classrooms.

The biggest take away from this is that learning must be immersive to keep kids engaged, interactive which empowers them, and social so they can learn from others and share their knowledge. Google Expeditions now has 600+ virtual reality tours. Students can dive down and explore the bottom of the sea and the next day take a tour of Mars. Companies like Best Buy sell complete kits. There are databases with supporting lesson plans, there are new search features and the app works on tablets or phones. During an expedition students can have annotations on the screen, the teacher can even draw on his/her device and have it shown on the students' individual devices.

So now, using Tango Google has moved from just Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality. Teachers can place a digital object in the classroom and students can walk around seeing this digital object from all angles. There is 360 degree imagery.

This can also be used to teacher professional trade skills in the classroom.  It was stated that in the last 30 years we have made more progress teaching computers to learn artificially than we have made progress teaching humans to learn creatively.

This is definitely a leap we need to explore!

The rest of the day was filled with networking and exploring the Google Campus. I got to visit the Android Garden where they "retire" all the old versions of the Android Operating system.

Lastly I skipped the evening social event to visit my beautiful little niece in Petaluma. San Francisco rush hour put the Long Island Expressway traffic to shame as it took me 3 hours to drive what should have taken an hour and 20 minutes. It was worth it when I got to see this face. 

So, tomorrow will conclude my adventure. Stay tuned for the grand finale...