Google brings ‘Connected Classroom’ to South Africa with Vilakazi Street tour

On 13 October 2014, children from schools across the world will visit Vilakazi Street. On the street, they will manoeuvre around many historical monuments, among them, two different houses that have been homes to two Nobel Prize winners, one of which has been turned into a museum.

They will also make their way, not far from the Mandela Family Museum, to the spot a young Hector Peterson was killed and they will at once return to 16 June 1976. The school kids will participate in interactive sessions and ask questions to historians. The kids have taken two such historical trips already. Their first trip was to the 21 Icons exhibition at MOAD and their second was to the Constitution Hill. At first glance, nothing about these three trips is out of the ordinary, they are in fact, made frequently by school kids all year round. But it is different. The kids have made the first two trips and will make the trip to Vilakazi Street without leaving their classrooms.

These virtual field trips are part of Connected Classrooms, an initiative by Google that enables students from countries across the world to take “virtual field trips” through Google+ Hangouts to places they would otherwise never be able to visit. Though the initiative launched in 2013, and has since taken kids to all kinds of places, including space, it is the first time that it is in South Africa.

Google South Africa has put the program together with Pearson and 21 Icons. These virtual field trips enable teachers and learners to discover and explore historical and cultural destinations without leaving their classrooms.

“It’s been exciting working with Pearson and 21 Icons to bring South Africa’s history alive online, and bring together children from around the world to experience it. With the Internet, teachers have access to more resources than ever to explore our culture and history, and foster collaborative learning,” explains Elizma Nolte, Country Marketing Manager for Google South Africa.

Schools get involved in the tours by joining Google+ Hangout, whilst others can watch the Hangout Live on Google+ and YouTube. This allows the students to ask questions and engage in debates. All of this is recorded so that schools and parents can at a later stage watch the field trips.

In conjunction with Connected Classrooms, Google is also running a “Doodle 4 Google” competition, which invites children to create a Google Doodle with the theme: “South Africa of my Dreams”. The winning Doodle will be displayed on the home page of Google South Africa, and the winning school will receive a R100 000 technology grant.

The competition whilst it enables children to get creative, also allows teachers to use the classroom activities provided, to better implement technology as a teaching aid. Besides Connected Classrooms, the activities also include a series of lesson plans developed in conjunction with Pearson.

Technology is forcibly inserting itself into the education sphere and with giants like Google showing an interest in inventing new ways of educating and aiding traditional ways to expand their reach, schools that do not have funds to send their children to field trips can benefit greatly from this initiative.