You’re walking through the streets of Paris on your way to the Louvre. Upon entering the museum you pause at the Venus de Milo before heading down the long corridor to see the Mona Lisa. As an art student, the chance to study Da Vinci’s masterpiece up close is a once in a lifetime experience—and you’re doing it without ever leaving the classroom. Instead, you’re watching it through the eyes of your professor who is traveling abroad and with the help of Google Glass is streaming a live feed that takes you along for the journey.
This might see like a scenario too far off to consider, but for students and faculty at Morningside College in Sioux City, the possibility is real. The director of Technology for the college, Marcie Cambigue was selected to be part of the Google Explorer program after entering a contest in February and she now has her own pair of Google Glass to try out.
“Wearable technology right now seems to be the going thing and voice activation and gesture seem to be replacing touch,” says Cambigue. “We’re looking at how these things can be used in the classroom to allow our students to be better prepared for the world four years from now.”
Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display. The lenses of the glasses are like a computer screen, allowing you to see information much as you would on a traditional laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone except the data doesn’t interfere with your line of vision. You can take pictures, record videos, surf the Web, videoconference via Google Hangouts and receive information like directions or language translation in real-time. Other than its obvious cool factor, Google Glass has a very real potential to greatly enhance education.
On a practical level, Morningside College is using the technology in its computer science classes where students are developing apps for Google Glass.
“It gives the them the ability to write apps for some of the newest and latest technology. We’ve already got a professor here on campus that will be incorporating that in a fall class,” says Cambigue. Being a Google product, Glass runs on an Android operating system, which is essentially how the students will design and build their apps.
Cambigue picked up her Google Glass at the company’s Mountain View global headquarters on June 24th. Since then, she and her colleagues have only begun to scratch the surface of what the technology can do. “There’s just so many different applications and so many different ways you can use this,” she says.
Drawing inspiration from fellow explorers, Cambigue sees the value of Google Glass for the health and science students. She says doctors are using Glass to take video or pictures during a surgery. Imagine having a front row seat to a complicated operation as a medical student. The kind of knowledge you’d gain would be impossible to imitate in the classroom. It also takes telemedicine to another level.
“If you are a nurse in a remote area and a doctor needed to do an exam, it would just be a
