[Editor’s Note: The winners have been chosen. We received many creative and enthusiastic entries.  Congratulations to:

Glenmerry Elementary School in Trail BC

Ralph McCall School in Airdrie AB

and Scarborough Village Alternative Public School in Scarborough ON.

Each of these schools have won a Google Expeditions prize package!]

Field trips are great for kids. Unfortunately, due to logistics, expense and numerous other factors, most really cool trips are not even contemplated—the Great Wall of China, for example. However, Google has designed a great kit, Google Expeditions, that can help kids get a lot of the benefits of travelling to exotic destinations away from the classroom using the coolest technology available, virtual reality (VR). Take your classroom to distant lands, to ancient cities, or to the depths of the ocean. Google Expeditions is revolutionary. Enter your school for a chance to win one of three Google Expeditions kits from Best Buy and Google, and your students will explore the world like never before.

I am incredibly impressed with this technology. Any school with this technology will instantly be able to bring the world to its students. Research has shown that students with more field trip activities at school are better critical thinkers, have higher historical empathy, and higher cultural tolerance. I truly believe that students who take the virtual field trips to distant lands and times long past offered through Google Expeditions will be more aware of their history, their relationship with the rest of the planet, and be more well rounded individuals.

First watch this video that explains a little about Google Expeditions, then read the details about how to enter to win a Google Expeditions kit for your school.

 

What equipment comes with a Google Expeditions kit

Each kit comes with virtual reality viewers, student devices and a teacher device. The plastic VR viewers are comfortable and durable. Insert the carefully crafted student device into the viewer and the student is all set to start an expedition. The 10 inch teacher device enables the teacher to control the VR experience for all of the students at once. Expedition kits will be available in a range of sizes from Best Buy: all of the prizes for this contest will contain enough devices for 10 students to enjoy the experience at a time.

Who can enter this contest*

  • Canadian elementary schools
  • Canadian high schools
  • One entry per school submitted via the school’s official email address or social media account, or the official email address or social media account of a faculty member

How to enter

We want you to have fun with your video! You have up to two minutes to show us who you are, give us a feel of your school, and tell us why your students should win a Google Expeditions kit.

Videos will be judged on:

  • Creativity – Think outside the box and do something different!
  • Originality – Show us who you are!
  • Relevance – Explain why you think your school deserves this awesome prize!

Remember to include the name of your school and your city within your video

  1. Email: Videos can be submitted by sending your video link to laurmitchell@bestbuycanada.ca during the open submissions period of this contest with the subject line: Video Submission: Google Expeditions Contest. School Name.
  2. Social Media: Videos can be submitted through social media via YouTube or Facebook upload. Schools must tag Best Buy Canada and use the official contest hashtag (#ExploreWithVR)

Please remember, all submitted content must be your own, and by submitting a video you agree to the contest rules and regulations (available at the bottom of this article)

What will you win

The top three videos will each receive one 10-student Google Expeditions kit valued at $6,000 for their school.

This contest will run from May 15, 2017 to June 4, 2017.  Winners will be announced on June 12th.

Remember: you must submit a creative video from your schools social channels or email and include the official hashtag #ExploreWithVR. This is a great prize so only the best videos will win. Tell your friends, your kids’ schools, and any teachers in your life. They would not want to miss this amazing opportunity to enrich the lives of the children in their care.

Good Luck

 

We frequently have many contests running at Best Buy so check out the “contests in progress” page for more great contests to enter.

 

Google Expeditions Video Contest Rules and Regulations

* this competition is not open in Quebec
Martin Renaud
Martin Renaud
Editor in Chief
Martin loves working with the talented editors and writers on the Best Buy Blog as Editor-in-Chief. During his spare time he is either working on his next novel, cooking up a masterpiece in the kitchen, or adding some smart tech to his new home on Mayne Island in British Columbia.
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31 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Julie,
    We understand that there are many Canadian schools that teach in French or have French immersion programs so both French and English can be part of your school’s identity, so yes you can include French in the Video. However, the prize, Google Expeditions, is not yet available in French (which is why Best Buy was not able to offer this contest in Quebec) so if your school won you would still receive an English prize.
    Good Luck!

  2. The winners have been chosen and are listed at the top of this blog article. I was very impressed with the effort, enthusiasm, and teamwork that schools across Canada put into their video submissions. There were many very creative entries.

  3. Hi I was wondering if the VR sets came with different sizes to fit different sized heads. I just want to know if the sizes are adjustable or if we would have to adjust our head size.
    Thank you.

    • I have not seen the headsets but since these are intended for school aged children I would expect they can be adjusted. I’ll reach out to the team managing Google Expeditions and let you know the answer soon. I don’t know how you would go about adjusting head sizes.

  4. When will the announcement of the winners of the contest come. It was understood that the announcements will be made on the 12th of June. No such announcements can be found. Please respond as soon as possible with instructions to know where the announcement will be found. Thank You.

  5. Thanks for this great opportunity. All seems very well thought out. I just had an issue with one thing in particular. The requirements of this wonderful contest state that you ” have up to two minutes”. This can be understood as the maximum time limit for the video submission of the contest is two minutes. However, after scanning through the comments of this contest, it could be understood that it was acceptable to submit a submission that was longer than two minutes. All this is fine but the issue comes in when many great submissions that had a duration of longer than two minutes were cut down and shortened which in turn led to some great ideas and scenes to be cut out of the final submission for certain schools. Having a video that exceed the time limit results in an unjust advantage as many other schools had restricted the submission length to merely two minutes. I understand that all personages involved in the creation and management of this contest had striven to make it as equitable as possible but this complication in relation the time limit is truly vexatious. As I am nowhere near as astute as the managers of this appreciable contest, I am not able to come up with a proposition to remove the effects of this unintentional double standard but I am confident that you guys will have an exceptional idea. I await your response

    Concerned Contestant

    • I would like to correct myself. It seems that I have forgotten a period after my last sentence in the comment above. My negligence has resulted in that typographical error.

      Sincerely
      Forgetful Contestant

  6. Thank you for providing this contest. I work as a Lead Teacher for Instructional Technology in 11 different schools, and I am trying to inspire others to use new technology to enhance students learning. In the filming of this, I learned how few even knew what a Google Expedition was, and now I have made it a goal of mine to ensure that the word is spread and teachers are educated as to what these are and how they can make their students more engaged. Best of luck to all of the schools who submitted videos.

  8. Hi Best Buy, we had just realized that the video has to be within 2 minutes….well our video is around 3 minutes then when we were looking for the email to send it today we had realized that it has to be within 2 minutes. Is this acceptable or will we have to edit our video?

    Sincerely,
    Scarborough Village Public School

  9. Just realized that the video has to be within 2 minutes, but our video is around 3 minutes before realizing that it had to be within 2 minutes. Will that be acceptable or do we have to change some things?

    Sincerely,
    Scarborough Village Public School

  10. Hi Martin,
    We’ve posted our video to our Facebook page as directed above. Should we also e-mail a link, or is that sufficient?

    • did you use the official hashtag #ExploreWithVR and tag Bestbuycanada? If you did then we can see it on Facebook.

  11. We’ve shared this through our Facebook page. Just wondering if that’s enough for the submission or should we e-mail as well?

  13. Hi Martin, I am going through the rule and regulations and had a quick question. Can the video include commercial music? Like a music bed? Or does the video need to be 100% original, free from copyright content.

    • As this was not stated in the rules there are no restrictions like that for the submission. However, I request a ton of videos from the writers who review products for the blog and since I give them the freedom to experiment (I want their perspective to be honest and original so customers get an accurate, and interesting take on whatever product it is). As such sometimes the writer will include commercial video or even film footage (if the review is of a TV for example) and YouTube will often block that video from showing due to copyright issues. It’s annoying since the writer will then have to edit out the commercial content which takes a lot more work.

      It’s something to be aware of in case you plan to load it to a service like YouTube.

  14. This sounds like a great contest. Just a a quick question. Do devices (the phones) come provided in the kit given or do they have to bought separately in order to utilize these kits? Thanks!

    • Yes. As I wrote above, “Each kit comes with virtual reality viewers, student devices and a teacher device.” The student devices are like phones; they fit into the viewers to create the VR experience. The teacher device is a tablet that enables the teacher to control everything the students experience during their virtual field trips.

    • Hi Julie,
      We understand that there are many Canadian schools that teach in French or have French immersion programs so both French and English can be part of your school’s identity, so yes you can include French in the Video. However, the prize, Google Expeditions, is not yet available in French (which is why Best Buy was not able to offer this contest in Quebec) so if your school won you would still receive an English prize.
      Good Luck!

  17. This is awesome! I’m going to get my students and fellow teachers to help me enter this!

  18. This sounds like a really cool contest. I’m going to share it with everyone I know who works at a school.

Comments are closed.