School pilots new virtual reality platform

Space exploration for public schools was limited to field trips to the planetarium in the 20th century. But now virtual reality technology is bringing the planetarium to the classrooms — like those at PS 213 in Oakland Gardens.

On Karen Glover’s fifth-grade class’s mission to Mars Wednesday, kids held cardboard glasses strapped to mobile devices up to their eyes as she walked them through their exploration of the surface of the fourth rock from the sun.

As the children wondered why, the atmosphere in the images they were looking at was white and gray and the ground was red all the way to the horizon. Glover encouraged them to seek out their own answers.

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