PRIESTLEY College students were introduced to the classroom of the future when Google visited for the day.

A team from one of the world's leading internet and technology companies demonstrated how pupils will be able to take field trips anywhere in the world via virtual reality (VR).

Google Expeditions allows teachers to bring abstract concepts to life and for students to 'travel' anywhere in the world simply by putting on a VR headset.

The teacher controls the 'expedition' using a tablet which controls what the pupils see.

"I’d never experienced anything else like that," said IT teacher Tom Heaton.

"It’s nice to see where the technology is going. It’s got this companion app for teachers which gives you more information about what they’re looking at so you kind of become this virtual tour guide."

Priestley's IT department organised the visit from Google but the immersive technology could be used in all kinds of lessons.

Tom, 31, added: "My groups looked at the International Space Station and some of the technology surrounding that.

"So they had a 360-degree view of what it is like to live on the station and saw some of the different laboratories up there.

"One of the history groups did a similar thing with the Great Wall of China. They looked at some of the key areas and historical points along the wall.

"The biology guys looked inside the human body at the heart and some biological systems underwater."

Tom believes that Google Expeditions will keep students engaged with concepts that are hard to visualise.

"We’ve kind of got this impression that VR is just for games," said Tom, who has been at Priestley for nine years.

"The students hadn’t really realised what else could be done with it.

"One of the comments I got which was quite funny was: ‘You can look right down’ and we were hovering over Rio de Janeiro at the time."

And while some believe that the use of technology should be limited in the classroom, Tom reckons we should be making the most of it.

"I’m very much a believer that we should use the technology that is at our disposal," he said.

"Our students are walking around with phones in their pockets that are more powerful than the computers in the labs when I was at school.

"We should be embracing that rather than telling them to switch them off."

DAVID MORGAN