We love our unique campus and encourage every prospective family to come to see it in person, as pictures alone just don’t capture the full spirit of our School by the Sea. That said, we know that travel is not always an option, so we set out to create the best possible virtual tour to show off our beautiful seaside campus.
The idea for this project came from Christian Garris ’05, Associate Director of Admissions. Garris thought prospective students at admissions fairs would enjoy seeing the campus through VR Goggles in a 360-degree tour. The communications office agreed the tour would be a great addition to our website. So we set to work.
Like many projects at Tabor, we viewed this as a great practical learning opportunity for students involved with the technology student help desk, a student club organized to help the Tabor community with all of their technological needs. Lianne Petrocelli, the faculty head of the group, helped introduce and coordinate the project. The students joined in our effort eagerly and set straight to work to figure out which buildings and areas would be best to include in the tour. With such a photogenic campus, it was tough to narrow the list down. We settled on seventeen images.
After doing some research on how to capture the images, the group decided to rent an 8K 360 camera called the Insta360 Pro. This type of camera is designed for 360 and VR use, and it fit our needs nicely. The rental order was placed and a week later we were ready to go out and shoot! After a quick training session, we grabbed our gear and moved to our shooting locations; not surprisingly, the students picked up the app-based user interface quickly. In all, the photography was completed in four days and almost entirely shot by our student volunteers!
We are happy to offer this new feature on our website and to our fair visitors and look forward to updating the images, adding sites as time goes on.
If you visit us at one of the many fairs we attend throughout the year, please be sure to ask our Admissions Reps about viewing the tour through our VR Goggles. The goggles provide a truly immersive experience, perhaps as close to being here yourself!
While we will always prefer to show you around campus personally to share what we love most about our school, a campus tour from the comfort of your living room isn’t a bad way to start exploring how Tabor might be the right place for you. Enjoy!
