Google World Wonders Project

World Wonders Utilises Street View Technology

The World Wonders Project supports in learning about the 132 historic sites from 18 countries inclusive of Stonehenge, the archaeological regions of Pompeii together with the ancient Kyoto temples. Besides the man-made sites one can also tour the natural places, explore the sandy dune of Shark Bay of Australia or view the rock domes of Yosemite National Park in California.

You can explore the ancient and the modern wonders of the world in high-res photos and 3D Street View style images. World Wonders utilises Street View technology in taking the user on a computer-generated trip to these iconic sites. The sites comprise of 3D models and YouTube videos of historical locations and users can obtain more details and a wider view of the individual site.

With the Street View technology, the site enables the user to virtually explore around some of the most significant historical as well as beautiful world heritage sites across panoramic street level images. The user gets an opportunity of experiencing these places as though they have been there. Being in partnership with many important organizations, comprising of UNESCO, the World Monuments fund, Getty Images together with Ourplace they have been provided with official information together with photographs of several sites and have brought world heritage sites online in order that users around the world could explore and the same could be preserved for future generation.

Treasured Educational Resource

It is expected that World Wonders would prove to the students and scholars, a treasured educational resource. For classroom purpose, they provide an innovative method of teaching history and geography in schools wherein primary as well as secondary teachers can download teacher guides and lesson plans free of cost from the website and utilise the same in their classroom.

 The website can be explored with the assistance of drop down menus which are towards the top of the page and the sites to be visited can be selected depending on the country for the kind of place, historic sites, palaces and gardens or landscapes and regions. On the other hand you could also utilise the image cassette or the spinning globe to explore and look into a location which may draw your attention.

With the use of Street View car several attractive places across the globe have been visited and have placed the imagery on Street View though some of the world heritage sites have not been accessible by car and hence new technology had been designed in order to record these locations.

Preserving & Promoting Culture Online

A bicycle-based camera system had been designed in order to gather imagery of places like trails, garden, parts as well as archaeological locations, rivers and railways. These images are then digitized and stemmed together to a continuous 360-degree image which can be explored with Street View on Google Maps. A collection of educational packages are made available and one could share the contents of the site with your colleagues.

World Wonders is said to be a fragment of commitment in preserving culture online and in making it accessible to all. With the sponsorships of Google Cultural Institute they have been publishing high resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, digitizing the records of well-known figures like Nelson Mandela and presenting thousands of artworks, through the Art Project.

Head of the Google Cultural Institute, Steve Crossan had mentioned that `Google has been committed in preserving and promoting all kinds of culture online. The World Wonders Project tends to bring to existence numerous of the most significant momentous sites on earth thereby making them reachable to a unique universal audience.