We are big fans of VR! Starting this year we have several VR/AR kits we are loaning to our school libraries, complete with lesson plans they can use to connect classes with all kinds of great resources.

Sure, it’s fun to play with these. But virtual and augmented reality is playing an increasingly important role in a lot of other areas. We are going to look at a different use each week, so you can work with your community members to help them learn about the great things possible for them today, and tomorrow.

This week, we have a very cool story about a shipwreck that you can explore yourself in virtual reality!

I think this is going to be one of the real benefits of VR to all of us – we are going to have the the opportunity to experience things and to see things that we would never otherwise experience and see! What a fantastic future we have to look look forward to enjoying!!

Watch the video, read the excerpt below, and click on the link to read the entire thing. (Note: the video would look a LOT cooler if you were watching it with our VR headsets!)

Take a Virtual Tour of a 17th-Century Shipwreck

A new VR experience lets users explore the “Melckmeyt” without diving into Iceland’s freezing waters

“In October 1659, the Dutch merchant vessel Melckmeyt was preparing to sail from Iceland to Amsterdam when a violent storm hit. Crew members, one of whom died in the process, spent two days trying to stop the ship from sinking, but their efforts were in vain. The Melckmeyt, still loaded with cargo, plunged to the bottom of the frigid waters off Iceland’s Flatey Island, where the surviving crewmen were stranded for the winter.

Local divers first discovered the remnants of the wreck in 1992, Mindy Weisberger reports for Live Science. Though much of the ship had decayed over the centuries, its 108-foot lower hull was incredibly well preserved. Now, to mark the 360th anniversary of the Melckmeyt’s demise, archaeologists have launched a virtual reality experience that lets users explore the wreckage as it appears today—and see how the ship might have looked in the days after it sank.

Those in Iceland can stop by the Reykjavik Maritime Museum to tour the Melckmeyt (Dutch for “milkmaid”) with a VR headset. Individuals further afield can use a VR headset, computer or smartphone to experience the wreckage via an interactive YouTube video.

Users explore the ship as a diver, clicking and dragging to move around the archaeological site. The three-minute video begins by panning over the Melckmeyt’s ruins as seen today; labels offer identifying details on various parts of the ship. Then, the scene pivots to a reconstruction of what the Melckmeyt, a type of Dutch vessel known as a flute, might have looked like when it landed on the sea floor in 1659. Keep an eye out for a reproduction of Johannes Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid,” which appears on the similarly named ship’s stern at minute 1:58.”