Tech Tools: Metaverse
Written by Debbie Harris, Tech Tools brings you excellent technology tips to inspire you and add creativity to your teaching.

The Technology

Imagine you wanted your students to see a unicorn walking through your synagogue on their screens. Sounds cool, right? That combination of real live scenes with digital characters is known as Augmented Reality—or AR for short (not to be confused with Virtual Reality, which you need those goggles for).

You can create such AR interactive experiences for your students using Metaverse Studio.

Metaverse is a free website and app that lets you create AR experiences using the camera in your phone or tablet. You can create on either Macintosh computers or iOS devices.

To create a new experience in Metaverse, click on “Create new” to launch the storyboard. You’ll need to name the experience, add characters (there are plenty in the app, or you can upload your own), dialogue and actions. As you add scenes, you’ll be able to link them to one another to craft your experience.

Once your experience is finished, you upload it to the Metaverse server. You can choose to make it public, part of a group, or private. You’ll then get a QR code to share with your students. Students will need iOS devices with the app installed to play your experiences. 


In Your Classroom

There’s definitely a learning curve, but this is a great tool to use to create reviews, tell stories or introduce unit. Also, if you have teen madrichim, this is a great task for them to work on.

Samples and Tutorials

    • - For a sample Metaverse experience, grab your iOS device (with the app installed) and scan the QR code here.
    • - While most of these are more for secular school subjects, this list of teacher-created projects can provide some valuable inspiration for your own content.
    • - A tour of Metaverse Studio.
    • - Tutorials can be found here.

FAQs

- Access the website here

- Download the iOS app here

- Teachers will need to create an account in order to create experiences. Students do not need to create accounts.


Debbie Harris is the Director of Educational Technology at Solomon Schechter Day School of Metropolitan Chicago and blogs at http://www.museforjews.com. Reach her at deb@debharris.com

 

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