Beta Launch of Our Virtual World for Education, Edorble

Greetings!

Today we released the first beta of Edorble, a 3D virtual world where teachers and students can come together to talk, browse the web, and explore. We couldn’t be more excited. Go ahead and claim a world at our home page.

We think Edorble is great for online discussions, online office hours, or simply as a space for hanging out and having fun. Take advantage of the sense of space by having your class break into small groups, and have the students “come to the front of the room” to give presentations Use the sense of presence from the avatars to do some role-playing activities. Students can raise their hands to keep the conversations organized. Browse the web together. Edorble can be a place where your class can hang out, explore, and chat. Create a world with other teachers from around the world for global collaboration.

At the core of this beta is a keystone feature: voice chat. The voice chat is spatialized, so you can only hear who your avatar is “close to” in the world.  However, holding down b lets you “broadcast” your voice to everyone in the world. When trying out Edorble, please use headphones as this will reduce the echo caused by sound feedback! When something breaks (and we know it will), you can write in a support request right from the menu that appears when you press escape.

Also in the beta, but heavily under construction, is an embedded web browser in the auditorium. This web browser is “synced”, so whoever is standing in the blue circle is essentially controlling the web browser for anyone else in the room. This way, you can look at web pages together or even watch videos together (things like pause and play are also synced). Websites that are quite complex may not work in this early version of Edorble, and websites that require authentication sometimes don’t behave well.  Nevertheless, we think this is a solid start towards our goal of a highly functional, in-world web browser.

This beta may fail to impress or surprise people that are used to more sophisticated virtual worlds that have been on the market for a while. We have things in the works that will surprise everyone. Also, one of our early goals is to simply provide an easy, free way for teachers to get in a private, 3D world with their students. Currently, existing solutions don’t provide this. It’s also important to note that Edorble is not a public “metaverse” or open world like other virtual worlds; each Edorble world is private.

As always, our north star is the needs, desires, and delight of teachers and students. Let us know what you think, and let us know what you’d like to see in Edorble.

www.edorble.com

For support related questions, email support@edorble.com

For any other questions, email me at gabe@edorble.com