Avatar-based Search

I just spotted 3B Village and got excited about the possibilities. With so many schools locking down technology-maybe we could use this to do selective searches and allow the students the same interactivity they are looking for.

First what is 3B Village?

3B Village is an amazing web browser it also has some chat features possible for collaboration. It is basically a free 3D browser. It allows you to create your own 3D rooms which have walls lined with webpages that you selected . You use an avatar to wander the rooms visiting various websites and can even chat with other virtual visitors.

I can see how it could be especially useful for creating topic based research/ treasure hunts and other collaborative tasks for groups of students working virtually. At first glance it seems a much ‘safer’ environment to take students into and navigate rather than second life. Plus you are creating the rooms with an educational purpose behind your selections.

It is very easy to create your own rooms for your class and then just invite them along. You can generate a ‘quick room’ using a range of other sources, like Flickr , Google, and you can even generate rooms full of TeacherTube videos.


Find more videos like this on Classroom 2.0
Here are some ideas I read from another blog-I would site it but I forget to copy the URL-

• Create theme based rooms and store the resources in a special 3B room(s) so that groups of students can work together virtually searching for and sharing information
• Create film shows from Teachertube/Youtube that students can watch together. They can then do their viewing tasks together and discuss them as they watch.
• Students to create their own collection of study bookmarks as a project to share with other students
• Create rooms based on materials from Flickr or other photobooks.
• Students can work together to create a 3B room or village which represents their town.
• Students can visit a 3B city and write a report on it, plan a visit to that place based on the resources they access there.
What I like about it
• A nice collection of rooms already created including some for kids
• You can either create rooms quickly using searches through various online content such as Flickr, YouTube, or Google, or you can hand pick websites to create a customised room specifically for your students
• It’s simple to use
• It’s free
• At 14Mb it’s not too huge a download
• Love wandering round the YouTube video type rooms and this may well be a way around institution that block YouTube!!?

The site is http://3b.net/browser/demo.html

Check out the video I uploaded to see how it works on the video page