The last day of AltspaceVR is tomorrow, March 10, 2023, at 10AM Pacific Time. As co-founder and director of Educators in VR and member of the AltspaceVR community since 2016, I face leaving my home for many years in the metaverse, and a place where Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and I raised a business and watch it grow to over 4,000 members from around the world. The moment comes with a sense of great loss, but also joy as Educators in VR continues forward, carrying with us the lessons learned from our experiences in AltspaceVR teaching and hosting over 800 educational VR events annually.

Tomorrow, Microsoft will be turning out the lights on AltspaceVR, sending our creative bits and pieces into dust and history.

What is left will be our memories, relationships, and stories.

Oh, the stories.

I will never forget meeting a teacher in a refugee camp in Columbia. He’d found an old Oculus Gear headset, put it on and found a magical place for his students to travel beyond the barbed wire fences. In broken English, he told me that he believed he was the only teacher in the world who saw the potential of VR to change education forever. I told him he wasn’t alone, that I was a teacher using VR. He started to cry, and so did I. He realized he wasn’t alone.

The next day, I told a couple other teachers and we all agreed we needed a meetup to bring teachers together to talk and learn from each other. Each of us were pioneering the mountain of immersive education alone. Together, think of what we could do.

A few weeks later in November 2018, we anticipated 20 or 30 people at the event. Over 180 people showed up. We were stunned. A few months later, Daniel and I formed Educators in VR as a membership educational organization, and look at what we’ve accomplished together!

Over 4 years later, Educators in VR has hosted events on 20+ VR platforms. Our Educators in VR Teams have grown to 25 including three multicultural teams discussing XR immersive technology in Spanish, Chinese, and French. We continue to be pioneers, pushing limits and testing boundaries.

With your help we’ve built a strong community independent of a VR platform. We’re very proud of that. We hosted educational workshops on ENGAGE XR since the beginning of 2019, so much so, it became our second home. We are treating our migration from AltspaceVR to ENGAGE XR as a change of address. We’re literally picking up shop and moving it to the new platform. When you arrive, it will feel like home – okay, we’ve planned a little remodeling but it will still be familiar.

All are welcome. While we suggest you create a paid account in ENGAGE XR to explore your own teaching and educational potential there, you may register for a free Lite account and participate in all of our events.

After a short break in March for daylight savings time, we are back in ENGAGE XR with our events. We will also be hosting events on other platforms and exploring the platforms to help you learn more about their teaching potential.

April 5, 2023

Aviation and Flight Simulator Meetup: Join us in ENGAGE XR for our Aviation Team’s meetup exploring the XR aviation industry including flight simulators, air traffic control simulators, space exploration simulators, and the aerospace industry’s use of XR technology for training and education.

LEARN: AI in XR: We are exploring the uses of Artificial Intelligence in VR environments including ChatGPT and hopefully the new AI in ENGAGE XR that acts as your personal assistant and support contact. This is an update to the event in January that filled up fast, so mark ATTEND on the event to reserve your spot.

World Builders Meetup: We’ll be bringing our World Building Team back together to talk about where people have placed their worlds in the metaverse after the closure of AltspaceVR and discuss the lessons learned in the process.

Choosing a VR Headset: The EDVR Virtual Hardware Team is back to help you choose headsets for yourself, your class, school, or business. They are keeping up with the latest hardware technology to help you plan your budget and make decisions to find the right VR headset to match your specific needs.

Conversational Intelligence in VR: The EDVR VR Coaching Team is hosting a special workshop to discuss conversational intelligence, and the power of our hardwired and learned abiolity to connect, engage, and navigate with others through a shared concept of reality. They will explore the power of language and our capacity to communicate effectively, productively, and improve our connections and networking skills.

April 6, 2023

How to Research in VR: The EDVR VR Research Team continues their popular introduction to how to research in and with VR, the tips, technologies, theories, and analysis technologies associated with immersive technology research of all subjects.

April 11, 2023

Celebrate ENGAGE XR: Join us as we celebrate the expansion of our home in ENGAGE XR. We’ll be celebrating this innovative social and business XR platform and share with you exciting news about what is coming up this year, and catch up with everyone!

This is just the start of the month. We have events with all of our teams, and some new teams to be announced soon. Subscribe to our Google EDVR Calendar to keep up with all our events.

Check out our events on ENGAGE XR, and be sure and mark ATTEND on our events to ensure a seat.

The closure of AltspaceVR is an ending, but it is also a beginning. We will carry the lessons learned, the transformative experiences we’ve shared with us. And watch out. As we spread ourselves across the metaverse, we are changing it! For good!

Thank you, and see you in ENGAGE XR in April!