What We Do

3DE works with educators to plan, strategize, build and program classrooms, museums and educational simulations in the virtual worlds of Second Life and OpenSim.

Second Life (http://secondlife.com), created by San Francisco-based Linden Labs in 2003, is a virtual world where people become avatars, travel through all types of virtual islands, interact with other avatars and build beautiful cities and houses and just about anything imaginable.

Since its founding, it has grown into a social network with millions of people with many types of interests, including businesses and educators. Hundreds of universities world-wide use Second Life for teaching and learning.

People in Second Life can program objects and interact with them. They can build cars or spaceships or gaming simulations. They can build instructional classrooms.

OpenSim is the more recent open source version of Second Life. Thousands of virtual islands have been created with OpenSim software, again attracting people with many types of interests.

A main advantage of OpenSim for educators is that it puts total control of the virtual world classroom in their hands. They can build, program, experiment and teach while providing a safe, educational environment free from distractions or interruptions because they control who has access to their virtual world.

3DE not only helps plan and build educational virtual worlds, it also can help link the World Wide Web directly into the classroom. Educators who are familiar with using the World Wide Web in their classrooms can easily use that content directly inside their virtual worlds. Whether it's through a Web-based course management tool such as Moodle/Sloodle, or through Liden Labs' media sharing browser, 3DE is an expert in moving content from the Web or from other sources into virtual worlds.

3DE provides expertise in virtual world planning, programming, building interactive educational tools; building orientation/training areas; building simulations, linking Web-based course management systems into Second Life or OpenSim; creating classrooms; and creating museums.

Our clients include businesses, middle schools, museums and colleges.