A group of us (librarians and educators at the Community Virtual Library) visited the virtual world of 3rdRock to experience Alice in Wonderland in a 3D immersive environment. Wow! This was not only reading but entering the book!

A librarian at the University of Hawaii created this immersive storybook complete with various scenes from the story with passages of text. Thinking about how children (as well as readers/learners of all ages) will experience literature in the future was a fascinating topic during our tour. Talk about metaliteracy! We enjoyed conversing at the Mad Hatter’s tea party!

While we were fully immersed in the 3D storytelling, we were not wearing virtual reality headsets. Virtual worlds are viewed on a desktop and we believe they are part of virtual reality. Desktop VR allows for many productive tools built into the interface and is less uncomfortable than the “trapped feeling” I get with my VR headset. Of course, as VR evolves, it may become more comfortable. Who knows what the future holds for VR but it may not be ready for young people since research has not been done on how it impacts developing minds. In a virtual world, students could create their own storybook content or develop 3D objects on various subjects. Building in VR currently requires additional programs like Unity or Unreal Engine.

Watching a machinima of our Wonderland virtual field trip does not do is justice! You really need to “be there” inside the story, but this video is meant to archive the event. The group started out in Kitely at the CVL Hypergrid Resource Library and then jumped over to 3rdRock to visit Wonderland as part of the ACRL Virtual World Interest Group which is part of the American Library Association.