360° media is not the only way to create immersive stories and experiences. In fact, the VR world is wide open for experimentation and innovation! Some tools, like Vizor and A-frame, let you create virtual (digital) shapes and worlds to view in VR. Others help you create interactive elements for 360° photos and video. Tools like Spark AR, Adobe Aero, and HP Reveal allow you to step into augmented reality. Check out some of the tools below to dive further into telling stories with virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.
Adobe Aero – View, build, and share immersive and interactive AR experiences.
A-frame – A web framework for building virtual reality experiences. Make WebVR with HTML and Entity-Component. Works on Vive, Rift, desktop, mobile platforms.
ANIMVR – Enables users to draw & animate in VR, providing a set of tools based on concepts used in traditional animation: like frames, onionskin, multiple timelines etc.
Blender – An open source, cross platform modeling animation and rendering tool.
CoSpaces – CoSpaces Edu lets students build their own 3D creations, animate them with code and explore them in Virtual or Augmented Reality.
Facebook 360 – Resources for producing a wide range of 360 content, including a special section on 360 photos.
Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) – A free tool for image manipulation.
Glitch – A platform and community with free tools to create and use millions of apps, including VR experiences.
Global Nomads Group Virtual Reality Lab – Video resources for experiencing VR content and connecting with other classrooms with the goal of sparking curiosity and cultivating empathy.
HP Reveal – A tool that lets you turn everyday objects into opportunities for augmented reality.
Mozilla Mixed Reality Home – Free tools to create VR experiences.
REACH – A web platform for creating, remixing, and sharing volumetric VR using real people and places. A drag-and-drop interface lets users place real people into high-res 3D environments, and then share the results via a simple web link.
Scene VR – SceneVR (part of the KnightLab) turns your collection of panoramic and VR-ready photos into a slideshow of navigable scenes, allowing you to create unique 360° narratives.
Spark AR – A Facebook tool enabling creation of AR effects that can be layered over people, objects and places.
Storytelling Layers on 360 Video – 2017 Spring, An introduction to 360° video.
Supercraft – A creation tool (built on top of A-Frame) that lets you craft VR worlds, with your hands, all from within VR.
Thinglink – Thinglink enables users to add clickable tags (including text, audio files and embeds Education, teachers and students can annotate 360 media and create interactive infographics, maps, drawings, photos and videos.from across the web) to any image or video and share the tagged media on social networks.
Unity 3D – A cross-platform game engine used to develop three-dimensional and two-dimensional video games and simulations.
Unreal Engine – A tool for creating virtual reality experiences.
Virtual Reality for Education – A site listing a variety of VR in education resources.
Vizor – A virtual reality platform that allows you to create and publish VR content, right in your browser, using webVR.
WebVR – An open standard that makes it possible to experience VR in your browser. The goal is to make it easier for everyone to get into VR experiences, no matter what device you have.
This project is part of a longstanding tradition of organizations helping support young people to make media. To learn more about the youth media world, check out some of these websites and organizations. (Have an organization to add? Contact us to let us know!)
Adobe Youth Voices Essentials – A set of open curricula and resources, created by EDC in partnership with the Adobe Foundation, for educators to create media-making learning experiences for young people.
Arts Corps (Seattle, WA) – A force for creativity and justice in a region where race is the greatest predictor of whether a young person has access to an arts education.
BAVC: Bay Area Video Coalition (San Francisco, CA, USA) – Inspires social change by enabling the sharing of diverse stories through art, education and technology.
The Clubhouse Network (Boston, MA, USA) – The Clubhouse Network: A Global Community For Creativity & Achievement℠ is a program of the Museum of Science, Boston in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab.
Downtown Community Television (DCTV) (New York City, NY, USA) – DCTV’s PRO-TV program has been offering free training to the youth of New York City since 1978, PRO-TV provides positive creative outlets for young people to address the issues affecting their lives and their communities.
Eastside Community Trust (London, UK, USA) – Eastside Educational Trust exists to help young people develop their creative thinking, so they can be the problem solvers of tomorrow.
Educational Video Center (New York City, NY, USA) – a non-profit youth media organization dedicated to teaching documentary video as a means to develop artistic, critical literacy, and career skills of young people, while nurturing their idealism and commitment to social change.
Global Action Project (New York City, NY, USA) – Works with young people most affected by injustice to build the knowledge, tools, and relationships needed to create media for community power, cultural expression, and political change.
The Lamp (New York City, NY, USA) – Brings 21st-century survival skills to youth, parents and educators.
LightHouse Studio (Charlottesville, VA, USA) – Equips young people with the skills and confidence to tell their stories and build community through collaborative filmmaking. Brings young people together to make movies.
National Association for Media Literacy Education (New York City, NY, USA) – A national organization dedicated to media literacy. See their Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the United States.
The One Minutes Jr. (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) – The One Minutes Jr. brings together youngsters all over the world for video workshops to have their voices heard. The One Minutes Jr. is a project of The One Minutes Foundation.
PLURAL + (New York City, NY, USA)- A youth-produced video festival which encourages young people to explore migration, diversity and social inclusion, and to share their creative vision with the world. PLURAL + website includes a list of global youth media organizations and resources.
POV – POV (a cinema term for “point of view”) is a showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV’s website includes a list of Youth Filmmaking Programs.
Recode (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – A social organization committed to digital empowerment and which aims at preparing independent, aware and connected young people who are apt to reprogram the system in which they belong to through the use of technology.
Reel Grrls (Seattle, WA, USA) – A youth organization that mentors girls through media production.
re:imagine/ATL (Atlanta, GA, USA) – Connects youth with resources and mentorship to amplify their voices in media.
Spy Hop(Salt Lake City, UT, USA) – Spy Hop’s mission is to mentor young people in the digital media arts to help them find their voice, tell their stories, and be empowered to affect positive change in their lives, their communities, and the world.
Urban Arts Partnership (New York City, NY, USA) – Advances the intellectual, social and artistic development of underserved public school students through arts-integrated education.
Urban Gateways (Chicago, IL, USA) – Educates and inspires young people by delivering high-quality, accessible arts experiences that advance their personal and academic growth.
YouthLearn (Chicago, IL, USA) – Develops projects at the intersection of informal learning, 21st century literacy, and creative self-expression. YouthLearn’s Media Literacy Toolbox includes activities, handouts, and curricular resources to support media literacy education in a variety of settings—classroom or afterschool program, low-tech or high-tech, children or teens.
Youth Speaks (San Francisco, CA, USA) – Creates safe spaces that challenge young people to find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators.
WITNESS (New York City, NY, USA) – WITNESS works to make it possible for anyone, anywhere to use video and technology to protect and defend human rights.
SDG Action Campaign – The United Nations SDG Action Campaign is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General administered by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and mandated to support the UN system-wide and the Member States on advocacy and public engagement in the SDG implementation.
Sustainable Development Goals – The SDGs, also known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to tackle the world’s most urgent and important challenges by the year 2030. Millions of people — governments, organizations, and individuals, including children and youth — were involved in crafting the agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted in September 2015 by world leaders at the United Nations. The goals are bold and ambitious and will require that everyone, including young people, contribute to making them a reality.
UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development Goals Learning Objectives (pdf) – a guide for education professionals on the use of ESD in learning for the SDGs, and to contribute to achieving the SDGs. The guide identifies indicative learning objectives and suggests topics and learning activities for each SDG. It also presents implementation methods at different levels, from course design to national strategies.
World’s Largest Lesson – introduces the Sustainable Development Goals to children and young people everywhere and unites them in action.
The World We Want: A Guide to the Goals for Children and Young People – a guide to help young people understand the Goals, how they impact their lives and what they can do to help their government achieve the Goals.
Augmented Reality (AR) – The integration of digital information into a user’s view of the real world.
Default Orientation – The initial view that a user will have when your video starts.
Field of View (FOV) – The parts of a video that can be seen by the viewer.
Fine Cut – A close to completed version of all the audio and visual components of a media project – following a rough cut and before a final cut.
Immersion – The perception of being physically present in a non-physical world.
Logline – A brief description of a story.
Rotation Terms:
The terms roll, pitch, and yaw originated from airplane control. When uploading video to certain hosting sites, you may have the option to adjust these settings.
Rough Cut – A “first draft” of an edited media project.
Stitching – The process of combining multiple videos to produce a fully immersive 360° video.
Virtual Reality (VR) – A computer-generated simulation of a 3D environment.
For additional terms, see Facebook 360 and Vimeo 360.
360 Story Lab