VR Chat

Intro

VR Chat is a community-based platform where you can interact with people and play games with them. You can create your own avatar, enter a world, and just start chatting! There are plenty of worlds to choose from, and you can save your favorite ones. You can change the privacy settings of the worlds: for example, a world that is open to anyone vs. a world only you and your friends can enter. You can do a lot with the settings, whether it's to increase your sense of security, or just to prevent your computer from being overloaded with data. 

VR Chat is a free platform. There is a plus version for $9.99 per month and $99.9 per year in which you can access more avatars than the basic version. You can customize your icons, collect up to 100 favorite, have an increased trust from VRChat Plus, have a supporter badge, and enhance your invite messages. 

Avatar feature shield settings: visibility of other avatars can be modified. 

• Number of users: 80

• Ease of use:  Easy - Medium

• Platforms: 

• Best for: Meeting interesting strangers lol (one sentence or so just getting across what it works best for)

• Motion Options: Natural & Teleport 

Intro video from Oculus: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/997678176960598/

More information about VR Chat Plus: https://hello.vrchat.com/vrchat-plus-faq

Pedagogical Tools

• Whiteboard 

Potential Pedagogical Uses

• Great space to teach some concepts on:  numbers, colors, parts of house, countries, and so on

• Fun tool to do some oral reflections

• Good opportunity for students to do pre-reading whole-class discussions 

• Vocabulary reviews can be done easily on the whiteboard

• Pronunciation practice with local people in authentic worlds

Pros/Cons

Pros:

• You can make a copy of an existing room and invite your students (anyone you like) over, which allows you to control the privacy settings

• You can create your own world 

• Good opportunity to learn the language in an authentic world (e.g. Learn Japanese in a Japanese Garden world) 

• Easy interaction with local people or people who learn the same target language in the world you are

• Oral and written target language practice opportunities

• You can use a whiteboard in any world

• You can create your own avatar or use the existing ones you like

• You can wander around different worlds 

Cons:

• Not very optimized, there may be bugs that make you need to restart the game

• It is public, so anyone can come to the world you are in

• You might some inappopriate language from other users

• Not quite recommended for young learners unless you create your own world and have your own privacy settings

Additional Resources

There are some tutorials to guide user how to use navigate around the platform. You might find a YouTube and official VR Chat blog tutorial below. Additionaly, there is an in-app tutorial if you download it. 

VR Chat blog tutorial: https://medium.com/vrchat/stuck-inside-a-quick-guide-for-using-vrchat-to-stay-connected-f71430cf8a11

VR Chat YouTube Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtENuEbqUXk

How to create a world on VR Chat: https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/creating-your-first-world: 

A sample lesson to teach Japanese on VR Chat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ez2QEQyJc