Tapestry is a free platform providing immersive cultural heritage experiences: high-quality, guided 3D virtual tours of notable sites worldwide with historical, natural, or archeological importance.
The platform was created and is run by CyArk, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to make the world’s cultural heritage widely accessible to all using the power of 3D technology. Tapestry is browser-based and operates on desktop, tablet, mobile, or kiosk devices.
How Does Tapestry Work?
Tapestry is decidedly simple to use -- the platform runs entirely in a web browser, with nothing to download or install. Visitors can explore on a phone, tablet, or desktop computer at any time, in any place.
Graphic-heavy sites such as Tapestry can sometimes lag on ordinary computers and mobile devices. However, in my testing, I found Tapestry to be highly functional after a brief loading period. That being said, the interactive 3D sections of the virtual tour will use a substantial fraction of your computer's graphic memory and it's best not to have other graphic-heavy programs running at the same time.
Tapestry’s photorealistic virtual tours—also called "experiences"—are beautifully rendered. And its interactive sections, which allow visitors to explore sites across 360 degrees in 3D via mouse or touchscreen, create the sensation of being actually present.
Educators can search for experiences in several ways. Spin the globe to find the location you'd like to explore, mouse over the bright orange dot, and view the description/link to the experience. Or search all 77 virtual tours in the library, filtered by keyword, category, publication date, and language. Finally, users can search directly from the home page by keyword, although I found this this method less useful than the first two methods.
Once begun, the virtual tour displays a menu of “stops” on the left, each one dedicated to a particular sub-location within the site. A narrator describes the scenes displayed and provides background information while the virtual camera zooms, pans and tilts through buildings and landscapes, allowing the viewer to fully explore all aspects of the site.
Closed captions may be activated, in addition to or instead of the narration. Music appropriate to the experience adds to the overall effect of being present. Users can navigate freely among the stops as well as use controls to advance or reverse position.
Is Tapestry Good for Education?
While not explicitly designed for education, Tapestry’s interactive virtual tours can engage students in a way unlike most other learning tools do. The combination of high-quality graphics, soundtrack, narration and interactivity creates the illusion of being present remarkably well. The experience can be mesmerizing.
I asked Elizabeth Lee, CyArk’s Vice President for Programs and Development, about Tapestry’s use in education. “While the platform was launched in 2023, we only created an education section a few months ago,” said Lee. “We wanted to create a resource for the many educators who were already using the platform on their own.”
New resources for educators include newsletters and the Tapestry Certified Educators professional training, whose first cohort has enrolled and begun training.
“After the first cohort completes the professional training, we plan to post more resources about how to use these experiences in the classroom,” said Lee, adding, “We hope to offer additional sessions in the future for other educators, based on the feedback and response we get from these first sessions.”
Most of Tapestry’s experiences are accessible to a 2nd-8th grade audience, with the majority of text comprehension designed for students aged 10-12 years.
All that is not to say that Tapestry isn’t a valuable resource for older students as well. With its highly engaging interface, it can serve as a perfect starting point for more advanced students to explore and discover what interests them on their own.
What are the Best Tapestry features?
Interactive 3D Exploration
The combination of Tapestry’s amazingly accurate and detailed graphics and its interactive 3d exploration creates a virtual experience unlike any other I’ve seen.
When the user selects a numbered feature in an experience, the camera zooms in and a downloadable video opens in the right panel.
Below, I've selected the green turtle detail of the Great Barrier Reef virtual tour, stop four (Relationships on the Reef). I found it quicker to download the video and watch on my computer, rather than running it in browser window. Regardless, the brief close-up video is well worth watching to appreciate the magnificence of these denizens of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem.
Playback Controls
Tapestry’s playback controls allows educators to pause, resume, or jump back or forward 15 seconds while a stop is playing, making it easy to focus on key moments, all while the 3D view remains synched with the narration.
Downloadable Resources and Transcripts
Each Tapestry virtual tour includes a complete downloadable PDF transcript; a gallery of related images and brief videos; and an outline of the story, with a summary of each stop. These extras serve not only to guide educators in using experiences in the classroom, but also as valuable study aids for students.
Direct Links for Content and Stops
Teachers can share a specific stop, photo, voice or interactive, allowing students to land directly on the assigned content, rather than at the beginning of the selected tour.
Tapestry for Teachers Newsletter
The newsletter provides tips on how educators can best incorporate Tapestry into classroom instruction and lesson plans, as well as offering seasonal suggestions for virtual tours.
How Accessible is Tapestry?
Tapestry is in partial conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, a set of web accessibility standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that guides webmasters in making content usable for those with disabilities, including low vision, cognitive and learning differences, motor impairments, and hearing loss. It's also tested compatible with Screen Reader VoiceOver and Screen Reader Jaws.
How Much Does Tapestry Cost?
Built by the nonprofit organization CyArk, Tapestry is 100% free for all visitors. No account is required to take its virtual tours, access, or download related educational materials.
