A group of four people wanders aimlessly through the halls of the SIMO fair, the International Educational Technology and Innovation Exhibition held every year in Madrid.
They advance slowly, looking from side to side.
They look for a stand where someone can give them a hand.
They finally find one.
“We come to see if they can help us.
We want to introduce the students of our institute in Galicia to the metaverse.
And we already have the glasses, although we don't know what to do with them.
“We have many, dozens of boxes with glasses like this one.”
And they show their interlocutor some brand new glasses, kept like a treasure, in their original packaging.
This anecdote, based on real events, is told by Francisco Roncero, one of the two founders of Educa360, a promising company, created in 2020, that is dedicated to devising immersive technological utilities for the educational sector.
In reality, the aforementioned virtual reality glasses are just one more instrument to facilitate immersion in this new parallel meta universe.
Because its potential for the educational field can be immense, as long as its development, regulation and promotion falls into the right hands.
To understand how we can achieve this, the first thing is to be clear about what we are talking about in this new world of new realities.
One thing is augmented reality (AR), which are applications that make a mix between virtual reality and the real world (that is, they incorporate virtual elements into the real world, such as paintings from the Louvre on the walls of your living room).
Another thing is virtual reality (VR), which does take us out of the real world through the glasses created for it and allows us to live immersive experiences, when playing a video game or visiting Paris, for example.
Although it can also be accessed through other devices.
But one step further is the metaverse, an entire parallel virtual universe, whose added value is the possibility of carrying out transactions using cryptocurrencies.
And that is where you can create content aimed at education (from virtual classes, to masters...).
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Where should we start?
“For the training of teachers to learn to use and also create these contents,” responds the expert in AI in education Juan Cigarrán.
“A whole universe opens up for education, if it is combined, hand in hand with the teacher, with the correct teaching methodology.”
With these words he conveys the optimism of Cigarrán, former vice-rector of Technology at the National University of Distance Education (UNED) and professor at the School of Informatics of this center.
“Another advantage is the accessibility it allows, both for people with mobility problems and to promote the motivation of students who live in isolated areas,” he highlights.
The first experience in this field appeared at the beginning of this century with
Second Life
, a website that allowed you to live a parallel life through an avatar.
Then the metaverse emerged, actually as something complementary to the
blockchain,
a database where the registered information is validated in a decentralized way through a common protocol and which was created for the cryptocurrency market, such as Bitcoin.
Adapt education to the virtual world
As a result, alternative multiverses can coexist in this metaverse, including the educational one.
Its possibilities are immense.
For example, to teach parabolic shooting, in the subject of Physics, an archery immersion can be designed so that the student himself can check the strength of the angle, explains Cigarrán.
In turn, this creates a multidisciplinary universe that can allow the teacher to also become a designer of 3D content for education or computer programs, creating new work niches in companies that are dedicated to creating educational metaverses.
An example is precisely the company I mentioned at the beginning, Educa360.
Francisco Roncero Lama and his partner, Fernando Sierra, saw the opportunity to undertake to create a company that would provide technological elements to educators.
“We take educational concepts and bring them closer to virtual ones.”
To do this, they have a permanent team of professionals from different fields, from programmers to virtual reality and 3D developers, infographers, documentary filmmakers to educators.
And they also have specialists in other content (like music, for example) when they make products for those subjects.
These products are supervised and
sealed
by the Chair of Education and Emerging Technologies, Gamification and Artificial Intelligence (EduEmer)
,
of the Pablo de Olavide University.
This chair, in collaboration with European Open Business School SL, promotes research, training and dissemination in everything related to education and technologies.
“We create the product, but in beta, so that the teacher or the center can finish it,” explains Fran Roncero.
That is, they provide a program to the center, which is called EducaMaker, and each teacher can make the changes they need with it for what they want to teach.
But, in addition, the students themselves can also participate, thereby intervening in the construction of their own learning.
The virtual environments created by the team of this company are not aimed at a specific educational level and the idea is that they are not used in class only with glasses.
In the same class, while some students put on their glasses, others follow the task designed on a computer or other device.
And some contents are not minor, such as versions of the Sistine Chapel with and without Michelangelo's paintings (to be used in the Drawing subject) or a giant map of the world on which the student's avatar walks and points out the capitals of each country (for Geography).
Educa360 also offers a service to schools in the metaverse, through another product, Educaverse.
This also allows them to have a space in the metaverse.
“But Educaverse is limited, it is exclusive for educational initiatives.
For example, some schools use it to make a digital copy of their center so that future students and their parents can visit it,” he adds.
But here is not the thing.
There are university and non-university centers that are creating their own currency to reward their students and that can be exchanged, for example, for free tuition or credits.
Educa360 is finalizing an agreement with the Pablo de Olavide University to offer microcredentials that students can study within the University Degrees (for example, on the legal aspects of the metaverse, audiovisual production for it, 3D design or marketing focused on it ) to become something like Creators of the Metaverse.
That is to say, everything looks like it could be a future Degree in itself in some universities, or perhaps part of a double Degree.
Much to do
There are already various initiatives and many ideas, but experts warn that resources and social impulse are needed and so that the changes and contributions of the metaverse to the educational world are applied widely and do not contribute to widening the gap between the centers and regions that are going more and less advanced in digital literacy.
“Although its possibilities may be immense, today, “it is still very much in its infancy,” as UNED professor emeritus, former Secretary of State for Education and author of the latest educational reform, Alejandro Tiana, says.
“The educational processes that we were already familiar with can have an interesting educational orientation in the metaverse, because it is a very wide world and, used properly, allows, for example, to establish the traceability of school trajectories or create tasks in the metaverse that , previously giving the student the appropriate tools, allow them to detect the weak points of each one.”
It can also allow learning to be systematized more rigorously and facilitate correction, adds Tiana.
“The main problem,” this expert highlights, is that “it requires very strong previous pedagogical work, because what has been done so far is still a bit rudimentary.”
At the moment, in the preparation of the latest educational reform, approved in 2020 and currently in force, that of the Organic Law of Modification of LOE (LOMLOE), Tiana's team worked with the Data Protection Agency to include an article that established a first legislative basis.
This is article 111 bis, which allows the use of information through a system of student identification codes: “An identification number will be regulated for each student, in order to facilitate the exchange of relevant information, the monitoring of the individualized educational trajectories, including the educational measures that could have been applied, if applicable.”
An essential issue to address in this context is the initial training of future teachers, especially in the faculties of Education.
Precisely, currently, the members of the Conference of Deans of these faculties are debating the reform of these contents.
María del Mar Sánchez Vera is a professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of Murcia and a member of the Educational Technology Research Group of this center: “The metaverse is a field of study with little evidence, there is still little research behind it, although it is We've been talking about it since
Second Life
appeared .
But the studies that have been done already show, for example, that it favors motivation for learning,” she highlights.
“The metaverse allows the personalization of teaching, since the student moves with his avatar through it and this is very interesting, but what is relevant is the task he has to do there,” highlights Sánchez Vera.
“This represents a change in the role of the teacher, from transmitter of information to facilitator or guide of tasks.”
Otherwise it would fall into the use of the metaverse in the classroom as mere entertainment.
An issue that raises some suspicion among teachers and parents is that of safety.
“Essential issues still need to be regulated, such as security,” this professor mentions, “we have to know in whose hands the metaverse is right now, what data we may be transferring from minors to big technology companies, for example,” she warns.
Sánchez Vera teaches these contents to the students at her university.
But they only occupy one semester-long subject in the four years of the Education degree.
“We have to teach everything from how to use technology in the classroom to the metaverse in that limited time.
This should be rephrased,” she suggests.
And, as a culmination, the metaverse can be really useful when it comes to knowing the educational itineraries of students, accrediting teachers or managing their degrees, careers or merits.
If they are in the metaverse, there would be no need for a third actor who has to approve anything, because what is in the metaverse has a legal entity.
“Today, technology sets the pace for the rest of the world,” summarizes Juan Cigarrán.
“And in the educational world we have to incorporate the metaverse now and get the most out of it.”
Another thing is more bizarre ideas, at least today, such as setting up a school or university entirely in the metaverse.
However, none of these experts want to put their hand in the fire because this will not happen in the future.
And perhaps not so far away, especially if it begins to rely on artificial intelligence (AI).