In this episode, we are talking about how the Metaverse will and has already started to change the way in which we educate at all levels.

MENTIONED IN THIS WEBSITE
Douglas King – Children assigned to play Minecraft
Inspired Education – First Metaverse School Opened
Eduverse – https://eduverse.com/uk/

We hope you enjoyed the show and that it inspired some ideas. Join us next week to delve further into the Metaverse

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Show Transcription

[00:00:00] Cheryl: Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. I am Cheryl Laidlaw

[00:00:08] Angela: I am Angela Harkness. We have been and are still on a journey to discover the Metaverse with 3.0 NFTs and anything that we are required to know to join this world 

[00:00:20] Cheryl: from. From this podcast, we will help you to unlock how the metaverse is going to impact your brand.

[00:00:27] Cheryl: Your business and even your personal 

[00:00:30] Angela: life. Join us as we take the mystery out of this new digital universe.

[00:00:40] Cheryl: Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. In this episode, we are going to explore how the metaverse and virtual reality will transform education at all levels. We believe that VR and learning in the meta. Have the potential to re revolutionize [00:01:00] education at all levels. So what examples do you have, Angela? 

[00:01:08] Angela: Okay, so at a school in Hawaii, Douglas King, who is a computer science teacher, gave his classroom students an assignment to play Minecraft together in the hope that it would build teamwork in real.

[00:01:23] Angela: He set them a challenge to build him an office that was completely underwater rules. Would 

[00:01:29] Cheryl: you say that Minecraft is a computer game just for anyone that’s not sure what Minecraft 

[00:01:34] Angela: is? Anybody who doesn’t know, so it’s very metaverse. You are in this world, you’ve gotta work as a team. That’s as much as I know.

[00:01:42] Angela: Okay. That’s cool. The rules were it had to be enclosed in a glass dome. It had to be. All elements had to be mined or donated from existing supplies, and it had to have plenty of trees, flowers, and other natural [00:02:00] elements. What he saw from this assignment was how much more they came together, work together, the natural leaders came forward and people were assigned tasks that reflected their natural ability.

[00:02:13] Angela: The coming together in the metaverse with Minecraft, and then having to work as a. Showed how gamification was used to help transfer those skills to a real project. That project is a small example, and it’s not truly in the metaverse, but it is using that technology to educate and bring children together, which I think is brilliant.

[00:02:37] Angela: I love this. Well, I just 

[00:02:39] Cheryl: love the fact that they have used a game for educational purposes. Yes. It just makes everything so much more. 

[00:02:46] Angela: Yeah, well, instead of fighting against it and, oh, don’t be gaming. Don’t be gaming, but like, okay, we can’t fight this, so let’s use it and use it for good purposes. And I 

[00:02:56] Cheryl: agree, we Well, you love that [00:03:00] teacher.

[00:03:00] Angela: We do love that teacher. It’s brilliant. 

[00:03:04] Cheryl: When education truly uses the Metaverse and vr, one of the main benefits is that students can be part of a much more immersive experience, whether they’re exploring a country, imagine a student being able to visit across the other side of the world from them and understand and experienced culture cultural differe.

[00:03:26] Cheryl: Or say if they visited a historical monument, imagine how much more interested children would be if they could visit the pyramids and walk through the tomb of the Egyptians, or how much more engaged they would be if they could feel as if they are really visiting somewhere like Machu Picchu. 

[00:03:45] Angela: Incredible.

[00:03:47] Angela: or the immersive experience of swimming with sharks under the sea. I have done this and it’s incredible. Not in real life, I mean using the 

[00:03:55] Cheryl: metaverse. I was gonna say, I really, I don’t really fancy that. 

[00:03:59] Angela: It’s, [00:04:00] it, it, it gives you that time. It gives you that feeling as, you know, like your stomach kind of like, oh, I’m frightened, but excited.

[00:04:08] Angela: It really is incredible. They swim all around you. It just, I don’t know. It’s really difficult unless you go into the metaverse to understand how real it can feel sometimes. Mm-hmm. or imagine being taken back in time to study historical events and explore living in a different time period. You imagine this, if we were at school, Instead of reading these things off the pages of a textbook that had been around for decades, you know, they were always beaten and 

[00:04:38] Cheryl: ripped.

[00:04:38] Cheryl: Oh, weren’t they do as 

[00:04:40] Angela: dishwater? Yeah, black and white. Just, you know. Well, 

[00:04:44] Cheryl: mine might have been in color, but I mean, , 

[00:04:47] Angela: I think mine, come on. I don’t know. I think mine were in color, but some of them were so old that, you know, you’re using checkbook. Sometimes they’re 20 years old. That, I mean, learning from the board is just [00:05:00] so, oh my God.

[00:05:01] Cheryl: 1990s now, isn’t it? Yeah. I, I would be so more interested in if I could actually see it, even having pictures of it. Well, I didn’t even have the internet school, 

[00:05:12] Angela: so, or even a model. No, me neither. Well, like one computer. I think we had one computer. One per class. No, not even per class. Like a year. There was a bus that came round and we got to go on and you.

[00:05:25] Angela: Oh, well, 

[00:05:26] Cheryl: you know, we, they don’t, we’re old. They are. Do they? They don’t . Okay. So there’s a company called Edgers that is already offers these experiences. Students can go on adventures around the world. They can experience walking the streets of London, climbing a mountain or hiking through the jungle.

[00:05:46] Cheryl: They can examine 3D models that. complex to learn from. I mean, come on. We know it’s complex to learn from books. Yeah. Um, such as the human cells or skeletons or different animals. Also, it [00:06:00] enables teachers and students to either work independently in groups or through teacher led exploration. It also opens up different avenues of learning.

[00:06:11] Angela: Yes, yes. Because people don’t learn in just one. , we are all different. And at school you tend to have to learn the way you are taught. But some, for example, find it incredibly difficult to learn from listening or trying to understand what is written on a whiteboard. I, for example, need to learn by doing. I don’t understand as well by just reading from a book.

[00:06:34] Angela: Math was always one of my BO subjects, but if I was able to actually see mapped in action instead of listening to a teacher trying to explain geometry. . If I would’ve been able to manipulate geometric shapes, then maybe I would’ve understood it better. Yeah, definitely. The other, definitely the other aspect is that VR can help to simulate a certain act action.

[00:06:58] Angela: For example, [00:07:00] medical students are using VR as part of their surgical training. I love this. This is so cool. This is brilliant. . The reason why this is so effective is that it engages the with the brain’s motor system and it stimulates the same muscles as if you are doing it in real life, therefore creating muscle memory.

[00:07:19] Angela: So this is not just an advantage for children to learn motor skills. , but for the type of training that has a degree of danger or can be expensive, such as training surgeons or firefighters and pilots. However, to be fair, pilots have been using flight simulators for a long time, but the metaverse will be and VR to make the experience seem more real.

[00:07:43] Angela: Again, creating the power of muscle memory because you can retry and process repeatedly without an expensive and timely. For example, 

[00:07:54] Cheryl: one of the required elements in firefighter training is to do exercises [00:08:00] in very close spaces. 

[00:08:01] Angela: This is why I could never be a firefighter. Well, I don’t, I don’t think it’s for me either.

[00:08:05] Angela: I don’t . I couldn’t do that. 

[00:08:09] Cheryl: as, as we have both experience in the Metaverse VR headsets, can be a very real experience, and you have all seen those video. Of the game where people walk along the beam really high up above the city and how scared they are trying to balance and how they react when they fall.

[00:08:28] Cheryl: As a firefighter, you could experience different types of enclosed spaces with increasingly higher levels of danger until you are able to calm yourself and deal with the situation, and then you can go into the real training with your team. Those who struggle more would be able to do more exercise over and over and over again with no additional cost.

[00:08:53] Cheryl: That is just one small example. If you think of architects, it is [00:09:00] incredibly complex field to study, but imagine that if you are able to use the VR and the Metaverse in immersive learning to understand why would you build a certain type of building on a certain time of foundation, how will it affect the structure?

[00:09:18] Cheryl: I mean, I think that this is already in place with the architectural world, 

[00:09:22] Angela: actually. I think it’s, I think there is a lot of it. I think a lot of them, like firefighters and surgeon, they already use it. But as the technology evolves, the more that they will be able to learn and more that will be able to be simulated through the metaverse.

[00:09:38] Angela: Mm-hmm. , because I was was thinking, I was thinking about architects, like how complex must it be to know if you build on a certain type of ground? , how deep the foundation has to be and at a certain height, how the wind affects something and how a building moves using different materials. Like the whole, when I was, when I was thinking about this, I couldn’t even imagine [00:10:00] how much you need to learn mm-hmm.

[00:10:01] Angela: to understand all of that. It’s incredible. Yeah. And the more you can use the Metaverse and VR to learn from that, probably the better you’re gonna be. it, it will make it more real for you, I would imagine, but I think 

[00:10:16] Cheryl: you’ll make learning time shorter as well. Yeah. Degrees will now be like, you know, two 

[00:10:21] Angela: years maybe, but also if you are, if there’s a certain thing that you don’t understand or you can’t do, by using VR in the Metaverse cuz like, like a pilot to go into a fight simulator that costs a lot of money.

[00:10:35] Angela: And they cost a lot of money to build. Mm-hmm. . And the same with firefighters. They have to have buildings and that. But if you could do an exercise over and over and over and over again until you then feel better about it, you can keep up with the rest of your class rather than feeling like you’ve fallen.

[00:10:52] Cheryl: Yes, definitely. As someone that was always behind me too, I would’ve loved that opportunity to. Yeah. You know, 

[00:10:58] keep 

[00:10:58] Angela: up. Yeah, me [00:11:00] too. So the other element of this is distant learning, distance learning it, I’m gonna start that again. The other element of this is distance learning. It opens up the chance for children who may not have the best education options available, both to them at all levels.

[00:11:16] Angela: whether the child is young and lives remotely, or if you can’t attend a university because the course you want is too expensive to move for, or students who may struggle in school environment, whether that be for physical or mental health reasons, the option to learn on your own through VR or join a classroom environment is now possible.

[00:11:38] Angela: I think the development of VR and the Metaverse opens up incredible opportunities. To fundamentally shake up education. I am not a big believer that schools should be just about two plus two equals four. And I know through experiences that everyone is very different and learns very differently. And just because you are not [00:12:00] academic doesn’t mean you are not intelligent.

[00:12:02] Angela: I think that school should be about learning skills that help you live in a world and be creative and innovative. To ensure you have high self-esteem and that you understand your own skills and talents when you leave education, imagine a 

[00:12:18] Cheryl: school that taught for a child’s real interest, and this is where Gamification Con continues to play an incredibly important role in education.

[00:12:28] Cheryl: Let’s take a child that doesn’t show any interest in school but loves football. You can teach that child massively through their love of football, maths. If you kick a ball at a certain velocity, how far would it travel? Biology through the actions of how a footballer’s body responds to a game. Sports science has to learn.

[00:12:53] Cheryl: Nutrition will impact how they play. Geography is how the weather affects a game. [00:13:00] English through sports reporting and journalism, teamwork, strategy, management of people, leader. History can be taught through football. What important world events were also taking place throughout the history of football.

[00:13:16] Cheryl: If you have a student that is into fashion, we have talked about and and encouraged this before in our past episodes, there are so many elements that can be taught, enabling education through fashion design, mass through the cutting and the structure of a pattern. The creativity of creating a design and the understanding of the chemistry of the fabric creation, but also through the cusp of creating clothing, commerce through selling that piece of work.

[00:13:47] Cheryl: Writing about fashion virtually. Visiting fashion shows history via closed and fashion have changed through the ages. Even geography with clothes and fashion around the. A teacher could [00:14:00] set the same assignment, but through the Metaverse and vr, they could complete the assignment using a subject that they’re really interested in.

[00:14:09] Cheryl: That’s just bloody 

[00:14:10] Angela: genius. Yeah. Could you imagine if that’s how you were taught and I came up with, well, I didn’t come up with the idea. I remembered listening, and this was years and years and years ago about a young boy who wasn’t doing well at school and his parents took him out of school and put him on this homeschooling program.

[00:14:28] Angela: and he had a homeschool tutor and they were talking about English. It was like, oh, I don’t like English. I can’t write and rubbish at it. And the the tutor said, what do you love? And he said, snowboarding. He said, well then write about that. Write about snowboarding. And then he realized his love of writing.

[00:14:47] Angela: and the English language and that he could write really well about snowboarding, but 

[00:14:51] Cheryl: he just needed a subject that he was interested 

[00:14:53] Angela: in. He just needed a subject that he was interested in. Yeah, and it’s just 

[00:14:57] Cheryl: that I think that can, that’s the same with most, that’s why [00:15:00] we, we, we find out what we’re interested in so much later in life cuz we are taught that we have to do si things a certain way and society tells us that we have to be able to do math, English, and science.

[00:15:13] Angela: Exactly. You know? , but those might not be your skills. Your skills might be creativity or you might have incredible people skills that you could learn through, or just things that you’re really passionate about, like at that age, like football mean must be fair. Clothes 

[00:15:28] Cheryl: skills is either something you’ve even got or you haven’t, but I think 

[00:15:32] Angela: you can.

[00:15:32] Angela: You can learn certain things, definitely like, but it’s instead of being told how you should be, teachers and education should look at who you are and talk. and teach. Do. Yeah. Your, your, your child’s interests and Yes. Yeah. Doesn’t so different. 

[00:15:52] Cheryl: In March, 2022, inspired education Group launched a pilot project to produce VR and the [00:16:00] metaverse to two of their schools.

[00:16:03] Cheryl: Inspired will be the first global school group to build a metaverse. Redham school in the UK is what they will base their metaverse school on. The school will be able to be access from anywhere in the world. 

[00:16:21] Angela: That’s really cool. Isn’t it 

[00:16:23] Cheryl: so cool? It’s always the English schools they’re based 

[00:16:26] on, 

[00:16:26] Angela: isn’t it?

[00:16:27] Angela: Yeah. . Yeah. It’s a very prestigious school, apparently Redham and that, that the group, the inspired education group, have schools all around the world. But the, and I think they teach differently. I think they do teach in a way that suits the student as opposed to what they should be taught. So it’d be interesting to see what comes out of that, wouldn’t it?

[00:16:47] Cheryl: Absolutely. See where the first graduation is. Yeah. Be five years time, I expect. 

[00:16:52] Angela: But we’ve talked, we talk about this all the time. How the metaverse just enables you to lift [00:17:00] boundaries. So this is just the start our conversation about education in the me Metaverse. Imagine if a school purchased some land or built their own metaverse land and enable children through education to build their own homes, and were given metaverse money like Roblox for services to the community, and then live and look after their home.

[00:17:25] Angela: There is so much academic education that goes along with this, but also you’re enabling students to understand the realities of being an adult and owning a home and paying bills, being independent of building a community, the possibilities, again, are endless. It just needs imagination. Mm-hmm. . So we hope you enjoyed this episode.

[00:17:48] Angela: Join us next week as we continue our journey into the myth first. Bye for. Bye-bye.

[00:17:58] Angela: Thank you for listening to this [00:18:00] episode of Women of the Metaverse. 

[00:18:02] Cheryl: You can find all information, links and people we talked about in the show notes on our website. 

[00:18:08] Angela: If you have enjoyed this podcast, please comment and subscribe. 

[00:18:13] Cheryl: Join us again in the next episode as we continue this exciting metaverse journey.