The Metaverse and Language Education
The Metaverse and Language Education
The Metaverse and Language Education
March 15, 2022
By Andrew Warner
Summary
In February, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings released a policy brief on the metaverse and its potential to interface with the education system.
Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg see the metaverse as the next major horizon of computing-Zuckerberg has been quite vocal about his vision of the metaverse as a means of synthesizing one's own physical reality with an all-encompassing virtual life.
"You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content-you are in it." When it comes to the metaverse's educational applications, the benefits seem clear-history teachers might use the metaverse to engage students in virtual realities that depict key historical events.
Language teachers, on the other hand, can employ the metaverse to create cultural enrichment activities that immerse students in the target language and its culture.
Not so fast-in order to ensure that educators use the metaverse in a productive and engaging fashion, the CUEB's report emphasizes the fact that educational technology developers must learn from the mistakes of other edtech platforms, like the two-dimensional educational apps and video games that rose to popularity in the last couple of decades.
While the metaverse holds a lot of promise for exciting and engaging educational experiences, if its presence in educational settings is indeed as inevitable as the CUEB's report suggests, then edtech developers must learn from the flaws of past efforts at gamifying language education.
"The metaverse is but a context-an immersive one-that can in principle bring the best of digital technologies to bear on education if and only if it is done right, with the science of learning and real children in mind," the CUEB report reads.
Reference
Warner, A. (2022, March 15). The metaverse and language education. Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/03/15/the-metaverse-and-language-education/