For this week’s task, I want to focus my speculative narrative on the Metaverse Classroom. COVID Pandemic has changed the way people acquire knowledge and it will continuously affect the younger generation of pupils.
As the chart indicates, students from Kindergarten to Second Grade have never experienced a normal school year. This has led to student’s lack of executive functioning and social interactions with peers. With the help of A.I and virtual reality, Metaverse classrooms can fabricate a classroom-like environment and students can interact with teachers and each other using their personalized avatar. Yet, some people may question whether the Metaverse can foster a genuine classroom environment and enhance student’s learning and teacher-student relationships? Or whether A.I will replace teachers eventually? According to Dr. Shannon Vallor, “A.I will not replicate human minds anytime soon”, especially when dealing with unpredictable real-world settings and complex problems, which educators often face.
Here are my two short narratives:
Utopia [The Class]
Grade five teacher Ms. Nelly is waiting for her students to login to the virtual classroom for a reading workshop. She glances around the classroom and suddenly, on the right corner of the screen, she sees notifications of students’ requests to enter the classroom. “Here they come” says Ms. Nelly, while clicking the button on the controller to admit the students.
“Good Morning, Ms. Nelly” says Oliver.
“Hi, I’m here” shouts Anzo.
“I really like your new hair color, Oliver. Did you change it yesterday?” asks Nina.
“Yah, I used my academic points to exchange for a cooler hair style” answers Oliver.
As Ms. Nelly continues to admit students into the classroom, she hopes to give students more time to interact with one another, yet it’s time for class.
“Ok class” says Ms. Nelly
“Hands up and partner up with someone in the room. Once you do, sit next to them and ask them about books they read recently”.
Some Grade 5 students quickly find their partner, whilst some stumble across the room like lost minions.
“Who wants to be my partner?” shouts Anzo.
“Anzo, listen to the instruction, I said hands up partner up” says Ms. Nelly.
Ms. Nelly walks around the classroom and listens to her student’s conversation about the recent books they read.
“If you want, you can enable the auto-speech bubble setting so your partner and myself can review what you just said”. Ms. Nelly reminds the whole class.
Speech bubbles start to pop up and linger above each student’s head.
“Interesting, I see that Joanna is currently reading Frindle and her partner Rex asked her opinion about the book so far. Great work. You two kept the conversation going. If you are almost done with your conversation, give me a thumbs up so I know how many of you need more time.”
A stream of thumbs appears in the air that tells Ms. Nelly That most students are done talking with partners.
Dystopia [The incident]
Oliver is working on his narrative writing project and his classmate Joe oversees his writing.
“No way! You got into trouble last weekend for watching Squid Game without your parents’ permission!?” screams Joe.
Oliver feels his face is getting red and hot. He turns his avatar’s back to Joe and covers his writing.
“None of your business, that was rude of you, looking at my writing without asking me first.” claims Oliver.
“Sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose” says Joe’s avatar with the same smiley expression.
Is Joe genuinely sorry? Or he is just being sarcastic?
“Leave me alone” says Oliver, with an aloof tone, but a smiley expression on his avatar.
Did Oliver really mean that? Or is he messing around with Joe?
How can this conflict be resolved in a Metaverse classroom?
References
Vallor, S. (2018, November 6). Lessons from the AI Mirror [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40UbpSoYN4k&t=824s
Jung, M. (2021) Hana Bank [JPG]. The Korea Herold.
http://res.heraldm.com/content/image/2021/08/06/20210806000488_0.jpg