What kind of sparks will "metaverse + education" collide with?

　　◎Our reporter Zhang Gailun

　　Recently, the 5th World Education Frontier Forum was held.

At the end of the "Metaverse and Education" session of the forum, Shang Junjie, former vice president of the School of Education of Peking University and chairman of the Educational Game Committee of the China Educational Technology Association, asked a question to the guests: the normalization of the metaverse applied to education How long is the field?

This is also a topic that has been frequently discussed in the past year.

　　my country's educational informatization has achieved leapfrog development after nearly ten years of vigorous promotion.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Education, all schools at all levels and types across the country are connected to the Internet, and the export bandwidth of all schools has reached more than 100 megabits. The number of schools connected to wireless networks exceeds 210,000, and 99.5% of primary and secondary schools have multimedia classrooms.

　　So how will new technologies like the Metaverse affect education in the next decade?

　　Metaverse is an advanced stage of educational informatization

　　Shang Junjie pointed out that the essence of Metaverse is a digital interactive environment that interacts with the real world.

In a narrow sense, it refers to an immersive virtual world based on VR/AR and artificial intelligence technology; in a broad sense, it can cover all the concepts of the digital world, from the current Internet to the future digital world of virtual and real integration. metaverse.

　　Information technology has a revolutionary impact on education, and new technologies will always bring new possibilities to educational reform.

Shang Junjie concluded that Metaverse can bring students a more immersive and experiential learning environment, and can also create a mixed reality learning environment.

　　However, the Metaverse is not a panacea for education.

Shang Junjie said frankly that education is a "slow field", and don't expect a certain technology to change it suddenly.

The Metaverse can be regarded as an advanced stage of educational informatization.

In the long run, the Metaverse is a disruptive technology, but in the short term, there are still many uncertainties in its development. We must pay attention to the research of the Metaverse to provide theoretical guidance for industry practice.

　　Shang Junjie said that it is necessary to integrate the education metaverse into the long-term planning and top-level design of education informatization, clarify development goals and specific plans, and provide policy guidance for the healthy, orderly and sustainable development of the education metaverse.

　　He also pointed out that new educational infrastructure should be used to promote the development of the education metaverse, incorporate the education metaverse into the strategic action plan of education digitalization, accelerate the construction of educational private networks, and promote the application of 5G, VR/AR, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies in education. Wide range of applications in the field, constructing new educational scenarios such as intelligent learning interaction.

"Only by promoting educational infrastructure can our metaverse be truly 'set up'. Otherwise, if the network is stuck, students will not be interested." Shang Junjie said.

　　He said that it is still necessary to strengthen the formulation of technical standards related to the educational metaverse. First, the technical framework and rules of the metaverse must be clarified. Curriculum standards and related research discover the general laws and special laws of education, and further summarize and iterate to form metaverse technical standards and ethical rules applicable to the field of education.

　　The development of each level of educational metaverse has its own emphasis

　　The application of the Metaverse in the field of education will ultimately be applied to learning.

　　Xu Xin, a professor of the Information Management Department of East China Normal University, believes that the typical scenarios and key directions of research and development of Metaverse in the fields of higher education, basic education, and vocational education will have different emphases.

　　In the field of higher education, it focuses on the implementation of Metaverse in the integration of production and education and the embodiment of social attributes; in the field of vocational education, it focuses on the rapid construction of digital virtual scenes, automatic generation of VR teaching resources, and digital human resources in the field of vocational education. In the field of basic education, it focuses on science education and conducts a series of studies on the evaluation of students' learning ability and stress resistance ability in VR environment.

　　It is worth mentioning that Xu Xin emphasized that the application of Metaverse in the field of basic education needs to be cautious.

Previously, they considered 3D conversion of courseware, such as presenting the content of solid geometry in class to students directly in 3D.

But teachers who study mathematics give a different view - they worry that this will limit the spatial imagination of students.

"When students are provided with an immersive learning environment, is their attention more concentrated or more diffuse than before? This needs further research." Xu Xin said.

　　"The development of the Education Metaverse must be able to grasp the essence of education, not to use technology for the sake of using technology, but to truly let technology promote the growth and progress of students." Xu Xin emphasized.