Madrid (EFE).- The American technological giant Meta, parent of applications such as Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, considers that the metaverse will be the next evolution of the Internet and its use will serve to “rehumanize” education, inspire and motivate students thanks to to its immersion capacity.
The metaverse “does not intend to dehumanize education, but quite the opposite,” Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom and now president of global affairs at Meta, points out in an interview with EFE by videoconference.
“I think many years from now we will look back and say: ‘My God, do you remember? We used to sit at a desk and look at pieces of paper.’ That’s dehumanizing.”
Understood as a virtual space endowed with immersive technologies (such as augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence or mixed reality), the metaverse will provide “much more human learning experiences”. “I really believe that we are rehumanizing education,” he points out.
In order to have the best experience in this technological enclave, the firm led by Mark Zuckerberg has tools such as Meta Quest, virtual glasses capable of working in mixed reality to enter the virtual world and immerse yourself in a creative, educational or leisure.
In his commitment, Clegg considers that this technological revolution applied to education will not imply “replacing teachers, but rather giving them new tools to inspire and motivate young students,” he explained.
Virtual classrooms
It is a new way of rethinking classes, by creating a virtual environment that brings teachers and students together: “The teacher takes complete control of the experience that the students have. And that’s why software developers are creating a lot of content. Although we are only at the start ”, he specifies.
According to a study carried out by the auditor PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 40% of students who use virtual reality technology in their classes consider themselves more prepared to apply what they have learned in real life and participate 150% more than in traditional classes .
It also increases learning efficiency by being able to reduce the assimilation of concepts to just 29 minutes, far from the 2 hours of traditional teaching in a classroom or the 45 minutes it would take in online learning, according to the study. .
“We are at a very early stage. We still need a much richer ecosystem of programs for teachers. We can build the hardware, we are a technology company, but we cannot do geometry or algebra classes. It is an alliance. We want to work with teachers, governments and researchers to make this a reality”, Clegg details.
Educational projects in several countries such as Japan or the United Kingdom
In this sense, the multinational has already announced projects in educational centers in countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom or in various European states in order to deepen their potential for learning and to analyze the necessary transformations in the educational environment that allow the integration of this new technology.
Projects that also look at Latin America, a region that, in his opinion, adopts new technologies very quickly and that is “home to a very dynamic community of creators with more than 100 million accounts for the use of augmented reality on Facebook and Instagram and with large markets like Brazil and Mexico among the top 10 globally.”
To this end, it highlights the four pillars of the technological transformation proposed by Meta: “Reinventing classes at school, placing teachers and students in a virtual space, transforming professional training and making it learning for a lifetime.”
A process for which a deadline is not set. “This transformation is already happening and we see its great potential. We hope it will take a few years before we see it on a large scale, but sometimes technology slows down and suddenly its critical mass skyrockets. And I can’t predict when that will be, ”he concludes.