Ed3 Weekly Issue #42: No More Mr. Nice Guy
Hello web3 and education frens,
Welcome to all my new subscribers from this past week. If you haven’t subscribed yet, click here, or use the button below to join over 100+ others learning about the intersection of web3 and education.
The purpose of this newsletter is to provide curated resources about web3 and education for curious educators and education lovers. Since starting this newsletter ten months ago I have felt a need to convince others about the uses of web3, VR, and the metaverse in education.
Having shared hundreds of articles it’s gotten to the point where it is beyond clear that there are major advancements happening in this space.
This week features a number of resources that demonstrate where and how these technologies are existing in the world today.
You can take a university biology class in the metaverse on an oculus headset that the bookstore loaned to you. Maybe you are using chatGPT in your creative writing class to generate poetry that is used to analyze rhyme patterns. Maybe you are a teacher that is doing a lesson on AI in your 7th-grade computer science classroom. Or possibly you are part of the community of 50,000 hardcore VR users.
My goal is to share the actual uses instead of what “could” become of the web3 technology ecosystem. As long as interesting applications like these continue to be implemented I’ll be doing that.
Here’s what I have for you this week:
🌐 Forbes shares how Meta is making inroads into higher ed
🤖 Stanford talks with teachers about chatGPT and gives us a summary
📚 Classroom ready AI curriculum for middle schoolers provided by MIT
🎧 Listen to this podcast with VR pioneer Maxim Perumal
Meta Makes a Higher Ed Push
Illustration by Stephanie Jones for Forbes
According to this recent article in Forbes, thanks to a $150 million investment from Meta, ten universities stepped into the metaverse this past fall. One school, the University of Maryland Global Campus, doesn’t even have any physical buildings as part of the student experience. Through a partnership with VictoryXR, they have created a digital representation of a college campus.
And the team at VictoryXR, led by Steve Grubbs, isn’t stopping there. After this initial rollout this fall they plan on having up to 100 digital campuses by next year. This is all part of Meta’s push to make a splash in the higher ed space. Using Apple’s playbook from the 90s of giving away computers to schools, Meta is not charging schools to provide headsets. So while for now the headsets are being loaned to students for free this quote may point to an important inflection point down the line, “Kesa Herlihy, clinical assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Nursing, said that headsets may eventually become part of a students’ course materials.”
K-12 Teachers Talk About ChatGPT
Image by iStock
“The chatter and fears raised by pundits and commentators is very loud,” says Associate Professor Victor Lee, faculty lead of the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “But one of the best things we can do right now is pause and listen to concerns from K-12 educators themselves.”
Stanford University provided this summary of a recent online gathering of educators to discuss the impacts of AI in our classrooms. The partnership between the design school (commonly known as the d.school), their AI institute, and the accelerator for learning were created to help address teacher concerns about this new technology.
The article brings up three key questions that we should be asking ourselves as educators in face of this revolutionary technology:
Why do we teach what we teach?
What does it mean to learn?
What do educators mean by terms like ‘rigor’ and ‘assessment’?
AI Curriculum for Students
Image from MIT
Do you need some AI curriculum for your middle school classroom? This free resource from MIT provides a number of activities for you to use if you are interested in engaging students with this new technology. Note that this report is a few years old (published in 2019) so it doesn’t address the recently released chatbot tools that are currently so popular.
Regardless it is still a quality resource for various activities to engage students with AI. Most of them are analog in nature that use lofi activities to get students to understand the basic functions of AI. One of my favorites is the “PB&J Sandwich Activity Sheet” which has students create an ethical matrix using a PB&J sandwich.
Deep and Meaningful Conversation on VR
Every so often I come across those mindblowing game-changing podcasts. This last happened when I heard Herman Nerula share about the future of the metaverse. Listening to this interview with Maxim Perumal had the same effect.
Perumal’s involvement with the development of VR and his current usage gives him a unique insight into the role this technology will play in our lives. Here is a quote that helps to provide some insight into his thinking, “VR headsets are those intimidating, funny-looking devices that seem to shut us off from the world. I am here to make them feel like a piece of clothing you love, and a device that opens you up to the world.”
Thank you for stopping by for another issue of my web3🤝education newsletter. If you’re on LinkedIn you can check out a version of this newsletter on my LinkedIn page and give me a follow. You can also link to all my work by checking out my blog or give me a follow on Twitter.