Ed3Weekly: Issue #13 of Web3🤝Education
Hello my friends, and happy NFTNYC22 week. Lots going on in my web3 world. Not only am I writing this from the hotel on my final night in Amsterdam, but simultaneously the Ed3 Educators project is live with the public mint, and there are NFT events galore in New York City.
Next week I will be sharing additional details, so stay tuned for a special Ed3 Educators Newsletter #14. For now, I am focused on traveling back across the Atlantic Ocean into New York City for the tail end of NFTNYC.
This past week I had the opportunity to have two very different web3-related experiences. The first was the Moco Museum Exhibition I mentioned in last week's newsletter. The Moco is located directly adjacent to the Van Gogh Museum and across from the famous Rijksmuseum. There was a small NFT exhibit and it was my first time seeing actual NFT art displayed in a museum, a very important milestone.
The following day I went to the NXT Museum in the up-and-coming Noor Amsterdam district. I highly recommend visiting here if you are in the Netherlands. The interactive digital art displays are highly immersive and interactive. It touched on themes of the future of digital art, identity, imagination, creativity, and more. I was also able to mint two POAPs while there.
From this experience, I got a sense of what the future of art and creativity is going to look like–fully immersive and experiential art displays. It provided an interesting contrast to the legacy museum experiences I had. I love a Van Gogh or 19th-century impressionistic paintings, but it was a whole other level to experience the art at the NXT Museum.
This week I have some articles to share that touch on the topics that these experiences ignited in me. There's an article reviewing books on the metaverse from Harvard Business Review, an article about how web3 will impact K-12 education, and the role of identity in the metaverse.
Check out the descriptions below, and click the links to read more. If you’re not subscribed yet, go to my profile and enter your email address to get this newsletter delivered right to your inbox.
Harvard Business Review Reviews Metaverse Books
Exploring the Metaverse — hbr.org
As a former self-described web3 aficionado but metaverse skeptic, I've become more and more fascinated with the potential of immersive technologies. This article in Harvard Business Review summarizes the important points of three major books on the metaverse that were recently released. It also emphasizes the role of ownership, especially identity ownership which is a key component of web3.
I appreciate that the article closes with a cautious eye towards a potential metaverse-enrolled future, "Yet I can’t help seeing the dystopian side of this future. Work isn’t becoming play; play is becoming work. It feels as if instead of offering digital liberation and ownership, the metaverse is offering more responsibilities without a promotion."
That interpretation is a little shortsighted, but I appreciate the critical eye of the potential dark side of these technologies if we do not implement them humanely and with intention.
How Web3/Ed3 And Immersive Technologies Signal A New Era For K-12 Education — www.forbes.com
Contrasting the dystopian interpretation offered by Harvard Business Review, this article presents a more optimistic take on web3 and education. Forbes has been publishing thoughtful work on web3. I have shared a number of pieces that showcase the potential of this technology, particularly in education.
This article quotes some of my favorite ed3 thinkers and writers (including the oft-referenced Scott David Meyer). Articles like this are important for pushing the conversation forward and sparking interest in web3. These technologies are not a panacea, but a tool to support effective pedagogy. We need to move the discussion forward about how we can increase the accessibility of these technologies for our students, and articles like this will go a long way towards doing that.
How Will We Present Ourselves in the Metaverse?
For the metaverse to grow, mobile digital identities are necessary | VentureBeat — venturebeat.com
Identity and ownership are the secret sauce of web3. They are what will make this technology move and provide unique value to its users. While at the NXT Museum there was one quote on an art piece that really caught my eye:
"It will feel like you're winning
There you'll be twinning
A new form to project yourself
From earthly norms you eject yourself
Born to be free, your body dances in ritual memory
Discovering how anonymity liberates identity
You drag and drop yourself as digital information."
This article in Venture Beat explores the idea of digital identities. It makes a compelling argument that the metaverse isn't just a destination, but actually, a realization that allows our digital identities to exist. I am really intrigued by this idea.
In our current iteration of the web, identity has been rightfully discussed in detail. You are interacting with your digital identity each time you log into your email, social media profile, or complete a transaction online.
What is that identity? Who has access to that identity? What does that particular form of your identity communicate? These questions will become all the more important as our lives transition into the metaverse.
Thank you for stopping by for another issue of my web3🤝education newsletter. Stay tuned for next week as I deep dive into the Ed3 Educators NFT project. As always you can subscribe to the newsletter here or if you’re on LinkedIn go check out a version of this newsletter on my LinkedIn profile and feel free to give me a follow as well.
Link to all my work by visiting www.dagan.me