Connectivism And Metaverse

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays we are living many fast changes. In my opinion, time seems to pass more quickly every day; technology is rapidly expanding and is a very important part of life. No matter what we do, today, we all have to use technology. It could range from using a light bulb to storage music in a very tiny gadget, or even visiting several websites. The fact is that now we are very usedto listening words like robotics, fiber optics, spaceships, lasers, genetics, nanotechnology and many more.
We have noticed that there are no limits on the possibilities that are within our grasps. The advances, that will come in the near future, will also prove that our society is on the top of the potential to transform the world as it is known today.
As a result, it is not difficult to inferhow these changes will affect many other aspects in society. One of those, a main one, is education.
We need to remember that there are many learning theories being used to enrich the learning process. However, we have to remember also that all those theories were developed in a different age in which learning process had not been influenced by technology. In order to solve this, today, thereare many psychologists and teachers investing in a new learning theory for digital age: The Connectivism.


CONNECTIVISM THEORY

Connectivism theory indicates the special importance that is given to the effect technology has on how people live, how they communicate, and how they learn.
Theories like conductism, cognitivism and constructivism believe that knowledge is a goal thateverybody can reach, through thinking and experience. They try to show and find evidence proving the way people learn.
Connectivism theory establishes that learning, in fact, is unknown. In other words, nobody can be, a hundred percent sure, what happens inside the head or the body of somebody else and this is because knowledge exists in the world rather than in the head of an individual. As aresult, the theory proposes a perspective similar to the Activity Theory of Vygotsky as it regards knowledge to exist within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities. It also bears some similarity with the Social Learning Theory of Bandura which proposes that people learn through direct contact.
Many learning theories see learning process as a very valuable thing; incontrast, connectivism theory believes that the object, which is being known, is the most valuable thing in this process. This is a kind of Positivism approach.

SOME CONNECTIVISM PRINCIPLES

* Capacity to know more is more important than what is currently known.
* Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
* Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
* Learningis a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
* Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
* Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
* Decision-making is a learning process by itself. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of ashifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

These are the main connectivism principles and, in order to achieve them, there are many approaches. One of those is called the metaverse project which I really believe represents a very powerful tool in the language learning process, even in generallearning process.


METAVERSE PROJECT

Metaverse is a term that was coined in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. In this novel, humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional space that uses the metaphor of the real world. So metaverse can describe a virtual reality-based collective online shared space, through Internet.
An...