Reimagining education through the Eduverse
For the last 2 years due to the pandemic, we have been readjusting to life on video calls, and one of the most striking things for me, even though I have been teaching and learning through the medium for an extended amount of time is that it is still really awkward—all my students are in boxes, like a strange version of the Brady bunch and everyone is looking off in random directions. Technology companies like Microsoft have tried to fix this sense of strangeness with their “Together” mode for in Teams. The approach removes the boxes and puts everyone in a shared virtual space such as under the sea. Everyone sees the whole group at once. The idea is that social and spatial awareness functions in the brain work more naturally in this environment and makes it harder to notice irregularities in eye contact, allowing are more authentic experience. So this is an example of an attempt to connect people online which is more effective and authentic. So one way to approach this problem has bee