This document discusses the rise of metaverses and their potential impact on education. It begins by defining metaverses as persistent virtual worlds that bridge the gap between virtual and real experiences. The COVID pandemic disrupted education and increased technology's role, while new technologies like AR, VR, and cryptocurrencies now better support metaverses. Major companies like Epic, Facebook, Microsoft, and Roblox are making large investments in metaverses and their education applications by providing more immersive and interactive experiences across devices. However, metaverses could also increase the digital divide and raise issues around how educational content is created and owned, as well as student privacy and data use that will require research and ethical standards.

1. Lifelong Learning in a Changing World:
From (serious) games to metaverses
Baltasar Fernández-Manjón
Grupo e-UCM (www.e-ucm.es)
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
balta@fdi.ucm.es @BaltaFM
15/11/2021, WEEF-GDC, UNED, Madrid Educación Digital y Juegos Serios
Cátedra Telefónica-Complutense

2. Metaverse: virtual worlds and real economy
• Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash created the term metaverse
• A persistent, synchronous, virtual space where people can interact with one
another in real time and where both planned and spontaneous events occur
that bridge the gap between the virtual and real world ( def by Mathew Ball)
• Persistent interactive virtual world with their own economic system breaking
the barrier across devices and the physical and virtual world
• Metaverse not that new as ICT system
• Second Life
• Isolated persistent digital world ( $$ Linden dollars)
• Still around with their Tilia payment system

3. Metaverses: Why now?
Disruption create by the COVID pandemic
• Technology role in the new normal
New development in supporting technologies
• Game technologies, including AR and VR
• World-wide game infrastructures
• Crypto currencies
New Metaverse initiatives with big investments

4. Metaverse major players
and education
• Epic – Fortnite
• Facebook –Horizon, oculus
• Microsoft –Minecraft, Teams, Office
• Roblox

5. Metaverse as educational disruptors?
• Open new possibilities for more interactive immersive experiences
• Hybrid environments: Augmented reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality
• Multimodal content with seamless user experience across devices
• Increases the already existing access gap -> tech divide
• Role of the educators in the new metaverses
• Sophisticated content complex and expensive to produce
• Content creators or just consumers?

6. Education, Research and Ethics
• Metaverse are highly-interactive integrated systems that get huge
amounts of users information
• All that interaction information could be used for better
understanding learning (learning analytics)
• Private companies will be the owners of users’ interaction data
• Privacy laws such as EU GDPR are not widely enforced
• Role of the educational researchers in this new landscape of big
investment of for profit companies?
• Ethics should drive any educational application of metaverses