As an example of what “artificial worlds” could be, No Man’s Sky pushes the imagination toward what the VR and AR world will be like. And we at PSA should push our imagination as well towards what these worlds can do for immersive learning environments.
For those who maintain there’s just no substitute for F2F connectivity, something like the below as a VR experience might lead us to begin to question the limits of AI, and the limits of our “media environments” possibilities.
Yes, we’ve had AI and VR worlds such as Second Life for some time, and those have stimulated educators imaginations about how they can support learning. No Man’s Sky could work similarly to get us thinking, gee what could learning look like if these sorts of immersive environments were created to support it, including collaborative learning, and social learning constructs?
In other words, what if “simulations” became as deeply interactive and as stimulating as F2F? We might have believed that could never happen, but what if your AI pal, like Siri, interacted with you and other learners, and “teacher guides” AI avatars, in a super rich ever evolving VR world?
It wouldn’t replace F2F, but it could create a media derived parallel universe that was close to, equal to, or more dynamic a learning opportunity than we can presently imagine, or that has previously existed in F2F.
To see this video in full screen, and to read the story, one apparently has to go to Time’s website directly Scroll down to the bottom of the story. (Admin note: Time has apparently also added code to prevent a screen grab of the video.)
Here’s the video embedded in small size: