Mentoring Teams as a Model of Supporting Distance Teaching

In this chapter, the author describes how the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education organized support for the education system during the COVID-19 pandemic building upon education reform and using the mentoring teams as the main resource for learning content creation and teachers' support network. One of the most significant activities during educational reform was the establishment of virtual classrooms whose main characteristics were continuous professional development support in the online environment for learning, communication and collaboration, quick access to the new and relevant information, and establishment of the learning community of practice. The hybrid model of continuous professional development combined with mentoring teams who were already experts in remote work and online collaboration and communication contributed to the swift and effective establishment of distance learning. This chapter provides information from the teacher perspective giving ideas and examples that can be used in future professional development and collaborative teamwork.

Prosumers Building the Virtual World

With the development of new digital technologies, the internet, and mass media, including social media, it is now possible to produce, consume, and exchange information and virtual creations in a simple and practically instantaneous way. As predicted by philosophers and sociologists in the 1980s, a culture of “prosumers” has been developed in communities where there is no longer a clear distinction between content producers and content users and where there is a continuous exchange of knowledge that enriches the whole community. The teaching of “digital creativity” can also take advantage of the fact that young people and adults are particularly attracted to these fields, which they perceive akin to their playful activities and which are normally used in an often sterile and useless way in their free time. The didactic sense of these experiences is that we try to build a cooperative group environment in which to experiment, learn, and exchange knowledge equally among all the participants.

Non-Verbal Communication Language in Virtual Worlds

Over the years, the virtual space has been changing, and the skills acquired by users have been improved, and the avatars, as well as the settings, have graphically become more and more sophisticated. In virtual reality, the avatar without an appropriate animation would move in jerks in a disharmonious way similar to a robot, but endowing it with a particular postural animation, you make a conscious choice of what information you want to transfer with its appearance and its posture. In recent years, research has focused on the study of communication and its importance. The purpose of this contribution is to analyze the animations present in Second Life trying to trace a socio-psychological picture of the non-verbal communication process in a virtual environment.

Toward the 4th Agenda 2030 Goal

The 2030 Agenda settles inclusion as a crucial goal. The index for inclusion underlines a set of resources to guide educational agencies through a process of inclusive development. One interesting model to achieve it is the Universal Design of Learning (UDL) framework, whose roots lie in the field of architecture and cognitive neuroscience. It provides options to enhance the executive functions also with the support of assistive technologies: studies have recently contributed to investigate how AI-innovated Educational Management Information Systems (EMIS), apps, and learning assessments can offer to the teachers the opportunities to differentiate and individualize learning, to diagnose factors of exclusion in education, and predict dropout, dyslexia, or autism disorder. After a discussion on the state of research and on the preparatory concepts, the chapter presents examples of AI-supported tools, and how they can scaffold executive functions; it wants also to urge a future-oriented vision regarding AI and to re-think the role of education in society.

A Bioeducational Approach to Virtual Learning Environments

Knowledge carries some general characteristics related to the socio-environmental, cultural, and bio-physiological contexts. These three coordinates help us to understand under which condition knowledge is achieved/gained and they do it. Along the same line, the real or virtual learning contexts being essential and unique, the possibilities offered by the VLE which give the opportunity of programming environmental challenges, complexity, and support for subjects open up a series of educational perspectives that support individual differences even when they reproduce social platforms as virtual worlds. Programming that through adequate representations of environments, situations, problems, and specific actions are able to work on more complex neuronal patterns usually activated in the presence of real objects, especially in light of the current structures present in formal contexts of education.

Affordances in Virtual World Learning Communities

Since the 2000s, much has been made of the potential technological affordances of virtual world education and training. However, despite their potential utilization for useful simulations, virtual worlds are first and foremost open, social platforms. In this chapter, the author will explore both the technical affordances and the oft-ignored social affordances of virtual world learning groups. Drawing from the literature and over a decade of experience with learning communities in Linden Lab's Second Life, the author will use ethnographic data gleaned from participant observation in two very different learning groups to develop a basic taxonomy of technical and social affordances in avatar-based multi-user online environments. It is hoped that through the rubric provided, educators, researchers, and technology stewards will have a clearer understanding of both the possible benefits and the drawbacks of hosting learning communities in this environment.

Effects of Virtual Reality Learning Platforms on Usability and Presence

The effectiveness of the learning process in the virtual reality (VR) environment and the presence and immersion components of the VR environment are among the most important variables for students to feel as if they are part of the 3D environment and function in the environment. The objective of this chapter is to determine and compare the presence and usability levels of primary school students participating in VR environments with different immersion characteristics (immersive and non-immersive). According to the findings, there was no significant difference between immersive and non-immersive VR environments in terms of presence and usability. It was also determined that the level of presence of students in both groups did not vary depending on usability. The results are regarded to be useful to educators, researchers, and instructional designers who want to integrate VR technology into their educational environments.

From Traditional to Distance Learning

In winter 2020, Coronavirus silently spread from a Chinese metropolis globally. Schools closed and emergency distance teaching was enforced wherever possible. This chapter examines this phenomenon as it took place in an Italian upper secondary school and applies the rules of gamification as a key to understanding the process and the interconnections of all the agents that played a role. The theoretical background includes Werbach and Hunter's game theory, the SAMR model of Ruben Puentedura, and the findings of social and emotional learning (SEL), with the aim to analyze not only the technical transformations with their consequences on teaching practices, but also the emotional impact the pandemic had on teachers and pupils. The results of the first national surveys about the effect of the lockdown months are taken into consideration to validate the author's experience, as well as articles and studies from sources such as UNESCO, OECD, and the Economic World Forum. The description of what happened as if it were a proper game may shed some light into the complexity of this experience.

Role of Technology in Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Educational Learning Challenges With Reference to India

Artificial education intelligence (AIEd) is one of the emerging educational technological fields. A most logical question which comes up is, Is it possible to ensure quality in higher education? Can use of AI and sister technologies help us deliver in the mission? Will it be able to tackle all or most of shortcomings in the field of education? This study aims in a systematic review to provide an overview of AI applications research in education. Technology use in education and learning has undergone a remarkable transformation in the education sector. In order to accomplish this purpose, a quantitative analysis approach was used by open end questionnaire for a survey of scholars. This chapter examined the possible impacts of artificial intelligence on universities. The empirical findings indicate that the knowledge of AI is declining and there is a need to disperse knowledge of technology in higher education.

Minecraft Our City, an Erasmus Project in Virtual World

Virtual worlds (VWs) offer alternative learning environments for geoscience education and give students a feeling of “being there.” In fact, VWs are also immersive environments that enable situated learning and constructivist learning in accordance with the Vygotsky theory, because the learner is inside an “imaginary” world context. In this environment, many activities and experiences can take place as scaffolding, cooperative learning, peer-to-peer and peer evaluation, coaching, scientific inquiry. Therefore, VWs can be a new technology to motivate students and provide the educational opportunities to learn in a socially interactive learning community. In the literature already, some studies report experiences carried out to investigate the effectiveness of virtual worlds in education. In the world, there are virtual worlds used for education such as Opensim and Samsara. Minecraft (https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/) is a virtual world used by new generations specially.