Metaverse and education: which pedagogical perspectives for the school of tomorrow? = Metaverso ed educazione: quali prospettive pedagogiche per la scuola di domani?

The large investments from big tech-companies and the vast attention that policy-makers around the globe are concentrating on the concept of metaverse are contributing in making it the “next big thing” in the course of the digital revolution that we will experience in the next decade. This concept, the metaverse, though, is not entirely new. A few decades ago, experiences such as Second Life, video games such as World of Warcraft or Fortnite, or certain social platforms strongly based on para-social interactions (e.g. Twitch) have already provided glimpses of what could be the future scenario of an internet enriched by the metaverse. It is thanks to cases like these that, in this exploratory phase, we can raise meaningful and important questions and reflections about the educational, training and didactic dimension of the metaverse. Which challenges and which opportunity can the metaverse bring to the world of education? What are the next kinds of digital divide that need to be addressed? How could the concept of educational relationship and educational presence change? The contribution intends to answer, with a pedagogical perspective, these, and other questions that the new immersive project proposed by Meta necessarily raises.