virtual worlds we live in

virtual world Oct 27, 2010

Our real world is a 4 dimensional environment where we live on. And the term real world professes the meaning of our physical existence in this real time to our society. But here persist a different world too, that many of us are unaware of. This next world is “Virtual World”.

A virtual world is fairly a vague and inclusive term which encompasses almost all of the sensory technologies and virtual realities in a virtual environment. In general, virtual world is understood as a computer-based environment created for its user to inhabit and interact via Avatars.

Avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional or three dimensional graphical representations. The computer accesses a computer-simulated world and presents perceptual stimuli to the user who in turn can manipulate elements of the modeled world and thus experiences telepresence to a certain degree.

This commonly tries to depict a world very similar to the real world, with real world rules and real-time actions, and communications.

Educational Aspects in Virtual World

Virtual world represents a powerful new media for instruction and education that presents many opportunities but also some challenges. Existence of virtual world allows for continuing and growing social interactions, which themselves can serve as a basis for collaborative education. The use of virtual worlds can give teachers the opportunity to have a greater level of student participation. It allows students to be able to carry out tasks that could be difficult in the real world due to physical restrictions and earthly constraints. Virtual world have the capability to adapt and grow to different user needs, for e.g. classroom teachers can use virtual world in their classroom activities changing their whiteboards with the open source projectors. They can be a good source of student-teacher feedbacks; the typical paper based resources have limitations that virtual world can overcome to a heightened level.

Virtual worlds allow students with specific needs and requirements to be able to access and use the same learning materials from home, as they would be receiving if they were in their classrooms. This can help students to keep up to date with relevant information and needs. Having the options to be able to attend a presentation via a virtual world from home or from their workplace can help the learner to be more at ease and comfort. The flexibility of virtual worlds has greatly improved the options for student study along with business collaboration. Consequently, teachers and educators create an online presence where students can interact, using their avatars to learn about new assignments and create project works that can be viewed within virtual worlds. Although, use of virtual worlds is a good way of communicating and interacting between students and teachers, this should not solely be a substitution for actual face-to-face meetings and live appearances. When using virtual worlds, there are also disadvantages to some extent. Students and learners lose their body languages, postures and other personal etiquettes due to the higher degree of ease that virtual world creates by not consisting any type of physical work for its users.

‘A’ rated educational institutions are running virtual classrooms and discussion-sections in developed nations of western part of world. So it also becomes a crucial matter for our country and the countrymen to be keen enough to initiate a positive feeling for these innovative ways of interactive learning by exploring absolute ideas and plans to project the virtual classes in our Nepalese education and business surroundings. And without any second thought this would definitely gear up our speed of learning with annual scholarly outcomes and heighten the business along with paving new opportunities for international success for Nepal.

Conclusion: The best idea for a more complete and wider variety in learning techniques is to integrate both handicraft and technology based methods.

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Sparsh

Software Engineer