On Tuesday, the 21st of June, Mr. Glykas, a parent of ACS Athens and Head of EMEA at XRSPACE, paid our school a visit to discuss the future of metaverse and in which ways technology is expected to change. Metaverse can be understood as a real-time 3D virtual interactive space where users can participate with a digitalized version of themselves, also known as their “Avatar.” Due to network capacity limitations, latency issues still exist, preventing us from being able to use our real-life appearance instead, the use of avatars is needed to represent us. However, in the years to come, this issue is also expected to evolve and grow. We’ve all noticed that the social media trends lately are geared towards the use of filters, avatars, and user-generated content. The bigger picture is that all these themes combined allow for distance-based collaborations and work from home, which in turn results in corporate cost reductions.

This overall technological shift is also expected to result in the development and evolution of new companies and industries that are currently not even listed in the stock market. For peak-layer competitor companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, this is the biggest challenge they expect to face. To survive, many industries will need to evolve quickly in the direction that technology is going.

One of the industries that are believed to be greatly impacted by this technological shift is the education industry. As an industry that, for over a century, has pretty much remained stagnant in terms of its structural and physical appearance, it will finally have the opportunity to evolve in the direction of technological advancement. 3D learning will revolutionize academics as we know it. Standardized tests are expected to evolve as well as the overall curriculum of schools. Virtual collaborations will be made extremely easy, and the use of VR headsets will limit issues of cheating or outside distractors when wanting to focus. All children, especially those with learning difficulties, are expected to grow through the use of VR technologies exponentially.

Understanding the direction of change and being open to new possibilities is the first step to growth. Here at the Institute of ACS Athens, we always look for new ways to actively involve our faculty in the growth process of our school. Through the Shifting Paradigm, our faculty was introduced to this new world of exploration and inquiry as a gesture to adopt cutting-edge technologies to enhance student learning.

Every new change comes with challenges, and the only way to benefit from the perks of change while distilling the negative outcomes is through openness and awareness, a clear sense of direction, and strong core values, all of which are things that we advocate in hopes of becoming innovative yet remaining conscious citizens.