It has been described as the most important technology since the internet, and for good reason. The blockchain is no longer a fringe technology with narrow economic applicability; it has become the digital backbone for thousands of innovative applications. Discover the tools that will define the online learning economy of tomorrow.
There’s a new technology in town, and the ubiquity of acronyms and buzzwords that surround it are as bountiful as the problems it could potentially solve. The Blockchain, which you may associate with popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, has been making major headlines in education. Most recently, Sony Global Education, in partnership with IBM, has announced a project to create a centralized, blockchain-based ledger for storing educational information, such as degrees, diplomas, tests and more, as a kind of ‘digital transcript.’ The MIT Media Lab, in partnership with Learning Machine, has been building Blockcerts, an open standard for creating, issuing, viewing, and verifying blockchain-based certificates. These major-player projects, along with a host of other new tools (skills-based hyperledgers, ad-free browsers, social media platforms that pay contributors, digital truth seekers, etc.), represent an entirely new ecosystem of potential for educators and students.
In this session, participants will be introduced to many of these new tools, learn how value is stored and earned through cryptocurrencies, and actively engage in a micro design thinking protocol to both understand blockchain and collaboratively explore how it might be leveraged to solve current and future issues in online education.