Ed3Weekly: Issue #2 of Web3🤝Education
Aloha mai and welcome to issue #2. Thank you to all the OG subscribers that signed up after my first release. Your subscriptions, likes, and retweets have really helped spread the word as I share about this next phase in my journey as an educator. Please continue sharing fam!
These (hopefully weekly) newsletters will be a place for me to share about all the happenings that I observe in my web3 🤝 education orbit. You will find articles, tweets, videos, or events that I think are relevant to this new and exciting ed3 space.
I will be keeping both NFT enthusiasts and educators in mind as I curate these newsletters. I believe the power of ed3 lies in our collective efficacy. We each can bring so much to this space and the ability to collaborate with each other will only help us all grow.
Again your likes and retweets really help, mahalo for all your support! 🤙
Tweets
Like all industries, businesses, and sectors web3 sufferers from a lack of female representation. This is particularly distressing for ed3 because K-12 education, one of the largest occupational fields in the country, is increasingly dominated by women. This article by Business Insider provides some very insightful data on the demographics in education by gender as well as the discrepancies in promotional opportunities.
I want to highlight this Tweet thread by Vriti Saraf CEO and Founder of k20 Educators as she dives into the landscape of women founders in web3. It is both concerning and hopeful at the same time. There are way too few women-led orgs in web3, but there is also a massive opportunity in web3 to build products, services, communities, and events that represent more diverse identities.
Check out the thread below:
Vriti Saraf 🌐 3.0 building the Eduverse on Twitter: — twitter.com
“Shout out to my fellow #web3 female founders! The work is grueling and we have so much more to do but it's wonderful to be in such brilliant company. Check out the production of the #womeninweb3 landscape 🧵👇🏾”
And make sure you check out the Women in Web3 Landscape graphic.
Articles
I am continually impressed with the work of Scott David Meyer. He is a machine, pumping out articles rich with thoughtful analysis of his work in the ed3 space. And I emphasize work. This person is actively building and iterating in the education space with web3 tools. His most recent article is a partnership with digital credentialing expert Simone. You will definitely want to check it out along with other writings on his mirror blog.
Middle School NFT Club
In February I launched my middle school NFT club. With little planning and a few goals, I wanted to create a safe space for students to explore and learn about NFTs. So far we have explored different NFT projects that inspire them, took a deep dive into jobs in the web3 space, and this week we laid the groundwork for our own class-driven NFT project idea.
I will be updating you each week on how this experiment progresses until the end of the school year. I have some NFT artists lined up to come in as guests to share with the students. Looking forward to guiding this learning experience for them.
Non-Fungible Teaching Moment
Every week I try to spend my Tuesday afternoons (evenings for those of you in mainland time zones) listening to the Non-Fungible Teaching Show with my friend Michael Cohen, aka The Tech Rabbi. And each week I catch at least one, usually many more, nuggets of information that completely change my thinking.
One idea that I have been playing around with is how teachers can use blockchain technology to ensure ownership of their own intellectual property, or IP. I could never quite synthesize in my head what that IP would actually be. Would it be a lesson plan, a slide deck, an infographic maybe?
But as The Teach Rabbi was speaking with jonrad from the Onboard DAO on his show, he mentioned how teachers could write their own textbook and mint that as an NFT. Boom, light bulb moment 💡
I mean it seems so obvious, but as a former math teacher, I have experienced the gatekeeping that textbook companies have over our curricula and what is being taught in our classrooms. As a teacher who often designs his own pathways for learning by piecing together various pieces of text from a variety of sources, I have been inspired to at some point possibly create my own text.
This text could be minted as an NFT, sold on the blockchain, and I could still retain ownership of it. I could also gain additional financial resources each time it is bought and sold by different people. That textbook could even be spliced up into different sections that could be bought and sold as smaller pieces by teachers that are creating their own learning pathways by taking different chunks of learning from different textbooks by different people.
The possibilities are endless, and it is something that I had never thought of before. Right now it is all just an idea in my head, but one that inspires me to continue exploring and building in this space. If you would like to learn more about how we can intersect education with blockchain technology I highly recommend you take a listen to the show. It happens every Tuesday at 9 pm eastern time on Twitter Spaces, give The Tech Rabbi a follow on Twitter to stay up to date.
Ed3 Educators NFT Happenings
For those that don't know I have been working as the growth lead for the Ed3 Educators NFT. Over these past couple of weeks, we have seen the community continue to grow both on Twitter and on our Discord. I am getting increasingly excited about the launch of our NFT as new people join the community and share their thoughts about how education can evolve in web3.
I am most enamored with how the design of each NFT reflects me as an educator. To see myself represented along with the many dynamic characteristics of my fellow educators inspires me.
Check out this graphic showing the anatomy of the Ed3 Educators NFT.
You can join the community by following the Twitter account or jump right in and join the Discord.
Thanks again for reading, you can read my blog on the decentralized blogging platform Mirror, sign up to receive my Substack, or go old school and read my bloggy blog. They all link to the same content 🤪