Time for Tangible: Issue #19 of web3🤝education
Hello educator and web3 frens,
A common refrain when the topic of web3 and crypto comes up is, "Yeah, but when and how do we start bringing this into our schools?". This is a fair question when discussing something as abstract as the evolution of the internet. This week I'm sharing some tangible applications of people and organizations that are leading the shift of implementing web3 education.
The perfect moment for the transition from "talking about it" to "doing it" is right now. Education is the main tool we have to enable the next generation of creators to engage with this technology. By flushing out those that are "in it for the money", it leaves these creative builders. Once the promise of the big payday is removed from the equation, only those that truly believe in the transformational power of these technologies will stick it out.
Looking at the Gartner Hype Cycle curve this would place us in the "Slope of Enlightenment." It's not quite the mainstream adoption that we are hoping for, but there are enough examples that will help to spread a broader understanding of what is possible. Finally, we are seeing the crystalization of these technologies.
This week I am sharing three tangible examples across K-12 to higher learning. Each of these demonstrates how the blockchain/metaverse/crypto topic will be brought directly into our classrooms.
Here is a summary of the resources:
🪙 An article about how students accumulate crypto tokens as they move through K-12
🎓 Ivy League school announces they are offering a certificate on the metaverse
🏫 Leading education innovator brings crypto and web3 digital education to high school students
Revolutionizing Education in America with Crypto — disruptmagazine.com
Amen Rahh, “The Revolutionary Principal”, is the real deal. Not only has he been talking about being on the cutting edge of bringing crypto into our schools, but he's also doing it. This article summarizes his most recent accomplishments–a 100% graduation rate for consecutive school years with 90% of students accepted to four-year universities.
The linked Tweet below also shows him giving a .2 ETH scholarship to a student. In addition, he has sent six students to Miami for an entrepreneurship conference through his non-profit COMPTON Legacy Foundation. This is real and it is changing people's lives. You can check out K12 Crypto to learn more.
Metaverse Program for Ivy League Students — fortune.com
If there were any questions about if the metaverse is going mainstream, it is this. The Pennsylvania University Wharton School of Business, the number three full-time MBA program in the U.S., recently announced it is offering an online certificate program, Business in the Metaverse Economy.
Their website states this certification will help students "Gain the industry knowledge needed to develop effective business models for capturing value in the metaverse economy." Some of the topics the course covers are blockchains and NFTs, industry economics, and use cases.
High School Students Can Access a No-Cost, Digital Crypto Education — finance.yahoo.com
Traditional Finacial Literacy classes have become increasingly more common in schools across the country. In 2020 twenty-one states required a financial literacy course to graduate from high school. But how many of these covered crypto and Defi web3 financial instruments?
Courses on these topics should be part of any financial literacy curriculum, regardless of your level of belief in their disruption. Education innovation company EVERFI announced is offering a no-cost web3 and crypto education to high school students for the 2022-23 school year.
This is an exciting progression for the normalizing of talking about these financial instruments in our schools. If we were to continue to ignore them and write them off as scams and Ponzi schemes, we are not spending the time being productively critical of their application.
Thank you for stopping by for another issue of my web3🤝education newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here or if you’re on LinkedIn go check out a version of this newsletter on my LinkedIn page and give me a follow.
Link to all my work by checking out my website.