Blockchain and Education should start cross-pollinating

■ Blockchain and Education should start cross-pollinating

The Learning of Tomorrow association held a talk event entitled “Blockchain and Education.” This association, which promotes the use of technology in education, has established working groups in AI, programming and blockchain.

At the opening of this talk event, the Learning of Tomorrow association announced that it is working on:

1. Research into blockchain technology applications in education

2. Fostering human resources in blockchain technology

3. Increasing the technical functionality of blockchain technology

I made a presentation about two examples of encrypted currencies and P2P being used to provide musicians with a source of income, and highlighted that this could be used in the education sector. The first example is the use of blockchain technology to sell music tracks on NEO. The other is Berlin-based imusify, which is a music crowdfunding service.

My suggestions regarding imusify are:

1) Managing grades: secure access to graduation certificates and prevention of misrepresentation of academic records

2) Sales of notes between students

3) Crowdfunding: fundraising for school activities 

4) Smart employment contracts in education: reducing personnel costs in administration 

1) One often hears of the use of blockchain technology to manage grades and issue certificates, but my interest was piqued by the sale of notes and crowdfunding for schools. There may be a large demand not just for notes, but for distributing, sharing and managing materials made by teachers. The need for donations to schools may also be significant.

O3 (from the Netherlands) offers wallets that handle 50 currencies, and Switchio (from Singapore) has opened a P2P exchange that does not have an encrypted currency management body. I stressed that these structures could be used between a range of schools. 

These are all interesting in that each of these applications crosses the bounds of schools and breaks down barriers. Crossing the bounds of schools and breaking barriers are just the things that the Learning for Tomorrow association is aiming for. How exciting! However, these will give rise to a distributed structure that disbands the school institution and may even change management and educational structures themselves. Once they begin to spread, there is sure to be pushback. Just as there was criticism saying that digital technologies will make teachers obsolete.

I hope to keep investigating technologies, demonstrating them and putting them to use while ensuring that educators see benefits. The Japan Electronics School, which I set up, can act as a test bed. I hope it proves useful to the Learning for Tomorrow association.