Ed3 Weekly Issue #117: The (Block)Chain Is Hot

Hello Ed3 Community,

2024 has been an interesting year in the crypto and blockchain space. If we look at the price of Bitcoin, while 2023 closed with a significant increase in its value, 2024 started with a whimper.

Many people declared that crypto is dead and that the real value lies in the rise of AI.

The asset values reflect this sentiment. If we use the price of Nvidia stock as an indicator, while Bitcoin has been moving up and down, Nvidia has been moving in only one direction—up and to the right.

Beyond asset prices, interest in blockchain technology was low. This newsletter is an easy anecdotal measure of this. I struggled to find news and articles on LinkedIn and Google News about blockchain technology and crypto in schools.

But something changed as we headed out of winter and into spring. Not only did the price of Bitcoin rise, moving from $40,000 to $72,000, but I also started to see more and more announcements and interest in how blockchain could be integrated into our education systems.

In this week’s issue, I am excited to share some news that reflects this "bullish" sentiment. I discuss new AR/VR applications in a middle school, scholarships for crypto studies, and in our weekly deep dive a teacher in Canada building a tokenized learning system.

Enjoy the articles, it’s a good time to be in web3! Listen to the Ed3 Weekly podcast to hear my reflections on this issue.

📰 Featured Articles:

Check out the resources linked below to delve deeper into the topics covered in this issue. Each resource is categorized by crypto, blockchain, and AI.

🤖 Al News

Renowned Tech Analyst Urges Higher Ed Leadership in AI

🔗 Tech analyst and venture capitalist Mary Meeker is focusing on higher ed and AI in her new report.

🥽 AR/VR News

Exploring the World with Virtual Reality

🔗 KIPP DC is committed to improving reading proficiency among middle school students. The objective of this project is to increase student reading levels through immersive learning experiences.

⛓️ Blockchain News

Circle Funds $5K Scholarships to Bay Area Graduates for Blockchain Studies

🔗 Circle has awarded $5,000 scholarships to 10 graduating Northern California high school seniors interested in learning about cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

🤿 Weekly Deep Dive

Lern2ern White Paper: Empowering Education with Blockchain Technology

Have you been wondering when blockchain will finally make its way into our schools and classrooms? One person I know is working on it as we speak. In this whitepaper on his Lern2Earn platform, Rich Baxter lays out his vision for a fully decentralized schooling platform on the blockchain.

Seeing these ideas from experienced, innovative educators like Rich inspires me to keep pushing forward in this space. It has been a tough couple of years for blockchain. After the NFT boom and bust, the metaverse hype machine, and the subsequent AI hysteria, there was a moment when I thought the time had come and gone, and people were moving on to new and bigger things.

Reading this whitepaper has re-energized me to keep exploring how blockchain can support a system of education that is user-owned on the next generation of the internet. Read it for yourself and let me know what you think!

Thank you for stopping by for another issue of my newsletter on emerging technology in education. You can join over 1000 others across LinkedIn and SubStack. You can also listen to the podcast on Spotify here, with a supplemental episode on each issue. Learn more about me by visiting my website.