Hold on to your hats as crypto shakes up the classroom

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This con­cept could fil­ter into all sorts of areas with­in the school sys­tem, includ­ing the pur­chase of uni­forms, pay­ing for trips and what you buy at the school can­teen. Schools will have their own tokens, which will have a coin val­ue and cre­ate all sorts of excit­ing new opportunities.

Some edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions are already mak­ing this future a real­i­ty. King’s Col­lege in New York City was the first accred­it­ed US insti­tu­tion to accept bit­coin as pay­ment as far back as 2014, elim­i­nat­ing the 2–3 per cent trans­ac­tion fees charged when stu­dents pay their tuition fees using a cred­it card. Else­where, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nicosia in Cyprus and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cum­bria in the UK have announced they will accept bit­coin as a form of pay­ment for uni­ver­si­ty tuition fees.

Schools’ own tokens

Even­tu­al­ly, stu­dents could find them­selves being reward­ed with their school’s very own cryp­tocur­ren­cy, allow­ing them to use it to buy some­thing with­in the school envi­ron­ment, whether it’s upgrad­ing their device, or win­ning one-on-one tutor­ing. These achieve­ments would then be instant­ly sent to a secure, blockchain-based ledger, along with oth­er achieve­ments such as extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties or par­tic­i­pat­ing in programs.

Once stu­dents get beyond their ear­ly school years, this tech­nol­o­gy takes on a whole new lev­el of impor­tance. Blockchain’s ver­i­fi­able, immutable, tam­per-proof tech­nol­o­gy allows stu­dents to ver­i­fy the cours­es they have tak­en and passed – whether voca­tion­al or through high­er edu­ca­tion – and share them with their future employ­ers. Think of it like a tam­per-proof CV, unlike the tra­di­tion­al paper version.

Blockchain tech­nol­o­gy gives poten­tial employ­ers the abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy their cre­den­tials quick­ly and eas­i­ly, adding an extra lay­er of trans­paren­cy and trust. By the time a stu­dent takes their cre­den­tials to an employ­er, they’ll have a much more well-round­ed view of their achieve­ments, qual­i­fi­ca­tions, expe­ri­ence and skills.

Again, this isn’t a far-off dream: the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mel­bourne has been using blockchain to issue dig­i­tal cre­den­tials since 2017, which means a graduate’s cre­den­tials are pri­vate, can­not be tam­pered with, and remain in the ledger permanently.

It’s incred­i­ble to con­sid­er the num­ber of appli­ca­tions this kind of tech­nol­o­gy could have on the edu­ca­tion sec­tor, and busi­ness more wide­ly. While we’re not there yet, ulti­mate­ly blockchain and web 3.0 is going to be the biggest tech­no­log­i­cal shift to hap­pen in our life­time. Hold on to your hats.

Toby Jones is the head of edu­ca­tion at Aus­tralian dig­i­tal cre­den­tial­ing agency, Learn­ing Vault.

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