How Cryptocurrencies Will Change Education
The blockchain can help improve education, whether by way of facilitating a direct connection between educators and students to facilitate easier and less costly learning through online platforms or by facilitating payment of course fees with cryptocurrencies.
Although payment of fees in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is already happening in various universities, online education platforms using blockchain to help educators to disseminate education and learning is a different approach. The latter platforms are connecting tutors and educators and learners through a crypto economy to facilitate learning and certification.
Such platforms allow educators to create learning experiences for students and earn tokens.
There is also another different approach where blockchain is being used to immutably and securely store data and information that can be shared among learners and educators. Some of these platforms pack their own crypto economies. Still, blockchain is facilitating verification and re-verification of education certificate and documents to help eliminate forgery.
Here are a few blockchain cryptocurrency projects in the education industry.
Academy
Academy Token cryptocurrency is an accredited (by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS-CASI)) school or university that teaches Blockchain Development. It is seeking to address the shortage of blockchain developers. Users will be able to access training programs, educational offering, and online content while paying with cryptocurrency.
According to the platform website, the fact that there are 14 open jobs for every blockchain engineer reveals that there is a shortage for developers. Developers will be able to pay for classes for blockchain programs at a rate of between $18,000-$22,000 USD for a six weeks program and between $24,000 and $35,000 USD for a 1 year + 1-year on-the-job immersive Coders Academy program. They will also offer education programs at a cost of between $3,500 and $10,000 USD. Firms looking for accredited and highly trained developers will be able to use the token to bid for developers on the platform. They will pay a placement fee of e 30 percent of their first-year salary.
They are running physical classes since January 2018 in Sofia, Bulgaria and another one in Singapore from April. The online classes will start in the 3rd Quarter this year.
AC3
AC3 is a blockchain for educators and content creators. They can create, protect and distribute exclusive content and they can sell the content to students and followers who can pay with cryptocurrency.
It seeks to solve problems imminent in the e-learning platforms such as payments, security, overload with ads and the difficulties of finding original content.
The wallet works on iOS, Windows, and Linux. The cryptocurrency is already listed on Cryptopia, SouthXchange, World Coin Index, Stocks. Exchange, BTC- Alpha and CoinMarketCap.
BitDegree
BitDegree is an online educational platform seeking to provide online courses, scholarships and has its own tokens and tech talent acquisition. The platform has a running MVP already, where people can start learning and earn BitDegree tokens as a scholarship or reward.
Currently, it is offering classes in Smart Contract Development and Solidity in February, Web Development Theory, and coding Fundamentals.
Students or other persons can enroll in interactive classes offered by expert instructors. There is also gamified learning experiences, clear and transparent blockchain based achievement tracking system and token scholarships and skills certification for those willing to hunt dream jobs. The instructions come from selected specialists who also earn.
Companies can use the BitDegree tokens to buy the courses to improve their tech talents and enhance employer branding and advertising. The tokens can be used to create smart-incentives as payment for a scholarship. In addition to purchasing services on the the platform, the tokens can be exchanged on a crypto exchange and also swapped for digital goods and services.
Disciplina
TeachMePlease and former developers of Cardano blockchain are developing Disciplina, a decentralized ledger system that supports different types of educational projects. It brings together educators, students, and third parties by uniting the records of big universities, small institutes, online educational platforms, and schools.
Remember TeachMePlease is already an established international platform that allows for cooperation between educational institutions, tutors and students, and has with some experience in this field since 2015. Already, students are able to find, pay for and take courses from different organizations and teachers. It already has 20,000 educational courses on the platform.
The blockchain-based platform will allow students to select desired courses, communicate with teachers and other students, and manage their academic calendars and educational processes. Educational institutions can access course creation tools, set pricing for the courses, get access to academic histories of students, and give the assignment of teachers to particular courses.
And while Sony launched a platform to facilitate storage of educational data and information from different educators and sharing it among themselves, Sony uses IBM blockchain and the information is stored on a centralized ledger.
TeachMePlease blockchain will have public and private parts of the blockchain. Individual schools will own their private chains and the blocks will be verified by witnesses who are special entities within the blockchain network.
The witnesses will generate public ledgers and agree on the validity of transactions defined by specified rules.
Disciplina token main sale took place between 04/27/18 – 05/27/18. The project hopes to move to- Mainnet on the 4Q of 2019.
EduCoin
Educoin is a blockchain-based decentralized global education service that will support the creation and distribution of educational content and transactions for education services using EDU cryptocurrency. Educators and participants will be able to provide online education on a peer-to-peer basis.
It will have features such as AI to facilitate the evaluation of consumers and matching of services as per need of clients (intelligent matching and recommendation globally). There will also be a pricing mechanism that makes it possible to price content and ensure providers are able to enjoy higher returns.
Evaluation of users will be possible through the recording and saving of reviews and will facilitate the provision of quality services by providers.
Knowledge.io
Knowledge.io is a platform seeking to bring revolution in the way knowledge acquisition and sharing is done. It brings together experts in a variety of topics and fields, educators, academicians, trainers, and assessors.
It will also have a marketplace and link to external exchanges and merchants and their partners. The blockchain-based Knowledge Score system monitors and measures people's proficiency in a wide range of topics. These experts earn the tokens by mining, which is by solving questions from which Knowledge Scores can be developed or using websites and apps that have some associated knowledge value.
It uses an ERC-20 token compliant KNW token to facilitate rewarding of participants in sharing their knowledge in this manner, although these tokens can also be used to buy products from the marketplace and other external exchanges.
The tokens can also be used to advertisers.
Knowledge.io’s Chief Operations Officer Marcia Hales said textbooks and videos will be indigestible and Q&A sets will be automatically generated around them for use in education, training, continuing education, assessment, certification, and in other areas of academia.
Children and learners can earn tokens through the use of the materials and these tokens can be applied to college tuition and other life improvement initiatives when they become of age, according to Hales.
LiveEdu
Education Ecosystem (LiveEdu) decentralized learning ecosystem is meant for online education and professional development. However, it is more of a platform for professional skill development as it will let users learn to build products in technologies such as cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, games development, and virtual reality. Users will learn these skills from others -- on how to build these products.
The platform is in beta stage and has already attracted 1,000,000 signups. It currently has live streams and videos.
But its not just a platform to facilitate teaching. It leads by example in implementing blockchain technology and will have the ERC20-compliant LEDU wallet and a Education Token token economy.
The token, which is already available for purchase from the Gate.io and Bibox, will be used to reward project creators, learners, site moderators, and API ecosystem developers as well as to facilitate financial transactions.
The tokens will also facilitate transactions between the ecosystem and external connections such as businesses, schools, libraries, colleges and online education companies.
To facilitate all that, the company will integrate with Parity, which is a wallet for Ethereum and ERC20 enthusiasts.
The company will also have Android and iOS apps.
NTOK-X tokens
NTOK-X tokens is a platform for education and professional development, bringing together tutors, students, talents and "hunters." It bundles together a host of features. Tutors are able to share or teach their skills to students and other users to earn the tokens.
Students, on the other hand, are able to search for skills and courses desired and study them, then pay in tokens. The platform allows users to even launch their own tokens and sell them to other users to raise funds for their education and professional development. This relates to any talented person.
This way, "hunters" can invest in these launched personal tokens from other users by buying the tokens, to earn some profits later as the skills of the people launching the tokens grow. However, those willing to launch their own tokens are voted for by other users in order to determine who should launch the token.
ODEM Tokens
ODEM is an on-demand education marketplace on Ethereum blockchain. It connects students, educators and service providers and these can engage as individuals or groups through educational programs.
Well, education too has many intermediaries, which adds unnecessary costs and inefficiencies and this project's intention wants to reduce or eliminate those inefficiencies and costs.
Educators can use the platform for discovery of learners (customers) and learners can do the same to discover programs of interest from educators around the world.
Both will submit requests, and the system will use artificial intelligence to manage complex requests for easier, quick and better program and customer discovery. Users can also leverage smart contracts to manage payments from beginning to the end of long-term engagements.
Students create public and private profiles. They can then search for and purchase in-person courses, lectures and curricula. They can submit their custom curricula to educators for bidding. Students can also earn ODEM tokens as royalties for custom content they create.
Educators, on the other hand, can create custom content and earn tokens as loyalties, earn more tokens by teaching courses, collaborate with students directly to develop and implement curricula.
Successlife
SuccessLife Tokens (SLTs) is a token meant for paying for personal, educational and professional development even as the amount expended in personal development industry reaches US$11 billion and $500 million per year in the U.S. alone while the . They raised $8 Million in their ICO and have partnership with LDJCapital and The Soho Loft media group. Their target is lowering fees for training in personal (hence making education affordable even as loan debt in U.S. continues to increase), professional and educational courses, lowering cost of living and reducing the burden of sluggish job markets and low low income growth.
They also hope to develop and fulfill needs of the large adult education market which is forcing corporate to upgrade training programs and policies. The platform will focus on a variety of market segments including holistic institutes, infomercials, books and audio books, motivational speakers, websites, seminars, personal coaching, online education, weight loss, and stress management programs. This is in addition to supporting life events and resources, incentive and reward programs as well as being a marketplace for digital content, digital services and user portals.
The coin is run and promoted by the Success Resources Group of companies that has 25 years of experience promoting hundreds of seminars and workshops annually across 30 countries. These events have so far attracted more than 10 million attendees.
It will also host an advertising engine.
Vanywhere
Vanywhere is more of a skill-sharing platform than an educational platform, which enables people to seek and offer skills for personalized results tailored to their needs and requests. Interactions will take place through live, 1-on-1 video, voice and chat or offline gigs for freelance projects.
For instance, users can offer tutorials and skill-based courses on how to cook a meal, style an outfit, fix your smartphone, or more, directly to other users through the VANY token (on the QTUM blockchain and QRC20 token standard compliant) that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions.
Those taking courses will be able to find a skiller (who are experts or professional in the field in question) who matches their interests and needs and both will be able to agree on how to connect: video, voice and chat. Skillers can then receive a review for their services.
Professional skillers are trained professionals such as accountants and copywriters, nutritionists and makeup artists, computer programmers and fitness trainers. Other skillers include social media influencers who could help on issues such as monetizing followers and advertisement help. Everyday Skillers are ordinary people with extraordinary skills and talents or insights.
The platform, which is backed by QTUM, launched in 2015 and has been tested by real users.
