One of the more challenging features of life today is trying to understand “BlockChain”. Kidding… but not kidding.

Broadly speaking, a blockchain is an evolving record of all transactions that is maintained, simultaneously and in common, by every computer in the network of that blockchain, be it Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Monero. Think, as some have suggested, of a dusty leather-bound ledger in a Dickensian counting house, a record of every transaction relevant to that practice.

 

Except that every accountant in London, and in Calcutta, has the same ledger, and when one adds a line to his own the addition appears in all of them. Once a transaction is affirmed, it will—theoretically, anyway—be in the ledger forever, unalterable and unerasable.

 

Historically, records have been stored in one place—a temple, a courthouse, a server—and kept by whoever presided. If you distrust central authority, or are queasy about Google, this won’t do at all. With BlockChain, the records, under a kind of cryptographic seal, are distributed to all and belong to no one. You can’t revise them, because everyone is watching, and because the software will reject it if you try. There is no Undo button.

 

Each block is essentially a bundle of transactions, with a tracking notation, represented in a bit of cryptographic code known as a “hash,” of all the transactions in the past. Each new block in the chain contains all the information (or, really, via the hash, a secure reference to all the information) contained in the previous one, all the way back to the first one, the so-called genesis block.

 

Some say BlockChain is a new “parallel space” that is based on fundamentally different qualities of relationship between individuals and governments, institutions, enterprise, and both high and low finance.

Others add that this parallel space can help establish new forms of learning, or, at minimum establish new ways of keeping track of learning.

New forms of learning will slowly become more recognizable and commonly accepted, but how long will that process take? With BlockChain we remove the middleman “gatekeeper” who certifies learning credentials, and often acts as a brake on learning innovation, as it is limited by silos of subject matter, narrow forms of assessment and minimal recognition of the latest EdTech MO.

Instead with BlockChain we might grant credibility to a specific individual’s learning path, activities, journey, outcome. etc without recourse to an “outside evaluator”. Theoretically, one would get credit for every learning activity you ever did.

What might this entail? Learning today is perhaps understood best as manipulating, processing, and curating information in an emotionally motived goal oriented context.  That information can be anywhere in the cloud, in a YouTube, in a “learning game” VR, in an online community, and pretty much wherever a smart phone can “jack in”.

Yet we still have common perspectives that learning takes place only at, and during, “conventional” learning events at learning venues, such as classes and schools. But we also know that children are learning machines in part, and that learning is just something humans do, all the time, everywhere, including  OTJ, and/or in a mobile tech world of “cloud space”.

The legacy educational institutions seem permanent entities despite alternatives growing year by year, because they perform two crucially important, and hard to otherwise address, functions.

One, they validate that an individual has “learned” certain material which then creates an open door to employability. 

Two, they are a  physical space where learning is predominantly thought to occur, and up through early adulthood, provide a (not always safe) physical location where “students” mostly live during daylight hours while their parents are at work.

Certainly for some students the status quo MO has seemed to work well in the past. (though not for many others).  But the “US Educational System” as constituted has also become less appropriate with each new year of huge changes in information and communication. There are signs our huge educational institutions are not capable of the kind of rapid change that is needed to keep up with the rest of our economic and societal upheavals. So we look around for tools that help us work around sticking points and blockages. 

A Blockchain MO of tracking and storing all the learning experiences an individual has, would be a way of aggregating and certifying the qualities of competency in further learning, in a certain field, or in a profession, or for employment. Mobile learning, OTJ training, and  all other learning away from schools, can become “certified” without a middleman, if using Blockchain. Theoretically learning in schools could be certified this way too. BlockChain could be key to being employable in the 21st century economy.

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Here’s an article from the 10/22/18 issue of the New Yorker that surveys some of the current practitioners and their visions of the blockchain science and arts. The big take away seems to be just how complex this is, along with how new and provisional the state of the art is.

The knowledge of where it is all going is currently absent, but there are big hints this “could be something really important”. Perhaps that “BlockChain and Learning” forum that Eliot Masie is setting up will take us further towards a vision where one doesn’t have to be genius to see the potentials, and enact them. Or perhaps we’ll encounter other useful guides and resources to help us “get it”, and move “it” forward with our own ideas too.

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