RE: Developing a Proof of Concept for Education on Steemit
This initiative is pretty powerful particularly because Ken has great knowledge and experience to offer! And I agree that education is ripe for disruption specifically because the costs are ridiculous. I have friends who are still paying off loans 25 years after graduation!
This one example of a grad school class via steemit is a great one and it opens many promising doors.
Having said that, one thing that is of concern to me with this paradigm shift is quality of education. Keeping in mind that school isn't as much about accumulating knowledge as it is about learning how to use one's brain, developing patience, critical thinking, discovering how to problem solve in the midst of challenges set up by someone who thinks differently than one does, getting out of one's comfort zone to try new approaches and developing the confidence and skills one can use to approach anything in life.
A person when left to his/her own devices tends to stay within a certain comfort zone simply because we can't know what or how much we don't know and this is where school is so useful.
There's this idea out there among high school grads right now about how they don't need school because after all what's the use of math or whatever classes that they aren't interested in? I've had long and drawn out conversations with 3 different 17-19 yr olds, and they are so passionately sure they know it all and have little value for how profoundly the mind can develop when immersed in college education. It is the nature of this age to have no idea just how much we don't know.
I for one still highly value the renaissance education and think that the humanities are more important than ever in this world where everything has become multi-disciplinary and requires agility to navigate the complex layers of social, economic, technical challenges we're faced with.
So circling back, from my point of view it'll be important within this disruptive shift in education to keep an eye on who will be teaching, will the teacher offer not just knowledge but also the key goal of education which is to develop critical thinking skills? How will we create paradigms that maintain depth in learning and not just variety (like we see out there now most often with tutorials and such on youtube)? How do we create incentives to help students stick out the inevitable discomfort of challenge within classes as well as within a program of learning?
Lol, this could have been a post ;-)
@natureofbeing, this is perfect. Thank your for such an insightful comment!
We 100% agree. It's critical with the "decentralize everything" mindset to keep checks/balances in place. Great accumulation of information doesn't correlate to a better understanding of something. A physical campus is so important to cultivate this balance of exposure, checks and balances as students learn, mature, and are challenged.
What we like about this particular course, is that it's being taught at a graduate level. These students (more so than undergrads) are actively positioning themselves to launch into the professional landscape. We hope that exposure to blockchain / steemit becomes a valuable resource for them in both within the academic setting of next year but also professionally in the next couple years. We hope the timing is good here, in order to yield the best impact. Impact (two ways) in terms of the students and the online community we have here today.
Lot's of exciting work ahead. We look forward to collaborating with Steemit Stewards such as yourself as these students begin to uncover the many layers of the blockchain world.