After years of observing the crypto industry's growth and influence, I encourage readers to approach this with an open mind. For those curious about the depth of crypto’s reach, now is a perfect time to recognize just how significant its impact has become.

A Look Back: Silicon Valley's Influence in 2008

To understand 2024’s “crypto election,” let’s briefly revisit 2008. Back then, Obama’s campaign gained momentum through strong support from the budding internet industry in Silicon Valley, where Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter rallied behind him.

These companies contributed not only financially, but also by offering strategic digital innovation and social networking expertise that reshaped campaign strategies. An insightful piece from The Nation, titled "Was Obama Silicon Valley’s President?" covers this in detail.

The 2024 Parallel: Crypto's Political Rise

In 2024, we’re seeing some similarities, yet this time with the crypto industry leading the way. A recent deep dive in Ed3 Weekly, titled "The Crypto Trio: How the Cryptocurrency Industry Has Made Its Mark on the 2024 Elections," highlights how crypto’s influence has now shifted the political landscape.

Here’s the key point to consider:

🔑 Crypto-backed super PACs—Fairshake, Defend American Jobs, and Protect Progress—have supported candidates from both parties, aiming for a pro-crypto Congress.

Crypto’s bipartisan support strategy focuses on electing candidates who favor crypto-friendly policies and clear regulatory frameworks. Their goal is to create a legislative environment that fosters innovation and provides clarity for digital assets. Amid the polarized discourse, it’s important to recognize that this strategy has succeeded in bringing unprecedented crypto support to Congress.

As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong put it:

"No matter what happens in this election, it's going to be the most pro-crypto Congress that we've ever had.”

Crypto’s Strategic Political Investments in 2024

So who are these players in the cryptocurrency industry have have contributed funds to the 2024 election? Coinbase, Ripple, and Jump Crypto have contributed a combined total of $93 million to pro-crypto super PACs such as Fairshake, Defend American Jobs, and Protect Progress. Notably, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz added another $45.2 million.

These donations were largely non-partisan, aimed at supporting candidates from both major parties who favor crypto-friendly policies. For example, Fairshake supported Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Protect Progress backed Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, who has endorsed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, promoting a regulatory framework for digital assets.

This bipartisan support is an example of the crypto industry's goal of creating a political environment where blockchain and digital assets can succeed, regardless of traditional party lines.

An Invitation to Educators

To my fellow educators, the 2024 election was an important signal to stay curious about blockchain, crypto, and tokenized finance. My weekly newsletter, Ed3 Weekly, is a great place to start. You can subscribe on LinkedIn or get it delivered straight to your inbox on Substack.

Each issue of Ed3 Weekly provides educators with curated resources focused on the intersection of emerging technologies—like Web3, blockchain, and AI—and education. Recent topics have included:

• Southeast Asia’s embrace of blockchain

• Bitcoin education in El Salvador and Argentina

• Tokenizing the $2.2 trillion education finance market

• Building durable skills for a blockchain-enabled future

These topics are meant to help educators understand and integrate new technologies in ways that matter for their classrooms and institutions.

Looking Ahead

As the crypto industry’s role continues to grow in politics, blockchain technology will no longer be a niche topic. It is an emerging force influencing policy and governance. This year’s election marks a moment for cryptocurrency to be a bipartisan contributor toward a regulatory environment that encourages innovation and transparency.

For educators, understanding these shifts is about preparing students for a future where financial literacy, blockchain awareness, and digital innovation are essential skills. Stay informed and open to new perspectives so we can help shape an educational ecosystem that empowers the next generation to contribute to our evolving digital world.

Afterward, I anxiously waited for the sign-ups or the possible lack of them. My initial fear was that none of the students would be interested in doing this. I knew there were a few students who knew of crypto from my investing club in the fall. I had also overheard a couple of students mention the “right-click save” phenomenon. I still wondered to myself if there were enough middle schoolers interested in spending a half hour every week talking about jpegs.

Can You Increase Your Maximum?

My answer came the following week when my principal asked to chat with me about my NFT Club. “Uh-oh,” I thought, maybe a parent complained about introducing this as something too controversial for kids. Or maybe no one signed up. “That’s fine,” I thought, I could spend the quarter in the library helping to thread sewing machines for the Sew Awesome club.

Instead, my principal asked me if I was willing to increase my maximum sign-ups from 10 to 14 because there were so many interested students. That was unexpected!

I, of course, said yes. The max of 10 was arbitrary and I was doubtful I’d even get that many.

Time to Make a Plan

All I needed now was a plan as to how I was going to teach young people about web3, the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs. There was no playbook for this at the time. No resources, no lesson plans, and no chatGPT to generate learning outcomes.

I had to rely on good old-fashioned learning design. So I did what you should always do when presented with the challenge of leading instruction for someone–what are the outcomes?

I wrote three:

• Understand how web3 will impact the future of work

• Understand the relationship between technology and art

• Understand how the blockchain empowers digital creators

My goal was to deliver these learning outcomes through a final performance assessment that would be a collaborative group project. We would create our own NFT generative art project to “sell” on the blockchain.

I wanted to keep things analog and lo-fi. I also had a few connections in the art I knew I could lean on. So I started building out the general framework for how students would engage with these learning outcomes.

Grab Them with the Art

My approach was to use art as the hook. If I could get students to engage with art on a fundamental level I had a chance of getting them to understand the use proposition of web3.

The first learning task I gave was to go to OpenSea and find an NFT they connected with. We built out a slide deck in which each student added a picture of their NFT, wrote a description, and explained why it’s meaningful to them.

Here’s a sample response:

The selections were varied. One student picked an NFT project by their favorite surfer, another because it was about Taylor Swift, and someone else chose an NFT simply because “it just looks cool, and it’s got a really good rarity.”

Next, I shared an informative video about NFTs titled “NFTs, Explained,” which is a thorough summary of the NFTs landscape. The video is entertaining and has the ability to grab young people’s attention. At 17 minutes it is a little longer than most videos I play in class, but the quality of the content makes it an appropriate option for this application.

I wanted to avoid spending numerous class lessons going over NFT terminology, use cases, and controversy. Having one single video that covered most of the basics was a great option.

Afterward, I led a 10-minute discussion about what they saw. I made sure to let students ask questions, share their ideas, and express their concerns about NFTs. Some of their questions were, “Are they bad for the environment”, “Can I make millions of dollars”, and “Canʻt I just right-click save a JPEG?”.

It was important that I honored each of their questions, provided simple fact-based answers, and also encouraged them to research on their own if it was something that I didnʻt have an answer for. It was a great opportunity for students to dig into their wondering minds.

Understand How Web3 Will Impact the Future of Work

The next part of the club was to learn about different work opportunities emerging in web3. Students identified different jobs using a web3 job board. I would recommend finding more current information for this task because the landscape for web3 employment has changed over the past year. In addition, the jobs on that particular job board were last updated three months since I will have posted this.

The point of this exercise was for students to gain an understanding of the type of work available in this emerging marketplace. As a provocation, I used this CBS news report to give some background of what this workplace environment looks like.

Once students had explored different job types in web3 they were tasked with creating teams. In each team, their assignment was to provide a summary of the job responsibilities along with a link to a sample job description. I gave them the following options for different occupational fields:

• Art / Design / Creative

• Software

• Engineering

• Marketing & Growth

• Data & Analytics

• Finance & Law

Here is one example:

If I were to repeat this exercise I would update it with more recent information about the broader tech job market. There have been large-scale layoffs across tech as well as in the metaverse and blockchain spaces. I would also include more specific examples of how the blockchain is being used in fashion, sports, and music to make the examples more tangible for them.

Understand the Relationship Between Technology and Art

Students benefit from real-life people who are professionals in the fields they are learning about. To help students engage with this learning outcome I reached out to a childhood friend. I first set up a zoom call to explain to him the context of the club. I then invited him to spend 30 minutes telling his story and sharing some of his work.

My friend is a prolific electronic musician, digital artist, and curator. He studied art at the university level, and has worked doing art installations, programming, and creating digital art sculptures. He was the perfect candidate to present to the students on the intersection of art and technology.

Students were assessed on the learning outcome through a question drafting process. At the conclusion of his presentation, I had the students each write at least one follow-up question that I would send to the artist to be answered. This activity was a way for them to synthesize the information from his presentation and the research we had done in class.

Here are some sample questions:

• How do you promote your NFTs?

• Why are most NFTs so expensive?

• What advice would you give a young artist?

• At what point did you decide art is what you wanted to do full-time?

• What software do you use and what do you draw with (tablet, iPad, apple pencil)?

Understand How the Blockchain Empowers Digital Creators

For the last learning outcome, I tapped into my network of professionals again. This time I reached out to Hawaiʻi-based artist Jasper Wong. Jasper has experience as a muralist, brand artist, and lead artist for FOMO MOFO a generative NFT project. The aim of this conversation was to set up students for their final performance assessment of building their own NFT project.

Before the virtual presentation, I had students research the FOMO MOFO NFT project. I guided them to the project website, showed them around the FOMO MOFO discord, and had them read an article in a Hawaii-based teach magazine about the project.

This exposure enabled them to prepare questions ahead of time before meeting the artist. Since they were being tasked with designing a generative NFT project from scratch, this subject expertise would be their main resource for information on how to do this.

Once they completed the virtual meet-up I outlined the parameters of our performance assessment. There would be four different “departments”–art, business, community, and marketing. Students could sign up for any of the four departments and were given tasks to start building.

Here were their initial guiding questions:

• Art: What will the overall design, theme, and traits be?

• Business: How will the token be priced and why?

• Community: How will you engage the supporters of the project?

• Marketing: What will your plan be to attract interest and sales for the project?

With these guiding questions, they were given the time to explore their ideas and give daily updates on their progress. My job was to provide guidance and suggestions.

As a class, they decided to create the “Sweater Rats” generative NFT project. The design concept was to have each rat have a different sweater trait. To give the project a purpose they agree to have a percentage of the “sales” go to fund warm clothing for the homeless.

In the end, we didn’t have time to actually build the project. Going into it I was transparent with them that our intention wasn’t to actually build this out. We were able to make some sketches of the designs, create a basic website template, and generate a rudimentary business plan for the project.

Bringing Closure to the Club

Their final task was to provide a brief written reflection about how they view the blockchain as a way to empower creators. We had an open discussion in which students shared what they thought about web3 and the blockchain and about whether they had an interest in exploring it some more.

The results were mixed. Some had an interest in how it could be applied to game design and esports. A few others wanted to pursue digital art and liked that their art could be monetized and sold using cryptocurrency and the blockchain.

The remaining participants found it a useful exploration of the technology and were grateful to have gained a deeper understanding from the club.

Overall the experience was beneficial. I would definitely repeat it again if I had the chance. Next time I would provide a much broader scope of application considering the changes to the NFT landscape and not focus solely on generative PFPs (profile pictures).

I would also incorporate elements of how the broader web3 tech space has expanded as well. The world of blockchain now includes a variety of digital media including music, film, and animation as well as gaming and writing too. We have also seen an explosion of AI-generated chatbots that can also play an important role in understanding emerging technology trends.

In the future, we need to be providing more opportunities for students to understand the role of the blockchain in an emerging creative economy. A school club is a comfortable starting point with a low barrier to entry. The next iteration is to have these projects and performance assessments included in their subject-specific areas of study like world languages, math, science, and English language arts.

I hope that educators out there can take some of the elements from my experience and use them to implement learning around web3 at their schools. Whether it is a stand-alone project in their class, a club, or just a fun after-school activity, the more opportunities we give young people to explore this technology the more quickly it will be adopted.

1. Using time more efficiently

2. Incorporating problem-solving and creative thinking

3. Building scaffolded instruction

4. Real-world application

The framework below was generated on ChatGPT using the following prompt: Create a multi-step lesson plan on teaching middle school students empathy in project design. 

Here is the lesson plan along with activities that I would use to complement the steps created by AI. The AI-generated text is in italics my original words are in plain text.

Introduction

Introduction: Begin the lesson by explaining the concept of empathy and why it is important in project design. You might start by asking students to think about a time when they had to design a project for someone else. Ask them to consider what they did to make sure their project was meaningful or helpful to the intended audience.

This is a good introduction but lacks any specifics on how to deliver the learning outcomes. An introductory activity I use for exploring empathy is to put students in pairs and have them design a “hybrid food” that contains the elements of their partner’s favorite food. Students interview each other about what types of foods they like, and what textures and flavors. One person takes this information and creates a new unique food from this description. In doing this activity students have created pizza with falafel or pasta with carne asada. It’s a fun way to get students to practice their listening and communication, integral skills for empathy work.

Defining Empathy

Define empathy: Provide a clear definition of empathy and explain that it involves understanding and relating to the feelings and experiences of others. You might use examples or scenarios to illustrate what empathy looks like in action.

For the “defining empathy” part of the lesson, have students watch this video and put them in small groups to write their own definition of empathy. Place the definitions somewhere for the entire room to see and do a short discussion/feedback to generate a class definition. Source your own materials on social and emotional learning such as videos and articles if the video I shared doesn’t resonate.

Practicing Empathy

Practice empathy: Next, give students an opportunity to practice empathy by asking them to brainstorm a list of different groups of people who might be affected by a project (e.g. elderly, children, people with disabilities, etc.). Then, ask students to think about what those groups might need or want from a project, and how they might go about designing something that meets those needs. Encourage students to share their ideas and discuss them as a class.

The chatbot did a pretty good job providing some specifics about an activity to use to help practice empathy. In addition to “brainstorming, a list of different groups of people who might be affected by a project” students can use observation to practice empathy. If students choose to design for people with disabilities, for example, walk around their neighborhood and take pictures of things that would be impactful on this group. Use the photographs to facilitate a discussion about what their needs are and how to solve for those needs.

Empathy in Action

Empathy in action: To further illustrate the importance of empathy in project design, you might show students examples of projects that were successful because they were designed with empathy in mind. For example, you could show examples of products that were designed to be accessible or user-friendly for people with disabilities, or community projects that were designed to address a specific need in the local area.

This phase of the lesson is a good time to expose students to case studies in design. Introduce how empathy is used in action by showing this news report on IDEO’s design process. Then have students work through three or four different products designed to solve a problem, for example, Nike FlyEase shoes or this expandable conveyor system. Students can outline how the examples embody the principles of empathy identified in the first part of the lesson.

Applying Empathy

Apply empathy: Finally, give students the chance to apply what they have learned by working in small groups to design a project that demonstrates empathy. Encourage students to consider the needs and wants of the intended audience as they develop their project ideas, and to think about how their project will address those needs in a meaningful way.

It is important to use intentional scaffolding in this phase of learning. Provide students with an extended period of time to create a design or prototype (1-2 weeks depending on the depth of their application). The Stanford University “Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide” has a section on prototypes. 

Their deliverable can be a written summary, a drawing or digital design, or even a physical prototype created using simple maker tools. This could include plastics, textiles, wood, paper, or lasers, 3D printers, sewing and embroidery machines, or a vinyl cutter. 

Closing the Lesson and Reflection

Throughout the lesson, be sure to emphasize the importance of empathy in project design and how it can help to create more meaningful and impactful projects. Encourage students to continue practicing empathy as they work on future projects, and remind them that it is an ongoing process that requires practice and awareness.

The chatbot did a good job including a final reflective piece for the lesson. After students have presented their prototypes in an exhibition have them write reflections in a journal or portfolio. Use the following as prompts: What do you understand about empathy? How can you use empathy in future projects? Or How can you apply empathy in your daily life?

Teachers and Robots Working Together

There has been a proliferation of social media posts with articles about chatGPT technology. There is evidence that this tool is an effective way to help support teaching practice. But I have yet to see one that details how we can combine our own creative human abilities with AI. This is important because it shows how AI can help address the four challenges I identified at the beginning of the article.

1. Using time more efficiently

2. Incorporating problem-solving and creative thinking

3. Building scaffolded instruction

4. Real-world application

AI is also effective for other instructional tasks such as generating fact-based assessments, homework assignments, or even slideshow presentations. I learned that we cannot rely solely on AI to create these resources. This post was to demonstrate that the creative abilities of educators have an important role in designing supplemental activities and tasks.

I look forward to seeing how other educators use their skills to co-create effective educational resources with the help of artificial intelligence. I believe AI will make more room for teachers rather than move us out of the instructional experience. It will also help us focus on more creative components of our job as the mundane tasks of our profession get addressed by AI.

As a musician and educator, I source a lot of insights about my craft from the world of music. One recent insight came from an interview with John Frusciante guitarist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He discussed how his guitar playing on the album "By the Way" was influenced by Eddie Van Halen. This helped me realize that instruction focused on content loses the magic of what is hidden.

Typically a guitarist influenced by Eddie Van Halen would be employing two of his signature guitar techniques, two-hand tapping and whammy bar dive bombs. John's guitar playing on the album is void of these. His style is described as "recognized for the melodic and subdued emotions." These are not things that you would associate with Eddie’s playing.

John explains it this way, “there’s a certain confidence between the way I am playing those simple things that I’m playing, and a certain precision in the accenting of things, and the rhythm playing. It’s a lot of things that I got from his style that just aren’t the obvious frontal parts of his style.”

Venice Queen

In that same interview, John also talks about how his rhythmic guitar playing was influenced by his interest in drum and bass music. When writing the acoustic guitar part of the song “Venice Queen” he used his exposure to the pulsating rhythms of electronic dance music to dictate his right-hand technique.

Listening to this driving and melodic rock-n-roll song it would be hard to hear the impact of music that uses samples and synthesizers.

https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZIw7nCYObqthuWCuDrCu0?si=62fec59b7b6e4971

Music shows us that instead of focusing on the “what” in education, we can focus on the “how.” This shift in focus can move us from only assessing content knowledge and make space for the assessment of self-knowledge.

Getting to Know You

A common experience at the beginning of the school year is a “getting to know you” activity. These commonly function as "ice breakers" or introductory diversions from the start-of-the-year routines. Adopting a musical mindset of assessing self-knowledge can help us leverage these moments to do so much more.

Frame these as important moments in which the students look inward and share valuable information about themselves. Use simple and free creative tools like Canva or Adobe Creative Cloud to have students create original pieces of digital media. Co-create rubrics with students that incorporate language around competencies like self-awareness and communication.

One template I use was shared with me by Claudio Zaval Jr. With this template students can identify unique traits, characteristics, or interests that influence them. Combining these digital creations with the peer and self-assessment rubrics that you co-created with the students, both you and the students gain insights into who they are as individuals.

Teaching Like Frusciante

John Frusciante’s guitar playing is confident in its simplicity and its precise rhythmic style. I have followed John’s guitar playing my whole life and wasn't until that interview that I became aware he had adopted those stylistic characteristics from Eddie Van Halen.

In a similar way, John's guitar playing has influenced my style as a teacher. From deep studies of his guitar playing, I have developed my thoughtfulness and creativity. Much like John who does extensive examinations of various musical and guitar styles I immerse myself in a variety of instructional techniques.

Ask Yourself

What magic is hidden behind your own unique style? How do you incorporate your individual interests to shape your instruction? What are the unexpected people or places that sneak their way into how you approach the craft of teaching?

By asking these questions we can unlock the magic hiding behind who we are as educators.

If you would like to hear the entire interview it is embedded below.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yO3M4HxxBo94uVdkmkKtu?si=bb2374a9a4154239

0xd74948b90bf7d85d6b88d934594f6e49901e992a8c964c070eff9ddd62715a57

Since then, I have reached a number of important personal milestones:

• Presented at three conference events on web3

• Started an NFT club at my middle school

• Joined a DAO for educators

• Attended an exclusive event at the World Trade Center for the owners of a specific NFT

• Published 30 issues of a web3/education newsletter

• Purchased many more NFTs

I have three main reflections to share after living for one year immersed in web3:

1. We’re still early

2. It still doesn’t work…yet

3. We’ll figure it out

Planes and Blockchains

I will be using planes and flight to help describe what I’ve learned. Understanding where planes came from and how we got here is useful imagery for understanding web3. As author Steve Parrish of The Great Mental Models said, “The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head.”

It’s written into the history of humankind that on December 17, 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The history of flight did not start with that event. There was kite flying in China, designs of various flying machines by da Vinci made, attempts at hot air balloon flights, “the flying man”, you get the idea.

Let’s take a look into the past to help us understand more about what we may see in the future.

Dirigibles and Tokens aka “We’re Still Early”

Lesson 1: We’re still early

We are in the “dirigible”, or “airship” phase of crypto and NFTs. This can refer to both the language that we use and what the technology looks like.

Dirigibles are those big metallic lube-looking things that were invented in the early 20th century. Your image of them might be from the cover of the Led Zeppelin I album or that horrific video of the Hindenburg disaster from 100 years ago. There were a number of terms that were used throughout their development, “zeppelin”, “aerostat”, “airship”, or “blimp.”

We don’t think of aircraft in those terms anymore. We just call all anything that flies through the sky an “airplane.” Similarly, I don’t foresee a future in which we still use the term “non-fungible token” or “cryptocurrency.” In the meantime, we have prototyped other terms as replacements, such as “token”, “digital asset” or my favorite, “magic internet money.”

As this technology becomes more widely adopted those terms will become outdated and will no longer make sense. A similar example today is how “surfing the information super highway” is an unusable phrase. The terminology of web3 will change as the utility of crypto and NFTs changes with it.

The claims about crypto and blockchain being “just a phase” is a sign of how early things are. The proclamations that we should “move on” from web3 are signals that we have reached the adoption bottom. Remember the famous Daily Mail headline from 1994, “Internet ‘may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it’.” Do you think the internet was a passing fad?

I admit that I get overzealous putting the pieces of the web3 puzzle together in my head. It is a fun exercise to imagine the use cases when designing my preferred future.

I have also learned that things are really early. There is a tremendous amount of room still to grow. And that’s a good thing. We will get to experience all future phases of growth by taking an early interest as builders in this space.

Stick around, that dirigible one day will become a jet plane. Just like how that token one day will become “magic internet money.”

The Metaverse is a Hot Air Baloon aka “It Still Doesn’t Work…Yet”

Lesson 2: It still doesn’t work…yet

Imagine you’ve created something accessible by a limited number of people, functions sporadically, and whose use could potentially result in dangerous outcomes. I am not talking about interacting on the blockchain, I am talking about the first hot air balloons.

The two have a lot in common.

Web3 does “work.” I can purchase crypto, transfer it to my wallet, and transact on the blockchain with digital tokens.

Yet it doesn’t “work” in the sense that it is not easy to use, very few people have the tools to use it, and it’s not completely safe. There’s nothing wrong with that. Early forms of the internet behaved similarly.

I can share an example of one of my favorite early internet memories. It was the Mike Tyson-James “Buster” Douglas fight in 1990. We had an internet connection at our house and we were able to access updates after each round by entering text commands. It felt pretty cutting-edge to be receiving real-time information about an event happening on the other side of the globe without a cable TV broadcast.

That was a far cry from the internet we know today. Far removed from the internet that we knew ten years ago, or even the first graphic-based/hyperlinked internet from almost 30 years ago.

The parallels with web3 are similar. The Carlson curve helps us understand that over time almost all technology experiences both a decrease in cost and an increase in performance.

In 1994 downloading a song on Netscape 1.0 using a 56 kbps modem took over 10 minutes. It cost about $4,000 in today’s dollars to buy the Macintosh Classic II that you’d be doing that on. That machine had about 40 MB of storage and 2 MB of RAM.

Today a Meta Quest Pro VR headset that allows you to experience fully immersive 3D environments costs $1,400. It has 256GB storage and 12GB RAM. We have computers that fit in our pockets that can live stream millions of songs at any time from anywhere in the world.

So while many web3 experiences that we have available today may feel like early 1990s internet, we’ll get there. This leads me to my final reflection.

From Airship to Rocketships aka “We’ll Figure It Out

Lesson 3: We’ll figure it out

It was 65 years between the first powered and controlled flight on earth in 1903 to the first human lunar landing in 1969. That’s pretty impressive.

Amazing things happen when technology catches up with humankind’s knowledge and desires. It produces the aforementioned lunar landing. It also produced electricity, the compass, penicillin, and of course the internet which is still evolving to this day.

One day we’ll be accessing an ever-present, inter-operable, immersive world with value exchange. It sounds crazy to say that. I believe the future will be even more “out there” than that. In 1903 making the prediction that we would be using air travel to land on the moon was pretty out there too.

A future with brain-computer interfaces is on the horizon. The ability to experience things with our brains that our eyes cannot see is going to happen. Living in multiple “worlds” with expanded communities and societies will be built in the next 50, 75, and 100 years.

The technology feels clunky now so it is hard to imagine all of these pieces coming together to create the novel future that I am explaining. I have listened through a lot of theorizing, conjecture, grandiose promises, and dire predictions during the past year that has forced me to question these possibilities. Having done the work to examine these futures with a skeptical and critical eye, I am comfortable saying that we will figure out how to bring blockchain technology into our future societies.

The Dream is Alive aka “A New Age Begins”

Prologue: A new age begins

Over this past year, I have experienced waves of surety and doubt about whether a blockchain-enabled future is real. There have been moments where I ask myself “what the hell am I thinking?” Maybe I am “sipping the web3 kool-aide.” Am I falling for the illusion that is being sold by charlatans? Am I one of the techno-clowns buying into that illusion?

If I didn’t see and experience some of the things this technology promises I probably wouldn’t believe it myself.

What I have come to understand during this year of exploration and learning is that the world will never be the same. In the future, we will speak about the post-COVID 2020s as being the moment when we entered a new era of how we (re)define the human experience.

I have concluded that there will be three things that define this human experience: ownership, value, and trust. Ownership in the way of NFTs (property), value in the way of cryptocurrency (money), and trust in the way of the blockchain (belief).

“To the moon” as we say in web3 lingo. It’s more than a meme, it’s an explanation of our shared human story.

This is part 3 of a series of articles on the emerging concept of ed3. As a curious and creative educator, my goal is to thoughtfully examine how web3 technologies will impact education in our changing world. Before I dig into this final piece of the ed3 puzzle I encourage you to read my first two articles on this topic. The first article introduces the idea of ed3. The second article lays out why ownership of student identity is important in this emerging ecosystem. This final article will speak to pedagogy and equity. 

Link to my previous articles here:

• At the Turning Point: Web3 and Education

• Fight the Power: Decentralization and Ownership

Ugh, the Metaverse

If you have spent any time in a classroom over the past one or two years you have invariably heard students talk about one of the following topics: Roblox, Fortnite, or Minecraft. If not, then I don’t think you’re listening close enough.

So what is it about these games that get students so excited? It’s actually pretty simple. They offer three things that school doesn't: play, imagination, and fun. I know, as a former Algebra teacher I am shocked as you are. Do you mean they’d rather play Roblox than factor a quadratic equation? What’s wrong with these kids?!

Instead of feeling concerned about this, it actually puts us on the precipice to enact the most transformative educational change for our children since the printing press.

Teachers Teach

Having spent the last 5 months (a lifetime in web time) down the blockchain rabbit hole. I have read countless articles, listened to hours of Twitter spaces, and joined a number of discord servers. Through these experiences one thing has come clear to me–there is a major misconception of what is actually involved in the craft of teaching.

Rather than go through each of these misconceptions one by one, the important thing to point out is where this misalignment comes from. What I have heard is that teachers are halfhearted, simple, unimaginative, and superficial. Yet, the educators I talk to every day are the most dynamic, complex, creative, and thoughtful people I know. So why this disconnect?

People in the web3 space are talking about their teachers. They are projecting a bias that they have about their experiences in school. This doesn’t put a blanket over their experiences. It also doesn’t say that every teacher is this amazing dynamo of inspirational amazingness. But during my engagement in the web3 space teachers are spoken about like we are either the “​​Wah wah woh wah wah” from the Peanuts cartoon or the “anyone, anyone” from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (more on this movie in a little bit).

The question I ask myself is how can we get the amazing thinking of people in the web3 space to collaborate with the educators doing the innovative work in our schools? This question has led me to the following realization if we can execute on this collaboration. Teachers are about to enter an age in which they partner with researchers and designers to implement a pedagogy that can ensure equity and access for all of our learners.

In this final piece of my trilogy of articles, I will apply the ownership of learning identities from my last article to how it can support innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity.

Ownership as the Rocketship

In my previous article, I outlined how decentralized technology allows learners to own their education. The main points I argued are that there are four parts to ownership: trustless environment, data reconciliation, reducing points of weakness, and optimizing resource distribution.

The next step is to answer the question of how this will support pedagogy and equity. I bring up pedagogy and equity because of the insights shared by ed-tech pioneer Justin Reich. In his book Failure to Disrupt(1) he said the following when speaking about the important shifts in how technology can improve education:

"Change won't come from heroic developers or even technology firms, but from communities of educators, researchers, and designers oriented toward innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity."

I am pretty sure I have quoted this line in every article I have written about web3 and blockchain. All of these technologies are meaningless if we lose focus on pedagogy and equity. Let’s look at the current state of pedagogy and equity and then examine how blockchain and web3 technology will shape the future of teaching and learning.

Pedagogy Schmedagogy

The fictional economics teacher played by Ben Stein in the classic 1980s movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has become the archetype of the disengaged drab teacher of yesteryear. Using his nasally monotone, the teacher stands at the chalkboard delivering a lecture on early 20th-century economic theory to a class of bored high school students. What has become part of the pop-culture lexicon, he calls out “anyone, anyone?” as he posits fact-based questions to the class.

As a teacher firmly entrenched in progressive pedagogy I watch this and cringe. I imagine the possibilities of implementing a learning experience rich with creation and interaction that would require just a smidgen of modern teaching pedagogy attached to it.

To the uninitiated, they may look at that scene and think, “wow, how boring is early 20th-century economic theory?!” 

But that’s not the whole picture. Progressive educational theory would say the problem is that the students are passively engaged–they are absorbing facts and they are not leading the learning. Those of us grounded in this student-centered teaching know that the answer is to get the students to be active by placing them in the driver's seat of the learning experience. It is not the content that is the problem, but the context of the learning.

The Elephant in the Room

The most pressing challenge for us in education is how we can ensure equity for our students as we design these engaging learning experiences. The clip from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off also serves as a great example of where we’ve gone wrong in this area as well. This fictional suburban high school in Chicago is mostly devoid of any people of color. The well-to-do students that play hooky to steal their father’s rare sports car and go joyriding are the perfect fodder of white privilege.

Our initial reaction is to feel sorry for the kids in the economics class who are the “victims” of a disengaging learning experience. But by all appearances, the school appears safe, well-staffed, facilities-rich, and led by a dean of students that actually has the time and freedom to leave the school for the entire day to track down the absent students.

I am not concerned that the learning experience with our economics teacher will negatively impact their ability to access higher education, a well-paying job, and other tools of financial independence. In fact, the very high school that the movie was filmed at, Glenbrook North High School, is ranked in the top 50 in the country with a 13-1 student-to-teacher ratio and has received the nation's top distinction as a Blue Ribbon School.

We can also point to the premise of the movie which is based on Ferris’ chronic absenteeism. He gains social status and acclaim and sets him up to be the hero character by his efforts to not attend school, illegal ones at that. I have yet to see that premise applied to a student of color in any Hollywood movie I’ve seen.

Short of dissecting the racist foundation this entire plot was built upon, it does give a window into what inequity in our schools looks like. Both absenteeism and disengaging instruction have much broader impacts in schools with a predominantly non-white student population.

Inequities are amplified when we add a layer of technology to this broken system. Access to computers, WiFi, and trained educators that can teach using these tools decrease in school districts with a high population of students of color. There is an entire infrastructure that is required to ensure the effective implementation of these tools. A clear problem emerges when we understand that our school systems are already built upon a foundation of unequal access to this robust infrastructure.

I will come back to this issue later as there is no easy answer to this problem.

Where Do We Go Wrong?

To return to Justin Reich’s argument, this is where most technology tools of the last ten years have gone wrong. We have thrown apps at this learning paradigm hoping it would do all the work for us. School districts have spent millions of dollars on puzzles and games whose primary learning outcome is the memorization of facts. A thorough summary of this era can be found in an article titled “Putting Education in ‘Educational’ Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning.”(2) 

In this article there is one key quote that addresses what I am describing:

“The majority of apps in today's marketplace can be considered part of the “first wave” of the digital revolution. In this wave, apps are simply digital worksheets, games, and puzzles that have been reproduced in an e-format without any explicit consideration of how children learn or how the unique affordances of electronic media can be harnessed to support learning.”

Fortunately, educational pedagogy and practice have evolved since this last wave of education technology apps. From the same article, the authors outline four principles that are drawn from consensus on the science of how children learn. These are the following: learning should be active, engaging, meaningful, and socially interactive. Recently these four principles have been amended to include iterative and joyful.(3)

It is a little bit of the chicken and the egg theory. But maybe it wasn’t the technology that was at fault after all, but the pedagogy.

Doo-doo, Meet Fan

And then there was coronavirus.

You would figure with all the developments in teaching pedagogy and practice along with the proliferation of educational apps that we would have been well prepared for the shift to remote learning that took place in the spring of 2020. However, recent research has demonstrated we were actually a lot farther off than we anticipated.

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Children and Media(4) found that 50 percent of the most downloaded paid educational apps for young children in the app store were scored in the low-quality range. Out of all the apps reviewed only 7 were found to be in the range of the highest quality. In this study, the same four pillars of learning mentioned above (active, engaging, meaningful, and socially interactive) were used.

This clearly signals we are falling well short of delivering on the promises of technological innovation by using these tools. Unfortunately, they were woefully inadequate at providing the engaging learning experiences that we hoped they would.

In fact, they had the opposite effect, especially for students of color.(5) With the social engagement of the live in-person classroom removed, students were now showing signs of increased depression and detachment from their learning. So now we had really screwed up. It’s one thing to not achieve high levels of engagement and meaning while students are still physically proximate to each other, it’s a whole other thing to do that when they are forced into the isolation of their own homes.

Everybody Get Together, Try to Love One Another Right Now

Back to the metaverse. At the start of this article, I mentioned the three most engaging, playful, and collaborative tools being used by students right now: Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. If we were to use the four pillars of learning along with the two amendments, we would find that these games hit all of these. That they are active, engaging, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful. (I would like to say that more work can be done in the meaningful part.)

This is what draws the through-line back to what Reich says about educational change, that it will come from “communities of educators, researchers, and designers.”

If we were to take the current research by groups such as the Brookings Institution, leading child psychologists, and design groups like the LEGO Foundation we can evolve the next generation of technology tools.

The question is then, what do these next-generation tools look like?

The Missing Piece

As I’ve outlined in this series of articles, the technology available in blockchain, decentralization, and the metaverse will play an important role in the evolution of learning. I can point to an article published by the Brookings Institution titled “A whole new world: Education meets the metaverse”(6) which provides a concrete example of how this technology can be implemented in a classroom.

I’d recommend reading the entire article closely as it makes clear connections between the most recent research in how students learn, emerging metaverse technology, and where technology companies have gone wrong. This quote summarizes the main point of the article: “Educational spaces within the metaverse can align with the science of how children learn. Now is the time to design educational spaces with children at the center.” 

This does not mean that the metaverse will solve all of our educational ills. It is faulty logic to think this way. It means that it is an open space to bring together educators, researchers, and designers together, just as Reich recommended! It is a missing piece that needs to be brought into the conversation. Another quote from the article to emphasize this point:

It is clear that games or activities in the metaverse hold the promise of being active rather than passive. Children can explore in this space “physically” and mentally. Whether the activity is engaging or not will be in the hands of the developer. As with apps, there are many products that capture the attention of children, but that interrupt the experience in ways that thwart engagement. Children do not learn when we interrupt a narrative or give too many choices. Thus, designers must be purposeful in creating a story board and having a flow through that board that does not divert a child’s attention to a new and irrelevant task or place.

I have concerns, and you should too, that bringing learning experiences into the metaverse will remove students from the social interactions the research identifies as being important to facilitate learning. This is the exact reason we need these partnerships between researchers, educators, and designers in creating this next iteration of our learning spaces. If we leave the implementation of this technology to the designers we will be repeating the problems that were created in the app-based learning models of the 2010s.

An additional quote from the Brookings Institution addresses this point, “social interaction could be preserved if the virtual environment served as a prompt for interactions between real people in either the real or virtual setting rather than as a substitute for interaction.”

These are key insights that tell me that the metaverse isn't THE answer, but part of it. To simply ignore it because we are leaning on biases that say it is simply a “gamification” of learning is short-sighted and naive. As they mention in the article “the metaverse offers a hybrid world of enormous potential if it is done right.” (emphasis theirs)

What Next?

My argument here is not “this is so simple, just plug every student into the metaverse and voila, problem solved!” In fact, it is much much more complicated than that. I would argue that access to equitable and effective learning is the single most pressing human rights issue in our country right now. I ask myself, how do we effectively educate our students in a system that is built upon inequity and pedagogical fallacies?

There are many challenges to overcome issues of equity of access. It is painfully obvious that any level of implementation of metaverse technology will require expensive hardware and software. Cloud computing, 5G, AR/VR hardware, high-powered GPUs, photorealistic 3D engines, and artificial intelligence will all be required to operate this architecture.

I don’t think there is an easy answer to this other than we need to figure this out. My hope is that both a rapid exponential change in the reduction of cost of these technologies along with an emerging awareness of the consequences of our past failings to design for equity will push us over this hurdle. This may be wishful thinking, but I am hopeful that because this is being placed at the center of these discussions we can enact changes in how we design this next generation of learning.

Then the pedagogical challenges. It is time for us to put into action the research-based models of teaching and learning based upon the six pillars of learning. We need learning experiences that are active, engaging, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful. It is time that we bring in the leading researchers on child learning theory into our school designs. In order to break down silos in our schools, this is one bridge that must be built.

We must apply changes based on the valuable insights we gained from the great distance learning experiment of 2020-21. In my view, these align with the suggestions by the Brookings Institute on how to best implement virtual worlds into our teaching and learning. I’ll close by briefly walking through each one.

Avoid distractions: Students can’t learn when there are too many things going on around them. Whether learning from home or in school, students are distracted by things that subtract from their focus on learning. This is impacted by each individuals’ social, economic, and family status. While school should be the grand equalizer, distractions remain. We as educators are not focusing enough on reducing them. A similar mindset needs to be applied as we look to build virtual worlds for our students to learn in.

Ensure real agency: Over the past few years of educational design, the parameters of how to create an effective student-centered classroom have been shaped by the smokescreen of non-research-based information sharing on social media by edu-fluencers. We need to apply the research that outlines the most effective way to ensure student agency. No more searching in the dark about how to actually implement this in practice. Studies like one conducted by the American Institute for Research are a good place to start.(7) 

Be culturally diverse and culturally inclusive: This is the most dangerous part of a potential metaverse associated learning space. Researcher Breigha Adeyemo who focuses on the intersections of race, technology, and democracy speaks to this in her Fast Company article titled “The metaverse is shaping up to be a racist hellscape. It doesn’t have to be that way.”(8) We have the opportunity to design these systems so they are more culturally diverse and inclusive, let’s do it.

Conclusion

These last three articles that I have been published have been a challenge to write. They have pushed my biases and understandings of what teaching and learning can look like to the edges. There were a number of times where I thought to myself, “I’m taking this too far, step away from the ledge.”

Rather than recoil in fear, I’ve leaned into these challenging questions. No one wants to design a future in which our children will be strapped into virtual reality headsets jetting through the metaverse from their desks a la Ready Player One. That couldn’t be further away from a reality I would like to see in our learning spaces.

But to say that these technologies won’t or can’t exist in some form in our classrooms is just being blind to the inevitable evolution of how humans interact with technology. In fact, as I mentioned at the top of this article, it is already here in the form of Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft.

Let’s not bury our heads because the metaverse and the blockchain are things that seem weird and difficult to understand. A similar thing happened in the 1990s as the internet transitioned from the backrooms of niche computer programmers to the broader population. Look where that got us–systems built upon exploiting the users for financial gain.

We have an opportunity to embrace this technology and work together to build a system that can offer transformative learning opportunities for students. I am raising my hand and joining the rooms where these discussions are happening. I hope is that you are open to peeking your head in and taking a listen to what is being discussed.

I am open to any and all feedback, ideas, or suggestions. The best place to do that is on my Twitter account at Dagan | dagan.eth (📚,🌐) (@DaganBernstein) / Twitter.

You are also welcome to join other educators interested in ed3 by checking out the DAO for educators, by educators at Ed3DAO (@Ed3DAO) / Twitter or check out a project of generative NFTs celebrating the MAGIC of educators at Ed3 Educators (@Ed3educators) / Twitter.

1https://failuretodisrupt.com

2https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1529100615569721

3https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01124/full

4https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17482798.2021.1882516

5https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2783714

6https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-whole-new-world-education-meets-the-metaverse/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

7https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/Maximizing-Student-Agency-NICs-Report-Oct-2018.pdf

8https://www.fastcompany.com/90706466/the-metaverse-is-shaping-up-to-be-a-racist-hellscape-it-doesnt-have-to-be-that-way

This is part 2 of a series of articles on the emerging concept of ed3.1 As a curious and creative educator my goal is to thoughtfully examine how web3 technologies will impact education in our changing world.

Check out my previous article:

• At the Turning Point: Web3 and Education

The Question at Hand

At the conclusion of my previous article, I closed with two questions that educators need to consider as we transition into the web3 space. One was about ownership, the other was about pedagogy and equity. In this piece, I will focus on the ownership question. Specifically, how do decentralized technologies allow learners to own their education?

What's Ownership Got to Do With It?

The concept of ownership can be rather complex. Production, labor, commodities, value, and all their related parts make up the ownership economy. For the scope of this article, I won't be pulling apart each of these pieces. I can refer you to an extended Twitter thread by writer Li Jin in which she covers the relevant basic ideas.

Or for an extended deep dive check out this piece by Austin Robey, co-founder at Ampled.

First, let's look at the role of creating in our schools. I'd like to reframe an idea by education thought-leader and originator of the term "ed3" Scott David Meyer. Meyer mapped Chris Dixon's thoughts on web3 onto education to introduce the idea of ed3 with the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/MrScottMeyer/status/1468336133427929088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1468336133427929088%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdagan.blog%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D473action%3Dedit

Here's my spin on it:

https://twitter.com/DaganBernstein/status/1496145013323018247

Creation is the defining characteristic of the second wave of education in our society. There has been a shift away from passive content learning towards active creation. This has been supported by increased access to computers and free creative tools like Canva, Scratch, YouTube, and Anchor. Students have been repositioned as creators in their schools. While equity of access remains a barrier for many students, in general, there has been an exponential rise in how students and teachers use these tools to facilitate learning experiences.

This active environment in which students are creators introduces the question of ownership. Digital products that are student-created commodities are now the output of the learning experience in schools.

If a student creates a podcast in school using microphones, computers, and lesson plans owned by the school, does the student own that piece of digital work? Can a student distribute that creation independent of the school and monetize it for their own financial gain?

The same question applies to teachers. If a teacher creates a YouTube video building a lesson plan from a curriculum that was designed by the school do they still own that piece of media? Are the original creators of that curriculum owed compensation as contributors to the intellectual property?

This evolution of teaching and learning will require us to decide how to best connect a student's identity to these pieces of digital media that they create. This means that the architecture of our schools needs to be redesigned.

It requires a system of decentralized blockchain technologies that are flexible enough to apply various levels of identity to different pieces of digital media. As knowledgeable professionals in this field, we have a responsibility to familiarize ourselves with the technologies being developed that address issues around ownership and identity.

Let's Talk Decentralization

If decentralization has such an important role in helping to solve the ownership question then what is it?

First, I want to point out that decentralization is one of three architectures, along with distributed and centralized, that can be used when building a network. When using a blockchain application it isn't either decentralized or not. There is a spectrum of features of the network that put it on a sliding scale of decentralization.

Here is a definition of decentralization from the Amazon Web Services website:

"In blockchain, decentralization refers to the transfer of control and decision-making from a centralized entity (individual, organization, or group thereof) to a distributed network."2

AWS identifies four major benefits of decentralization:

• Provides a trustless environment

• Improves data reconciliation

• Reduces points of weakness

• Optimizes resource distribution

So let's circle back to the original question I posed at the beginning of this piece: how do decentralized technologies allow learners to own their education? We can use each of the benefits of decentralization identified by AWS to craft some answers.

It provides a trustless environment. A decentralized blockchain doesn't require a third party to determine who owns what part of a piece of digital media. As students increase their use of digital media to represent their learning, the blockchain can encode all the necessary information needed to identify ownership of these creations.

It improves data reconciliation. Questions of ownership can be resolved by what has been encoded onto the blockchain. There can be clarity about what specific things a student did and didn't create or learn. True ownership will help facilitate authentic student agency. This extends not only to the output of the learning but the learning as a whole. We have the technology to determine the how, what, and where of a learning experience that can be included in an immutable chain of data.

It reduces points of weakness. Systemic failures that burden students can be eliminated. Inefficient institutional operations and ineffective nodes in the learning ecosystem can be addressed. DAOs within schools or even schools as DAOs can empower members of a learning community, specifically students.

It optimizes resource distribution. By reducing the points of weakness, decentralization can lead to optimizing structures. Learners are no longer passive victims by the limited capabilities of our institutions A trustless system allows everyone to decide what level of control they would like to have around how the resources of the school are allocated.

The Point Is

Are all of my statements above absolutes? Absolutely not (see what I did there?) The outcome I am aiming for is to start some dialogue. I am being transparent in my process of examining how ed3 tools can be used to redesign teaching and learning to support students. My goal is to inspire others to lean into this space. These are complex questions and we could use your help to think through them.

I am open to any and all feedback, ideas, or suggestions. The best place to do that is on my Twitter account at Dagan | dagan.eth (📚,🌐) (@DaganBernstein) / Twitter.

You are also welcome to join other educators interested in ed3 by checking out the DAO for educators, by educators at Ed3DAO (@Ed3DAO) / Twitter or check out a project of generative NFTs celebrating the MAGIC of educators at Ed3 Educators (@Ed3educators) / Twitter.

If you're not interested, don't worry, it's probably nothing.

1https://ed3.mirror.xyz/0U3QG8-4K6CD_ltU6SJyKN3-uBD3x6nEFs-YeShzYmk

2https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/decentralization-in-blockchain/

The authors posit that the future of education is using decentralized technologies owned by its builders and creators. This model of internet technology is now referred to as web3. Gavin Wood, who coined the term "web3", defines it as "a decentralized and fair internet where users control their own data, identity and destiny."2 (You can also refer to this article for additional information.)

Here's a simple model offered by one of the piece's authors Scott David Meyer in which he connects ed3 to web3 as defined by internet pioneer by Chris Dixon.

https://twitter.com/MrScottMeyer/status/1468336133427929088?s=20

Ed3 and web3 emphasize ownership and decentralization. Distributed ledger technology (blockchain), the metaverse, cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are components that make up the web3 ecosystem. These terms can be challenging to conceptualize and explain. This is an emerging technology. Many of them require entirely new mental models.

I decided to write about ed3 in order to build dialogue among educators as we begin the process of maneuvering this new technology. As educators, we need to have a prominent role in shaping its implementation. It is inevitable that the models of education that are deployed over the next 20 years will be influenced by it.

Failure to Disrupt

Or will it?

A central thesis to Justin Reich's book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Can't Transform Education3 is that technology by itself cannot disrupt education. His argument is that there are no shortcuts to large-scale institutional change. The scaling effects of technology conflict with the true innovation happening in smaller incremental improvements.

I completely agree with the perspective that Reich lays out. As an educator who considers himself a technologist, I rely heavily on Reich's position. As the saying goes, there is no free lunch. It is important to be critical when dissecting new technologies that make broad claims about the impact of a new app or software.

So how are ed3/web3 technologies any different?

Reich doesn't speak directly to web3, but he provides a useful explanation about new technologies in general.

"The rhetorical tropes of disruption and charismatic technologies center around a heroic developer creating new technology that leads to the transformation of educational systems."3

And then a corollary to the "heroic developer" theory.

"Change won't come from heroic developers or even technology firms, but from communities of educators, researchers, and designers oriented toward innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity."3

This viewpoint provides a valuable lens to critique web3's potential for educational transformation. By definition, web3 is an internet technology that operates without a centralized authority. There is no "heroic developer" creating and distributing this new technology. Decentralization offers the potential for all of us (communities of educators, researchers, and designers) to lead the transformation.

We also need to look beyond decentralization and ownership for ways that web3 can support innovation in education. The last part of Reich's second quote is critical, the orientation needs to be to pedagogy and equity. Any system that promises disruption or transformation that doesn't support pedagogy and equity has no use in the future of education.

But Wait, There's More

I invite educators to join the discussion and push the conversation about web3 further. It is important that we examine what could happen if (as ed3 promises) "learners own their education–validating their knowledge with decentralized technology"? How does this orientate communities of educators towards (Reich's goal of) "innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity"?

To help us start to imagine the possibilities of a web3 driven education ecosystem I created the following conjecture. It combines Reichian theory with the definition of ed3 from the Mirror.xyz article:

Educational change will be propelled by decentralization in which communities drive ownership of their learning identities enabling innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity.

I offer this statement as a lens to create conversation around the potential of ed3/web3 in our educational models. To amplify the discussion I will be exploring two questions.

1. How does decentralized technology allow learners to own their education?

2. How does the ownership of learning identities support innovative pedagogy and a commitment to educational equity?

You are all welcome to join me in this dialogue. Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DaganBernstein or subscribe to this blog wherever you are reading it. My goal is to get more educators involved in shaping the role of web3 technologies in education. I have a full conviction that this technology is coming. Join in on the conversation and come build with us.

1https://mirror.xyz/ed3.eth/0U3QG8-4K6CD_ltU6SJyKN3-uBD3x6nEFs-YeShzYmk?utm_source=pocket_mylist

2https://web3.foundation/about/

3https://failuretodisrupt.com