 Well speaking of stomping grounds, it's the top of the hour. So let's begin Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Transform. This is a wonderful meeting today. We have a lot to cover We are with today's event. We're starting a new series in the Future Transform We're going to be exploring web 3 and what that idea might mean for academia. What is web 3? I mean, we can think of it as the intersection of virtual reality on the one hand virtual worlds and the blockchain along with Bitcoin and NFTs on the other. Perhaps there's more to it. Perhaps there are architectural foundations of decentralization. Perhaps there are issues here with corporate centralization with power. Perhaps this may take over the world Perhaps it may fizzle or be somewhere in between. Our goal here at the forum is to collaboratively Explore this question and we're gonna be doing it over a series of sessions. Now today to kick us off I'm absolutely delighted to welcome two great thinkers and practitioners in the subject, Vrity Seraf and Scott Meyer. Each of these has been doing interesting projects in higher education as well as K312 and web 3. They've co-authored a wonderful paper, which you can take a look at called web 3 from web 3 to ed3 Which dives into what education might be in a web 3 environment So I'm gonna bring them up one after the other and then we'll start talking So to begin with let me introduce Vrity Seraf. Hello, Vrity. Hi there Good to see you. How are you doing today? I'm great. It's great to see you guys and some familiar faces in the audience Oh good. Well, it's great to see you as well There's a really nice wash of natural light beaming on you right now, which is very very appropriate Vrity our custom on the forum when we asked people to introduce themselves is to ask them not about their past But about their future. What are you gonna be working on for the next year? What are the big projects and the big ideas that are gonna be top of mind for Vrity? Yeah, that's a brilliant way to to do introductions. Um, I I'll I'll talk about Not just the next year, but maybe the next five to ten years. I'm just because I think web 3 is a very long term sort of prospect here We're working on creating a space for educators where Access and distance Are not problems We're trying to create a space where educators can come together connect with each other Learn from each other access all the resources that they need in order to create really incredible experiences for students So and that's you know in the metaverse and in those sort of web 3 world So that's one thing that we're working on and we will be working on for the next, you know, five years and then the other thing is Creating a space for educators to come together as a community and Benefit from all the things that they're doing in their communities So it's not just that they're sort of like contributing to a platform or content or a Twitter or whatever They're actually gaining value from what they're doing. So the idea of decentralized IP ownership and the idea of like connectivity across borders. I Have to ask when you say we who is we? um I'll answer that in two ways one is My team at k20 educators, but then the other is Everybody that you know wants to be involved in our DAO, which is basically any educator on the planet I really do think the ethos of web 3's collaboration and And doing things collectively And so the the more people that want to be a part of this and want to change the way that education operates and benefit from it both, you know from a intellectual level and a sort of fiscal level Can be and so I think that's the magic of web 3 that anybody that wants to like be a part of that can Very good. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. That's a very bold vision a very clear vision And it's one that tells us a great deal. Well, let me bring up your partner in crime We bring up scott meyer who is coming to us from the frozen north Hello scott. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Hello everybody Good to see you Well, well, you know, why don't you follow vt here? What are you going to be doing for the next year in order to explain yourself to our people here? What are you working on? What are the big topics and the big ideas? I think high level i'm interested in scaling education. Like how do we get more people educated? How do we get more than you know Over a majority of americans to have a higher education degree or something equivalent and How do we get more than seven percent of the world to have that? I'm really passionate that education is key to human flourishing that people can pursue, you know, their talents And the more Options we can give I think the more that people will have a chance to do that So i'm going to try to work on that and learn from everyone here as well So really excited for the discussion. Now when you say you're going to work on this What what are you going to be doing? Are you building software social networking holding events writing books starting a cult? What are you going to be doing? Yeah, no, I think right now where my talents and interests lie is translating This kind of technological world that I see into the educational space So i'm doing a lot of writing at ed3.gg like good game because I do think education is becoming a game And trying to explain and explore what's possible Really spark ideas that then can be used by all the amazing practitioners we have in the room here today Fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. So we have a translator and a builder two experts and two visionaries Friends, I'm going to ask the our guests a couple of quick questions to get things rolling But the forum is here for you. It's for your questions in your comments So remember the chat box remember the q&a box remember to click your you know the raise head button If you want to join us on stage especially if you want to make people feel warmer because freedy's in new york Scott's north dakota and they're probably very very chilly. I'm in virginia, but you know, we might need some more warmth here One question asked is When people talk about the web3 idea they they either tend to speak about it in terms of virtual reality of virtual worlds the The metaverse idea or they tend to speak about it in terms of the blockchain Either having some form of credentials or content that's identified via shared blockchain Or by using as you said freedy Some kind of physical work through say through bitcoin or through using nfts As a way of either signifying work or being creative and i'm just curious given those those two big domains How do you define web3? so the the main Crocs of web3 is that it's decentralized And the technology that is used to attain that vision can be varied So web3 is actually an ecosystem or the way that we define it is an ecosystem a decentralized ecosystem of technology that supports virtual engagement and that supports the activities of things like the the metaverse things like Any type of engagement online and so If you're thinking about it as an ecosystem of tools Then you can include the arvier stuff in there. You can include blockchain in there You can include, you know, social contracts anything that you want into that um, but Decentralization right now has been equated with blockchain because blockchain is the only technology or the latest technology That allows you to do that. Um I personally don't think that it's going to be the last piece of technology that allows decentralization I think that we are going to continue evolving and create more technology that even supersedes blockchain And web3 is just sort of like the onset of that era So that's brilliant That's a decentralized ecosystem with certain tools and we shouldn't expect these tools to be over with We should expect more decentralizing tech to appear. Uh, that's a really really great starting point. Thank you. Thank you Scott, do you want to add more to that or is that good? Uh, I would just add I think the concept of ownership is really important here where uh, You have a little bit more control over your own information your own, you know Finances if you're talking about a bitcoin or whatever it might be. I think in education the idea of like a self sovereign Educator or a learner is really interesting. And so It's going to be a spectrum, right? There's no like this is no longer web 2. This is now web 3 It's really a spectrum But we're really talking about the protocols that enable these things and then I think educators and schools We'll have to figure out what combination of uh, you know, decentralization versus centralization. Do they want what what kind of Spectrum where in the spectrum do they fall so? Yeah, I'm really glad you said that Scott because um, one of the things that I think is a little bit of a problematic topic right now is that You know, the folks that are really web3 gung-ho are like everything needs to do re-decentralize and web2 is awful And the truth is everything that we're doing right now is on web2, right? So web2 is not going to go away anytime soon and It's going to take a lot of time for people to get onboarded To decentralize ecosystems or or platforms or things that make those things accessible But there's always going to be this um, you know foundational like Reliance on web2 technology and that is okay, right web2 is not like It is a great, you know infrastructure that has been set up that allows us to do Literally everything that we've been doing and so comparing web2 to web3 and saying web2 is like not great But web3 is great. I think it's actually quite problematic Web3 is just the evolution of web2 and that's okay And then the other thing about decentralization is that not everything needs to be decentralized not everything has You know a great use case for decentralization And so we really have to understand like what utility does decentralization have and will it actually achieve The the goals that we want and you know in some cases Maybe it's not a good idea to do it Well, this is fascinating. I mean on the one hand, you're talking about specific technologies On the other hand, we're talking about architectural principles that range on ontology and philosophy Friends, I have one more question I want to put to our guests, but please feel free with your questions and also above all I forbid anybody in this conversation from being embarrassed If you have any questions at all, this is a great place to ask them Do not at all think you can ask something that will make you seem dumb or ignorant This is a brand new way of approaching digital technology. It's happening really quickly There's a lot moving on a lot of acronyms a lot of cute names And please I want to make sure that you're all comfortable asking questions The second question I wanted to put to you both Sounds like it's coming from ancient Chinese philosophy, but it's not You refer to a Tao And I was wondering if you could just quickly explain what a Tao is for everybody And what that might mean for education I'll take on the the early definition and then Scott maybe you can go into it and then I'll build on Sure What it means so in its simplest form a Tao is a community with a treasury And the purpose of the the treasury is basically to ensure that the activities of the community are being accomplished And the the beauty of a Tao is it's kind of like a co-op where you know Everyone sort of like has a vote and is able to direct the activities of the treasury But the difference is that nothing can be done No decisions can be made by any key players or any sort of like leaders or you know Founders of the of the Tao it's it's all based on community vote if the Tao is set up Right there are a lot of different types of Tao's that exist like it can be set up like a corporation, but If you set up a corporation like Tao then no one's going to want to be a part of that So a Tao is basically a community With a treasury that lives on chain And what does this mean for higher education? Yeah, this is powerful stuff. I mean I think about like ready said I actually am in the co-op capital of the united states So North Dakota has the most co-ops for business in any than any other state And it's really a reinvention of that idea right of how do we how do the employees own the business? So what does that mean in education? What if the professors own the university right? What if the students own the university you can imagine where you don't need a central authority to Say that a certain degree is you know valid or you don't have to have a All the other aspects university might have you might be able to flip the model where you get people Coming together for short periods of time around the topic. They're interested in They can validate their learning So really what a Tao a decentralized autonomous organization means is just you can spin up institutions without all of The pieces for administration and maintenance. It's really It's a co-op right so you can imagine co-op could be formed with different types of participants Well, thank you by the way for spelling it out As an English professor in training, I always try to resist that myself, but I'm glad that you did that Friends I want to turn this over to you now Thinking about now thinking about ethereum thinking about blockchain What technical and definitional questions do you have thinking about students faculty owning university? What questions do you have about how this applies to academia? Does this make sense or does this seem like something that's not necessarily going to work or apply? And even before I can finish saying those questions have come in rich Schultz from golden has a great question Let me just put this up a very specific one We hear so much about nfts may love the idea of aid money But there was considerable number that have concerns especially the climate change love to hear your thoughts So I'm just reading this area. Yeah So when we think about nfts and climate change what we're really talking about is the energy needed to to mine cryptocurrency right and The thing that makes cryptocurrency valuable is it takes a lot of computing power to mine one of these coins and to get that computing power You need energy, which is why there's actually a lot of crypto companies in North Dakota In the oil fields, they'll connect a pipe to the to the gas output. So the natural flare They're now using that to power energy, which is really interesting But what you're going to start seeing is that there's alternative chains or what are called level twos That don't require as much data going back and forth So a blockchain you can only send a little bit of information. So you have to send it often Every time that's sent it the entire thing is resaved. So imagine just like sending a video file back and forth with your friends Like it gets slow But if you only send that file once a week and everything that's been added in that seven day period then gets uploaded You know, it's a little bit easier. So The climate change issue will get better and the other thing that's I'm fascinated by is that The blockchain technology has actually forced a lot of innovation within renewables In my state of North Dakota as an example trying to be carbon neutral by by 2030 And most of it is because of this new technology using gas flare for energy Which is really fascinating. So there's there could be positives there, but I think We're going to going to move away from the proof of work model, which takes a lot of energy Yeah, and just to build on that There was a question about related to this that uh, the energy that's consumed in blockchain is in computing hashes And it's so to build on what scott was saying The the difference between proof of work and proof of stake is that proof of stake actually gives more ability for people that own more of the sort of percentage of the The chain to be able to operate on it. And so it just minimizes like the The energy it takes to actually verify Transaction In short, it's just it's going to be way more It's better for the environment and it's going to take a lot less energy And you know, there's a difference between like, uh, a second chain Uh Scott, what did you say? I always like get this Level two or yeah level two second chain versus like the difference between a proof of work and proof of stake So ethereum right now is working to move towards proof of stake so that even ethereum itself Can be better for the environment. So there's like this this Problem with you know, this having a bad impact because of energy consumption on the environment is a very Valid and concerning problem for everyone that works in blockchain and in crypto. So it's actually being actively Uh trying to be resolved. Um, and it's definitely on everyone's minds Well, great question rich and and thank you both. I've read in scott for really solid answers And by the way, just quickly readie. Can you define ethereum or scott since you use eth more would you like to define it? Yeah, it's just it's like, um, you know, it's like blockchain. It's it's a different different chain essentially So the ethereum network or the ethereum chain is one you would have things like arbitrom you'd have things like So it's just a different kind of set of rails in a way So you kind of have to build on one and that's I think the really interesting challenge Is this multi chain world? So right now if I have money on ethereum, I have to move it over You know to bitcoin or move it over into salon or whatever it might be In the future, it'll work better where we can use all of these things, right? So that we don't have to all use one and clog it up. So Yes, that's the the quick high level answer And the interesting thing about blockchain is that there are some chains that have utility For doing different things on them like building, you know Contracts on them like nfts or whatever and there are some that don't like for example Bitcoin does not support any, you know utility based activity on it So you're not going to see an nft on bitcoin ever Just because you can't do it But on ethereum the way that was it was built out you can actually Build social contracts on it you can build, you know tokenization on it you can build a lot of stuff on it As well as salana and any other new chains that are happening, but there are like Several chains that are actually emerging as the leaders just because they operate better and they're easy to build on Versus other chains that are you know, not doing as well. But yeah, the utility is definitely determined by like how the chain is built Oh, we had a quick question that came in the chat. So i'm just going to read this from re a clarification I'm not sure if i'm interpreting correctly But nft blockchain gives opportunity to own oops, sorry Sorry, the question just disappeared. I want to bring it right back. Um I don't just lost this again Does nft blockchain give opportunity to own part of a share of ownership like buying stocks for a company? So, uh, i'll just jump in there nfts are really just a file type so nfts Are just like a dot mov dot jpeg Dot gif whatever it might be It has json code in it so it can really be Created to be a lot of things but what makes it powerful is that you can put these into smart contracts So if I have an nft, I now get access to something so an nft could be a ticket an nft For example, if invisible college is an online, uh, they're trying to be a college online If you have their nft, you get access to their lectures, right? An nft can also be a piece of art, which is what a lot of people have seen So it's a it's a digital piece of art and what makes it interesting is that you can prove ownership So of course, I can right click and save it But I can also take a picture in front of the Mona Lisa that doesn't mean that it's mine and what's interesting about nfts is that the functionality so you can see where Now I go into a video game and I can decorate my virtual house with any of the art that I own No one else could could do that, right? Um Yeah, and there's a lot of other uses so just think of nft as a file type There's a big explosion right now in music nfts Which is fascinating where all the licensing information is wrapped in this file So whenever you buy a song from me five percent goes to ready because she did the drums 10 percent goes to brian because he did the lyrics 50 percent goes to me because You know, I I sang it whatever so you can imagine where this gets rid of a lot of gatekeepers and in the education world What would it look like if somebody bought instead of your textbook? They bought your nft which had all of the content in it, right? and now instead of the money going to Harper Collins or whoever, uh, you know It's going to go 50 to brian because he was the the lead author 40 percent to ready and 10 percent to me because I built the the contract right so It really gets rid of some of those middle people um that might Take right now a cruise value right and it goes more to the creators. That's why I think nfts are exciting Is they're really flexible? Really that really good question And just to build on that um the way that an nft works is you can it's You know, it's it's kind of like a package that has what scott was saying Which is like the file but it also has a contract and it can also have anything else like unlockable content So if I want to put stuff in this like nft package I can put a contract that says that anytime any this nft gets passed from one order to the next They get to own all the ip in this nft That can be part of the contract or I can say that um anytime this nft gets passed on to somebody else the royalties of the Like a percentage of the new sale goes back to the original owner Or they can say that um, you know in in a year this nft is actually going to You know dissolve and you're actually going to instead get a token that will give you access to a new community So you can actually like create like put basically anything into this like package. That's an nft that can um Can uh manifest at any time of the ownership of the nft No, so it's kind of like uh getting software or an application We we have more questions coming in and by the way, we have a whole bunch of text questions No one's virtually raising their hand, but please feel free You can tell that Rayty and scott are incredibly nice And are happy to answer your questions. We've never followed up just specifically in nfts from uh, Simone, uh, Rabbi Yoli, what about nft credentials? What they can what can they add to digital credentials like open badges? Yeah, they can add a lot You know, I love Simone's work has been incredible around open badges and the ability for A bottom's up approach to credentialing, which I think is really powerful I think the most common sort of nft you might hear about right now for giving Um a credential of sorts is called a po app a proof of attendance protocol Which is essentially an easy way to tell people like you you did something Um, and so you could see where you get, you know, really micro credentials even more micro than what universities call micro credentials, right? For doing a specific activity I'm doing a project right now at the school in india with uh fifth graders and essentially they're getting these po apps these nfts for For learning specific things. So as they complete the assignment, they get a po app And then what makes that unique is that can travel with them So I don't have to spend the five dollars and call my alma mater to get my transcript, right? It goes with me Uh, and so that's kind of where we see a lot of action in the credential space Um, I just put a uh long post up about kind of digital credentials, which I think is a good read But kind of the three core pieces you can think about that are part of this is The decentralized identity so that could be a person it could also be a computer But it's like we know that this information is tied to scott meyer And then we have the actual verifiable credentials. We know that scott meyer did or learned this thing. We don't need, uh You know the uh accreditation body coming to to prove that or we don't need a a grader like it's been verified And then we have the wallet, which is how I show it off and keep it, right? And I think what'll be interesting is that we probably will have different types of wallets, um You know, you think about when I send a resume in to a job that'll look different than my resume that I maybe Send into grad school And so if you own your credentials you own these different nfts that represent your learning journey You can decide which ones to showcase which ones to show the professors Um, and and kind of be self sovereign, right? So I think there's a big change Yeah, and I know that someone mentioned as you in there. I know they've done a little bit of work there. Um I think what's exciting is the potential of grassroots accreditation potentially Yeah, and just to add to that, um, I think there's a the fourth category here is which is what does your credential or your badge give you access to Yeah, um, and so it's possible for you know Maybe in the education of the future there aren't these like universities that are very, um, you know, inaccessible to people all around the world because of location or or Affordability or whatever, but instead, um a credential actually gives you access to this like, you know university club that you can Gain network from you can gain value content resources things like that from because you own that credential But not because you like went to that school So the the credentials actually can be like a gateway to community can be a gateway to resources things like that and then I'm just to sort of Put what idea what what scott said into like a capsule of an idea the idea of Owning your educational identity becomes a lifelong pursuit because of nft micro credentials instead of something that just lives Within an institution. So with the type of like portfolio that scott is talking about You can have a an nft micro credential in high school or several of them in in college in grad school But also when you're 80 you are going to have those credentials with you and have this like lifetime worth of Academic learning that you can access anytime and you never have to sort of like call somebody to like get your transcript Or or mesh all of them together It's it's sort of all lives within your possession in in a continuous way I have to ask the quick bone-headed question Which is what about all these horrible stories of people who lose their password to their bitcoin and they therefore lose the money? Is this something that every holder of a distributed? Certification will have to worry about Yes Yeah, it's really it's really important to learn a little bit about wallet security Which is essentially you have a seed phrase, which is kind of a long string of words And unfortunately right now the best way to keep that secure is to write it physically and put it in different places And that's going to be interesting to see how that evolves You know that's kind of the downside right of Unbundling or decentralizing is you don't have someone to take care of those things And so it'll be fascinating because I don't know if the public wants total decentralization, right? And so like I said, I think it'll fall somewhere in that spectrum where we're probably going to be okay with centralization Maybe people prefer the registrar or maybe they Don't have access to it because I live You know in a rural community in a country that doesn't have good education system But if I can go online and prove that I'm just as good as the person who went to North Dakota state in Fargo and the employer says anyone with this nft can apply for the job Now all of a sudden I have access that I didn't have previously just because I didn't have you know a near geography or funds to pay for school I'm that's a great answer. Thank you. I appreciate that and for you that reminds me of an earlier point But not everything being decentralized and having to negotiate and figure this out So far these have been terrific questions and I want to add to them now by bringing up a video question This is Jen Obando from Stevens Institute of Technology. And let me just bring her on stage Hello Jen, good to see you Hi, can you hear me? Perfectly Great. So I think my head is reeling I'm just starting to learn about nfts and things like that So this conversation has my head going in all sorts of directions regarding higher ed and I've placed some of my thoughts in the chat as well Um, the first thing that I can think of right is You know how this could get really messy for higher education at the very beginning, right at the whole idea is to decentralize You know where I think there still needs to be some sort of oversight to do this in an organized fashion Before we get like another gold rush movement where they're going to be really great winners and a lot of losers in the game And the you know the other kind of the other part of the question I'm sorry. I'm hearing an echo Like throwing myself off You're good Thanks, you know, I think oh jeez. I forgot who mentioned it Um, you know the digital divide that we already see right? I'm thinking all right great So if the future, you know is web 3d and nft and blockchain I'm going to be in a great position if I'm a creative and I can create things that I can then You know make a financial gain off of but what if I don't consider myself of creative? Like where do I fall now if the middlemen are being kind of left out of the conversation? And by the way, I'm going to make these little drawings into nfts soon. It'll be up there Watch out for that So that's my question. Thank you. Jeff. Please go ahead friends. Go ahead. Yeah Yeah, no, there's a lot there. I think uh on the kind of the latter point about being a creative and kind of who benefits I think You can you don't have to be the creator to benefit, right? Like you can be an owner I think in the education, it's interesting to think if you are a teacher or instructor, there's a question about adjuncts You know, you could Essentially get get paid based on the people coming to your class, right? So if you if people Take your class you actually own that nft and anyone who owns that has a percentage of the proceeds coming in because again all that could be Created as a like a contract a smart contract. So So I could offer opportunities, but you could Uh, you don't have to be making art. Uh, you could also be making knowledge, right? Or you could also be documenting experience and so you can think about nft is not just as proof of learning But also just proof of life and I know like The po-app organization they just raised 10 million this week and that was kind of their pitch is like we're more about human flourishing like Gamifying life like we're gonna get you to go on that run because you'll get a po-app just like you go on that run Because your iPhone says, you know your iWatch says you're almost completed the circle, right and you get the little badge, right? And I think it will be messy, but I think what the Way that this will get filtered out is readies point about what it leads to So I don't imagine a central authority saying like here's you know, here's the protocol or here's the thing that that everyone's going to accept But instead employers Individuals who say anyone who's done this I'll accept right and you're already seeing that with google saying if you've taken our Certificate, you know, we'll interview you And so I think it'll get messy But what I think will happen is that fewer employers will outsource quality to higher ed And they'll kind of take it upon themselves more um So I don't know I'd be curious your question to read. I think that's a lot of people's fear is that Decentralization will ultimately lead back to centralization, right? And maybe it's just that process of always bundling and unbundling But I do think like the ability and web 3 to take what exists Fork it which means like make a copy of it and then change it means that If somebody wants to offer an alternative, it's kind of like open source software You can just take it and then build your own version But the trick will be getting people to Take your class accept your class if they're an employer, you know that kind of thing somebody in the chat made a the Jewish similarity between uh charter schools right and and that we saw a big boom at one point and then There was a big a lot of enrollment in those in those school at least in New Jersey where I'm from and then it kind of like tapered out and You know the hardcore believers are still in the charter schools, but Your public schools are still around so And let's be here in Virginia. We just installed a new governor who is uh key in our charter schools So we'll see that's something I'm watching for Yeah, just to add to that I think we we have to think about like what is the purpose of decentralization and the purpose is to um To ensure that people have ownership over their activities and their decisions and what they're a part of And so, um, it doesn't necessarily mean that you know with decentralization There's no leadership or with decentralization like everybody's sort of like running around with like their heads on fire It just means that like Anything that people are a part of they can make a decision For how they are engaging and how that their activity is being monetized. So for example Like on twitter right now when you put content into the twitterverse like It you can't monetize off of that content unless you make it gated and people can actually sort of like pay to see your content, right? with um with decentralization ownership of ip And anyone can use that content with ownership of ip You know in the news sort of like web 3 worlds You would be able to actually like own the ip that you're creating on twitter on social media platform And you could actually take that and reuse it somewhere else and monetize off of it Um, but back to your sort of like, you know running around sort of like, you know in the decentralized world where there's no leadership Like if you think about dows, for example, the decentralized Autonomous organizations that we talked about before let's say there are 10 000 people part of a dow And the way that the dow works is that everybody actually is like an equal owner in the dow That doesn't mean that every single person in the dow is going to Make a decision on um how the treasury operates in the dow And they're going to be competing decisions. It's going to it kind of means that there's like, you know owners of or leaders that are Making proposals for different parts of how the dow operates And everybody's voting on those proposals. So they get to actually decide whether something happens by By democratic vote, but it's not that like there's no leadership whatsoever And you know, everyone's sort of like competing to figure out like what's happening in the dow So and then the other part of this is that it's it's what scott was saying, you know In order to make decentralized platforms blockchain, you know, web through technology accessible There are all of these like intermediate companies that are popping up that are creating platforms that allow you to actually access that technology So if you think about like these nft marketplaces like open sea wearable sole market with whatever Even though they're using blockchain technology or, you know, nfts to To help you trade nfts or buy nfts Their platform is centralized like open sea is a private ccorp, right? It is not a you know, socially owned Ccorp it is a private company that is allowing you to make transactions on blockchain And so there's always going to be that intermediary that is going to help you figure out how to use something That's going to help you verify your credentials. That's going to help you recover your passwords or whatever it is That's always going to exist and without that. I'm not sure we could actually operate in any kind of web world um, but yeah, so Yeah, I think that's That's beautifully said it brings you back to the old peer to peer days Thank you Jen. Thank you so much for the for the and let me just make a two really quick meta observations first If you're just joining us or registering us for the past few minutes, welcome We're having a very energetic exploration of web three for higher education And also I just want to give a shout out to sarah sangra goryo who had a wonderful moment just now She said in the chat. It was great to hear Jen's voice. I think that's one of the real pleasures of this medium It's great to reconnect We have all kinds of questions coming in. So let me just ask all of you In the chat and those of you who have put up text questions Would you mind if I shared these as a blog post? Anonymizing each person. So it would just be the question content and not by name Please put your thoughts in the chat box if this is good or bad for you. Let me know I'm completely ruled by your decision in this case Uh, we had a question coming up uh from several questions coming up from our friend jonathan parrots And I wanted to bring jon up here to give him a chance. Uh, let's see if we can Beam him up from colorado Hello jonathan. Good to see you. Hi, bram. Hi. Hi scott and broody. Nice to meet you Yeah Um, so I can I ask the question I I always ask in these content. I'm I'm so I'm um, um, a part-time cryptographer and educator and I Um, uh, yeah, I've worked as a I've worked as a photographer in industry and also I'm computer scientist. Um I don't I the whole discussion makes my head sort of explode. It seems to me that what we're experiencing is kind of Um, regulatory captured by metaphor. I mean, there's this there's these great metaphors around blockchains and dows and things And they they nearly are evocative metaphors of a decentralization is so wonderful We will have those images of big brother and have we want big brother out of our life so decentralization is going to solve all our problems and You know trust the idea that there are these that the blockchain is some sort of regular You know sort of institutionalized from a trust and we we we talk about them in this metaphorical way and People make policy decisions as if those metaphors reality and they're just not I mean as someone who does the crypto It's just not and and so the question I always ask people it's like all this just, you know Let's hope but just one little example where the metaphor I think is just is just kind of insane Let's talk about micro credentials people are always talking. Oh, hey, it's going to be so wonderful when students get to Have complete control of their educational records. They'll have their credential It'll be on the blockchain. They can reveal it in somewhere because the public chain is public So there's really no lot of revealing going on But I'm never going to have to pay those five dollars or ten dollars to the registrar of that institution where they got that degree those Records on the blockchain have been digitally signed by the issuing institution Otherwise any damn fool could just put some random thing on the blockchain and it would look like it was a valid potential So presumably there's a public infrastructure behind the scenes That the institutions that issue credentials all have a key and they have signed your credential before it's on before The micro credential before it goes on to the onto the chain So why do we move the chain? Why don't we simply hand graduates of every if you want to do this for class by class that perhaps Then you would just say I'm going to go Scott. You know every class you attend just get you know a handsome email someone a little bit Piece of data which has a digital signature that your teachers saw you in class Or if you finish a degree your institution, you know MIT gave you a degree in computer science. They MIT signs your diploma Why don't we hand someone a file on a funding drive or something and say now you control this when you don't Write back to the MIT Plug it into your computer and email that document signed document to whoever you want to prove that you have that degree So it's my idea of building these huge The whole idea of red three that we need this whole new infrastructure. We don't we use something that was invented in 1970s public heat signatures And all happens for free. So it seems like it's metaphors have just gone crazy. Or am I wrong about about Micro credentials to me. I'm completely misinterpreting micro credentials, but is that not a solution to them? That's a problem and micro channels for the court to solve I think uh, oh if I can jump in I would just say like the exciting edition So you're definitely talking about ownership, right? And like instead of a digital wallet, you have a physical wallet or a pocket or a usdp drive or whatever But what you're able to do now is I could actually go find everyone who did a certain event Whether I was in that event or not and so instead of me calling the alumni office and saying hey What harvard alumni can I go find in this town that I'm in and I can call him up and try to get a job I could actually just go find who is at the entrepreneurship club meeting on friday and And air drop them a token or I could air drop them an offer. I could give them So you can build networks off of those uh credentials even as small as like going to a pizza party A lot of that's going to be junk, right? And so like we don't want to show that so I think that'll be interesting is like How will people filter their own? Display of their okay, it's got so you take an aside way step You're like so the use case of sort of decentralizing and giving learners control over their academic records You're saying, okay, let's put that aside. Let's talk about some centralized thing where we can count How many people who got certain kinds of degrees by might by data mining on the blockchain? Okay, that's an interesting site use case maybe but the still the the thing a lot of people saying about credentials on the chain The chain is if they were a chain like they were a cloud But you know the the it's you still haven't answered my question of why don't we just hand them a digitally signed record a data data chunk Isn't that the same thing if you want learner control of their records Given their records unsigned because you're gonna have to anyway on the blockchain Well done Yeah Well, you can't but what I'm saying is like you could do that with the education right if they're if you have a signed Education experience now I can find those people connect with them use that use it like in a composable way, right? Morpheus on a usb drive not accessible by others. You kind of have that limitation So I don't know if I'm if I'm misunderstanding, but You know, I think a lot of this is You know, yeah, go ahead read. Yeah, so so to um The way to the to think about this is not necessarily like what is the technology? But it's more about what is the utility and why are we doing it? And so if you think about like What is the purpose of something being decentralized? It's uh the utility that scoff just named which is like you can um access it from many different points It's interoperable between different institutions or organizations or you know entities It allows, you know public Show of what's happening so you can actually like find community without having to like Go deep into google to define like kindred spirits You can actually find them through these badges and credentials And then the the the biggest thing here is that it is enabling a conversation About ownership of your education identity and unbundling education, right? Forget the fact that like, you know, you can do things on blockchain You can put things on blockchain like the fact that we're actually Talking about how to unbundle education how to create These specific instances where you can learn what you want to learn when you want to learn it That's the biggest um You know value that we're going to get out of web 3 not necessarily like the technology itself because like I said before Like blockchain is the first of the decentralized technology There's going to be way more things that emerge in the future that's going to allow us to continue to enhance this So if you want to sort of like shift your perspective into, you know What is possible and what can I accomplish from this think about utility think about how it's actually changing the way that Education can operate and then think about the technology. That's that's how I think about it anyway Yeah, okay, that's I'm happy to have those conversations. I think it's it's weird that those conversations I mean, I I'm in the state of Colorado and I've been in meetings the department education in Colorado Where we have solution providers who try to sell their, you know, they have a lot of money A lot of venture capital in these areas and then we have the as you were mentioning for you there It means you know intermediaries who have a platform which we can do x y or z and they want They want the state to put a lot of money on their platform And they they're sort of thrashing around as it that we have a technology want we want a problem that we can solve And you know the one they in the education context, they're always saying well, we want learners to have control over the records That's something I hear over and over and over again and Sure hand on my thumb drive with a signed copy, you know, we could do it tomorrow I was only once and I said to these vc funded people. Let's do it tomorrow Let's just take all of the high school diplomas of recognized high schools in in Colorado Let's scan them with a high-resolution scanner and let's have the state Department of Education digitally sign those documents and give every high school graduate a copy of that file And they will never again have to worry about waiting for their proof of having a high school diploma until they get the In the mail is blah blah blah. What if I lose my usb? Okay, same thing Scott said before don't lose your don't lose your private key ever. Yeah, sure So let's centralize it. That's a good idea. Really. Let's centralize everything But then I have to call somebody else to get my my records and then I can't build on them, right? So like if there's one institution giving me my credentials And if I go to a different institution or if I decide to change Something about the, you know, my location, you know, my major or whatever it is Then I have to like figure out how they can actually connect with each other I probably have to pay somebody to do that instead of like them just continuing to live in my one portfolio Like my identity is attached to my wallet and so everything that happens with me can live there And then it's not just about academics So like for example, if I'm applying to a job and I want the the employer to know like all the cool things that I have learned And I have skills in academically and professionally But I also want them to know that I'm really passionate about social impact. I'm really passionate about plans Um, I can actually have some of those credentials live in that same portfolio And people can get like a full perspective on who I am as a human Okay, I I I love everyone having control of their web identity Sure, let's all own our websites and and put whatever you want on or maybe some third party can Sell our service where they keep like micro kids. We'll call it facebook or something where you keep your some version of your public identity Well, that sounds That's something web 2.0 and web 1.0 as well like the end you at John John, I I've got a stack of folks who have other questions. They gotta bring up I want to thank you and after I came to twitter. I'm delighted that you're here. Thank you so much Friends everybody else that's another example of video question So if you want to click the raised hand to join us on stage you can do that Um, and if again, we have a wide range of perspectives and we're tackling this from a whole bunch of angles By the way in the chat people seem okay with me doing a blog post with the recording plus the text Thank you all. I'm really glad to do that because we're we've got a lot coming up Um, we have a whole bunch of other questions and I want to make sure that we can cover as many topics as possible I mentioned the awesome sarah sangrigorio and she had a really interesting question. Again. This is a philosophical question. Perhaps reading this might start with you She asks this seems to rub up against the increasing commodification of higher education How we started seeing institutions looking at implementing aspects of web 3 in their current ecosystems I guess that that's two different questions about the commodification and also are we seeing this in play? Yeah, that's actually a really good segue from uh, what you know john's uh Sort of basic ethos of like what can go wrong with web 3 and why do we even need it? I think it's really important just to sort of recognize Sort of his trail and train for a second is that if we don't ask the hard questions of why web 3 Doesn't work or shouldn't work or you know why we can't do what we can do with web 2 Then we're never going to progress and so it's actually really important that we ask those tough questions one of the like things that like hasn't been talked about as much as it should is um Are the the ethics of web 3 and how decentralization can actually you know Both help with that and hurt that if you're anonymizing yourself in a metaverse world or in a virtual world Like what can be the things that can go wrong there? And so like all of these questions are really important to ask and and I just Just sort of like get on the soapbox for a second Like the more we ask these tough questions the better the technology and the experiences we're going to get for everyone So like I really encourage everyone to like really second guess themselves I'm like, you know be their own devil's advocate to ask these questions so back to um To to the new question which is commoditization of education um, I think it's you know It it could become like a dystopian sort of problematic space where the only reason you're learning is because you want to earn Right. That's highly problematic. They're all these like learn Earn to learn to earn models or all of these models that are like saying like hey You're going to get a token if you learn x and y and and if students are only learning for extrinsic incentives As you know professors or classroom teachers We know that that can be really problematic And so I think and then that applies to micro credentials too. Like do you really want a micro credential? Do do we really want micro credentials to represent like the a plus that we got in a course? So do we want them to represent like the effort that we put into it? Or do we want to have that represent the skills that we gained? These are all questions that I think need to be answered before we can actually use the technology to do it And so, you know when we think about like how are we actually engaging in learning experience? And how are we showing that we have learned something? It has to go beyond like a test or an assessment or an a plus or whatever it is or an institution name like we can't One of the things that has always been problematic from my perspective is institutional Reputations so like if I went to Harvard then I am more valuable or more worthy of you know getting a job than if I went to a state university And so how do we change that perspective? In web 3 and how do we actually make the the skills that you've gained and the proficiencies that you've gained the actual value? And not like the institute that you went to and so so all of those are actually like open questions I I bet Scott has some you know theories and I thought Susan how we can veer away from it But those are all open questions. And what was the second question? Are you seeing web 3? You know, how are institutions adopting this? Yeah, so, you know organization institutions like mit have been actually experimenting with this since like 2007 I think they've been doing a lot of really cool things with like with blockchain for a while But there hasn't been like massive movement yet just because it isn't accessible It isn't, uh, you know easily understood by the laymen and there aren't a lot of platforms out there yet that make it Not only accessible but understood on a level that is like utility based and so There isn't as as far as I've seen like massive adoption But there are you know universities and institutions that are doing things like for example There's a school That's part of the big picture learning organization in australia That has created portfolios for students that are NFTs And so each student actually is able to put their work into a portfolio on chain And they can own that portfolio Again for the rest of your lives and it's one of the first sort of like experiments in that Um, but yeah, so I think there's like small sort of organizations that are doing interesting things But nothing that I've seen that's sort of prolific yet I thank you super super fast answer I would say higher ed probably won't like why would they it kind of goes against their business model It's going to be an and to me, you know the 93 percent of the world I can't get a higher ed degree or the you know the 55 60 percent of us like That's I think where the innovation will start and just like higher ed didn't start Online education until they had to to compete like I would imagine that's how it goes as the innovation comes elsewhere And then they see it and then they try to bring it in a nice provocative answer and freedom Thank you for that incredibly incredibly rich a pair of answers to sarah's very very excellent pair of questions We've time for one last question and it's it it's coming from a terrific person A hero of mine a wonderful wonderful thinker and inventor bob stein. Let me bring bob up on stage Oh Hello, sir. Hi I I was just thinking that most of what was talked about relative to Web three had to do with ownership And not much discussion about pedagogy and I'm wondering whether or not there's some insight you have into how it actually might change the The fundamental job of education, which is in fact pedagogy Any question? Yeah I mean that gets me really excited and I don't know if I have a great answer except that it if a professor can Stack their knowledge on top of those before them. I think we have more exciting opportunities There's a really interesting dow called opens. What is it open access? science network something like that and essentially what they're trying to do is incentivize Um scientific journals that are created with open access, you know with the open journals And so when you think about if you can open up more research more science if you have an awesome lecture Bob on like one specific topic Maybe you're not an expert on the entire class Like I could bring you in and you could be compensated for that one hour versus the entire semester, right? And so you could see how you could bring in all stars and but again You're bringing it down to ownership and the distribution of cash. I could chime in here So this is this is an amazing question, bob And it is like one of my favorite things because I'm a k-12 educator or I was And so I think about this a lot like how is that actually changing the fundamentals of education? And I think there are a few things one is that um When you're thinking about uh Credentialing and about skills and proficiencies you're actually leading more towards like a proficiency based education and performance based education versus like uh, you know Stage based education and so that can lead to project based learning that can lead to experiential based learning and that can lead to students almost like um owning their learning in a way that like they are They are focusing on their interests and their passions and building upon those skills So like that's one thing which is like it really does lead to experiential based learning But then in order to further underscore that the concept of the metaverse And the concept of this like virtual space where you can learn anything you want at any time That really does change the way that um, you can think about the uh, the mindset of learning so like growth mindset and like you know, uh, uh student centered learning and the ability to to create uh your own learning pathways like all of that comes to play And all of that becomes a lot more accessible because there's technology and infrastructure To support that one of the my favorite things to talk about in the context of the metaverse is um Did you ever watch the magic school bus or? Yeah, so like that concept of of being immersed in your own Learning and not having to sort of like derive information from like a static textbook that was published 100 years ago But something that's like constantly updated and you actually get to be a part of the learning And choose your own adventure through the learning Become such a more powerful experience and allow students from all over the world To access each other's worlds instead of having to learn in their own like regions and contexts So that actually has massive implications on pedagogy Um, so that that's a starting point But there's like so much more that can be talked about there. All of that sounds terrific. Although frankly going back to Web three, I don't see where web three is necessary for any of what you just described about totally Yeah, there's been a lot of conversation already in the last, you know 100 years in education, but But you have to think about this Bob. How many schools in the world are still teaching Didactically versus project-based how many schools are employing bad Frameworks for Montessori versus how Montessori actually was meant to be How many schools are employing Reggio Emilia and how many are not and I think the reason for one of the One of the reasons for why like we're still engaging in not great schooling practices and pedagogy models Is because there isn't enough proliferation of content of knowledge among educators. There isn't enough connection and like And sharing of knowledge and concepts like the metaverse allow you to do that They allow you to connect with each other all over the world without having to like worry about barriers Just one just one last point then I Love your enthusiasm for it Having lived through web 1.0 and web 2.0 These ideas, I mean, you know Neil Neil Stevenson described the metaverse way back in in web 1.0 Okay, I would argue the reason why none of this has happened Isn't because we were stuck in web 1.0 or web 2.0 It's because we didn't actually have the social and political will to make the changes that Yeah, I think you'd like to see and I'd like to see Uh, but end of end of rant Well, that's that's a great rant Bob and a great question. Good to see you and thank you It's also the end of our hour. I'm I I hate to wrap this up I hate to pause this right now, but we we've just blasted past the end of our time And I'm gonna have to let everybody go back to their lives Thank you Vreti and Scott for such things as fantastic guests This is it's just been great to listen to you to and for you to tackle all of our questions What's the best way to keep up with both of you? Is it your respective twitter handles? Yeah, that'd be great. I just put it in the chat. I'd love to continue the conversation there And I I think we're all here to learn and I guess the ethos that I like about web 3 is this idea of like shared learning and Composability, so I'd love to build on your ideas and critiques Well, that's agreed Twitter would be great. And then I just posted our newsletter for web 3 and education. So it's basically a really well curated Content that allows you to learn about web 3 contextualized for education So that it sort of like teaches you about all the components, but then it tells you why you should care if you're an educator terrific, thank you both, um, we'll We'll be carrying this on On the recording be up. Hopefully tonight and I'll do a blog post with your questions and the chat Nicely massaged for legibility and anonymity anonymity, but again, thank you to our two guests But don't go away yet. I've got to mention where things are headed for the next few weeks Looking ahead We have sessions on the climate crisis and academia libraries and careers student debt Eco-media literacy minority students on campus public higher education and web 3 more on that If you'd like to learn more go to form that future of education that us If you want to keep this conversation going as some of you have asked on twitter You can just use the hashtag ftte people already been tweeting out You can tweet at me or at shindig events and there's my blog URL For the blog post and for your thoughts there if you'd like to dive into the past, especially for our earlier conversations Including about decentralization about pedagogy about vr and about blockchain. Just go to tiny URL comm slash fdf archive And thank you all for a fantastic discussion. This has been very very rich thought-provoking. There's a lot to unpack It will be continuing to do this. We will have more sessions coming up over the next few months on web 3 I would love to hear your suggestions and thoughts about any guests or topics to bring up for that In the meantime, good luck with the rest of this semester Good luck with all this work and above all take care and be safe. We'll see you online Bye. Bye