Todays post was inspired by a question I received on linkedin yesterday from one of my contacts. He asked the following. 

This obviously won't be a quick answer to his question, nor do I really have to share what I think so much as what is factually taking place in the blockchain world. The industry of education is one of the palces blockchains are most being applied to. 

According to the US office of technology and their project Education Blockchain Action Network there are a total of 69 education blockchains. There may in fact be more but these are the ones we know have joined the action network.

Although many of these chains and projects are part of the education blockchain action network, they are not specific to education only, in fact many if not all of these chains have multiple purposes. However in looking at these purposes and how they apply to education we can see get a glimpse of what the future of blockchain may hold in education.

Vizidox

Take for example the VDX blockchain. VDX is claiming to have "Blockchain technology allows students to build up a secure, verifiable digital record of formal, professional & vocational qualifications."

Addording to VDX a problem in education is people falsiying degrees, certificates, and information about their education background.

Their solution sets out to solve this issue. 

Accredible

Accredible is probably the most well known app in all of education at the moment. 

Accredible is the certification provider behind Rosetta Stone, Google, Udacity, Kaplan University, Hootsuite, Telefonica, The International Association of Privacy Professionals and many other companies and educational institutions.

Their mission says "We believe it doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or how you learned something. If you can prove you're credible, you should be credible."

BitDegree

Not all education blockchains are about certifications and verifications though. Education has so much further of a reach that that. 

Another star in the education space is BitDegree. 

BitDegree is an online incentive based education platform. Instead of paying to go to learn things, you are getting paid to learn things. 

Employers can watch students progress from the blockchain and decide what students they may want to reseach for employment based on what the students records look like in courses specific to their needs.

This is a win win for everyone and at the time of this writing they have 1,685,000 enrolled students who are earning to learn.

Everopedia

The everopedia project is not a blockchain of its own, but rather an EOS based project. 

This project is aiming at creating a blockchain backed encyclopedia for eveyone. 

This is a project similar to something like wikipedia only instead of anyone being able to submit edits (or in the case of everopedia to also vote on edits), they require the IQ token from EOS platform. 

Acording to the website "Everipedia is a universal knowledge base where people can read, engage, and contribute to the articles that interest them most."

They also claim "you can also connect with other people who care about the same things that you do, and share your own perspective on what matters to you." making the project both incentive based and more social than traditional encyclopedias or wikipedias.

Conclusion

I have only really scratched the surface of blockchain projects and usage in the education sector.

Anyone is free to check out the other projects listed on Education Blockchain Action Network github, however as can be seen just from this article, there is much room for improvement from our existing education system. 

We can now create point reward systems based on the blockchain that can give students rewards that can be used in all sorts of different ways. Perhaps we will see in the future grade schools using such blockchain with school stores for students to spend those rewards, scholarships that are automatically granted to students who reach various academic goals, more accountablility with employment and educational history and all sorts of other things.

There truly is no telling the vast amount of ways that people will come up with to utilize blockchain in education. 

Personally I want to see a world where no more colleges exist that one has to pay to and instead people get paid for furthering their education. After all if they put the work in, why shouldn't they be rewarded just like if they put the work in for anything else in life.