We often think kids shouldn't earn money. We even have laws that restrict and prevent their ability to work in the US. I want to jump right into how I see Steemit's model can improve our education system by financially incentivizing children to learn and grow.
Pay Them to Learn
Kids love games. They love earning points, getting high scores, and sharing this stuff with friends. Things like PokemonGo are this generation's baseball. When you see kids who have never left the couch for years all of a sudden run around town like madmen trying to catch virtual objects for virtual points, you know that there is something bigger to this equation.
Is it just the game? The captivating experience of tapping your screen at air? Or is there something greater at play? What if at the end of a week of playing PokemonGo, the kids had enough money to buy a little something off Amazon? Do you think that they would be less enthused about the game or more enthused?
What if instead of a game, kids actually got paid from the Steem block chain for successfully learning things? This can't possible work...right?
How It Could Work
A teacher makes a post with their assignment. The students must upvote the post for attendance purposes. In the comments they would submit their work. If their work passes, the teacher upvotes their comment. Other kids may upvote their comments as well.
Now, of course this wouldn't work on Steemit, because everyone could see each other's work, and cheating would be the name of the game. However, we could build another platform that runs on the Steem block chain that reveals comments after the teacher's 12 hour payout from the students' attendance votes.
Additionally, students could submit their own individual assignments as regular posts. If other teachers and students like their work, they will get upvotes that way as well. The same holds true for the teachers. If other teachers and students are inspired by their work, they too will be encouraged with upvotes.
These educators will be providing their services impartially to any child who wants it anywhere in the world. Parents would even be incentivized to upvote good teachers, in order to encourage their activity, while increasing their ability to push more money to their students. In the long run, the best educators rise to the top, while students are encouraged to work hard so they can earn some more real world "points".
Alternate
Collaboration between peers is immensely beneficial to learning. If you haven't seen this talk yet, check Sugata Mitra's TED Talk:
What if we created a more student driven model, that was less top-down, with the teacher the only one calling the shots. Perhaps students could upvote subjects that they would like to explore. Perhaps students could actually curate who teaches them by downvoting counter-productive teachers. This has potential for severe abuse, but maybe there could be impartial Recursive Delegated Voting, where impartial users could ensure the students aren't abusing this ability.
I can imagine a sea of potential teachers, ones with great reputations and lots of Steem power, who would encourage and support children from all over the world to learn. They will engage and financially incentivize the kids to maximize their potential, while guiding them towards their real passions in life.
We often forget, but there are many kids in this world that would give much of what they own for a good education. How about we flip the script and pay them to learn instead.
This is the future, and children will spend their time on something like this when it exists. In fact I can imagine children leading classes and teaching what they're interested and passionate about.
The barriers that exist are that schools and the education system are very backwards, bureaucratic institutions that resist change at all costs. The majority of teachers/headteachers are very controlling and very abusive if their authority is challenged. If you threaten their jobs and authority - then they will resist this at all costs.
This digital, community-led learning system will happen. But it will probably happen outside of the school (prison) hours than from within them.
@alexc You are providing a wide sweeping overgeneralization of the education system as a whole and ignoring many of the awesome services it provides. What specific unbiased study states the majority of teachers are controlling and abusive? That we are power hungry and defensive?
I find your characterization of schools as prisons very offensive, and I hope you consider pursuing all sides of this issue before posting more hateful rhetoric.
Well, we are forced to send our kids to schools, whether we agree or not. Additionally, the kids have no say in the matter. While we can homeschool as an alternative, many lack the means to make that a reality. The fact that force is involved supports @alexc's claim of it resembling a prison, in my opinion. I believe completely voluntary models of education, like the one I explore here is how we will educate children in the future.
I also wouldn't call it hateful rhetoric. I am at work and don't have the studies to back up my views right now, but when I have the time I will show you how it is proven that our current model of education not only fails, but is completely counter-productive.
In the meantime, check out the School Sucks Project. Brett Veinotte does a phenomenal job breaking this all down and backs his claims up with real data. If you are curious as to why @alexc would say such things, I highly recommend you checking it out.
http://schoolsucksproject.com/category/podcast/
Take care!
On a side note, I of course recognize that there are many good teachers out there and I am not trying to castigate them needlessly. I am merely trying to point out fundamental flaws in our current model.
If we have voluntary models of education on a completely free market, I will never be able to afford school for my son with Autism. Students below the poverty line would never have a chance to attend school. Parents that don't care would never send their kids to school. Free and compulsory public education is the lynchpin to our society and growth. It's not force. It's open access for all. I am humbly asking to consider the good it is providing instead of just focusing on the bad.
To hear prison as an adjective sincerely makes me feel like I am an evil cog in some imaginary machine fueled by "the man". I am anything but. So yes, it hurts me greatly.
You and I agree on choice. My state has vouchers that allow students to attend private institutions. Many are starting to get there. I think there is much potential to be had there.
Thank you for your reply! It is great getting to discuss this from all sides of the issue! I will be sure to check out this link later when I have more time to process in full!
Love the school sucks project podcast! I actually recently wrote a post explaining why I believe that much of the current racial tensions stemmed from unethical public school practices: https://steemit.com/anarchism/@limitless/the-statist-root-causes-of-black-lives-matter
Will read it later for sure, followed back so I don't forget about you :)
That's fair. I'm sure there are some teachers who have a positive impact. I had maybe 2. I also can only talk out of personal experience which was that school was very oppressive.
https://steemit.com/school/@alexc/school-is-a-form-of-child-abuse
I may be overgeneralising. I am very hateful and angry towards schooling because it made me feel like a little worthless piece of shit because I dared to trust myself more than adult authority.
Self teaching from experience is the only real way to learn... the world has to come back to this.
Sounds like a 'no true scotsman'. There are many ways to learn.
I see posts like this and I wonder if i shouldn't have invested more time into computer science and programming earlier. I would love to implement this idea. As it stands, I'd love to a be a teacher on this platform, and perhaps i will be anyway. This is a fantastic idea. From my oen experience, I can tell you that i would have valued this kind of education experience far more than the Prussian system I grew up in.
This is a great project idea for homeschoolers. Perhaps you would need to have multisig so the parent(s) must approve the posts also. It would be the end of kids not wanting to do homework.
You could also make field trips into geocaching games. Museums, and other science education type venues. For learning to do farm work, there could be tasks like quests and rewards for tasks completed.
In fact, it isn't hard to see how this could translate to an organisational structure for a business too.
Its a great idea.. !!!
Incentives to kids to learn how to be critical instead of just storing & knowing information..
Don't u think applying blockchain principle to the real world is very possible?
Why limit to education only when it can be applied to every aspect of human life?
Are you in the SSP Facebook group? If like to discuss this further with you. I've been trying to plan out something like this for a while now.
I actually don't use facebook, I merely have a "fakebook" account that is private. However, I'd love to discuss these things further. My twitter is http://www.twitter.com/derekreith. I'm at work now, but since I work 14 hour shifts, I have the ability to check on replies throughout the day here and there. I'll be off all weekend and I look forward to talking with you some more.
Beautiful post. I have been thinking along these lines but you have traction and clarified it. Here was my similar thoughts on it. Glad to see you getting more notice to the possibilities.
https://steemit.com/education/@clevecross/steemits-first-scholarship-program
I see a lot of potential in this. And a lot of potential pitfalls, too, but as the pits reveal themselves, they can be countered by instituting new incentives. The potential for cheating, though, I could see being handled by structuring the system so that if anyone can be detected as cheating, it would penalize that student's peers, and that as a student achieves learning rank, it would benefit the student's peers. In this way, the student's learning community would have a stake in its members not only being honest, but also in learning and improving. A community could consist of one class, made up of, say, 30 students. If one or two were having trouble, the entire class would have an incentive to help them along, and their help would be invaluable -- the helper benefits by learning the material even more deeply, and the helpee sees learning as a way to connect with his or her society, as well as a positive experience. Most kids with lower grades tend to view the learning experience as negative; this could change that. Please watch my blog - I'm planning to post on your idea with a link to this piece in the next few days.
Awesome stuff! I didn't get to touch on it, but the really fascinating thing with this project is that there could be multiple different "windows" of education. SteemEDU could be more student driven, steemituniversity could be more top down, SteemitElementary could be a more group based model. There really is no limit to what you can come up with and they can all compete in an open market, where the best models will "win" out.
I'm talking with @kdnolan (http://www.kdnolan.com)about this stuff this weekend and I am just so fascinated by these limitless possibilities!
Thanks for reaching out!
Yes, the potential there is amazing. I'm following on this account as well as @daoine-sidhe so I can keep up with your progress. Will go check out @kdnolan, as well.
lets build this!!
contact me.. kdnolan.com - my contacts are on here if you want to get the ball rolling :)
Awesome KD! I followed your Twitter and Youtube. Check out my next post on the topic if you haven't. I tried to flush out my vision of what Steemit University would look like a little more:
https://steemit.com/steemituniversity/@derekareith/steemit-university-emergent-education
I've got some errands to do, but I'll be back on later tonight to connect. Thanks for reaching out!
It makes you think, but a number of real world barriers....union, crazy moms, etc
Block chains see no barriers :)
May I humbly ask you consider a counterargument.
http://www.nea.org/home/42011.htm
I think your intentions with this piece are awesome, I love "gamifying" a lot of my instruction too. But it misses out on the intrinsic piece. A good place to start looking for improvements, but not an end all be all.
Also, if you poke around most schools, the traditional models of "sage on the stage" actually are disappearing from many secondary education classrooms. Myself, I run a "flipped classroom" model for some students where I am a mere learning coach and they often teach each other. There are other awesome examples out there of instruction taking place like this. It's all about improving the mindset of a teacher. I am not there to teach, I am there to ensure learning takes place. This mindset is critical to any kinds of improvement in education, IMO.
Cool stuff, I will check that link when I have time!
Interesting concept. Having been in education it would need to be revised to ensure learning, but this is a good starting point.
good stuff. similarly, i've been thinking a lot about Steem use cases beyond blogging: https://steemit.com/protocols/@ntomaino/more-than-a-blogging-platform
Didn't think of that one tho!
Great idea. Let me know how I can help. Here is a project that we are working on called Curiosumé that converts knowledge assets to cryptography which can open and close contracts on a blockchain.
Are you on steemit.chat? Message me @limitless
Haven't logged on in a while, got disappointed with the constant shilling and the general vibe. Too much money centric noise. I am not about that. Money's nice but I'm into Bitcoin and Steemit for much bigger reasons.
It will be a good idea for kids to earn, but it will be also good to bring in some control.
Esto podría incluso beneficiar la generación de contenidos educativos gratuitos y útiles para personas que se educan en casa, o para la financiación de sitios web con esquemas MOOC que pueden por ejemplo usar algún tipo de autenticación Stemit y botones para votar contenido (o como dices, plataformas independientes que hagan uso de la red Steem. Yo soy uno de los defensores del derecho de las personas a diferentes modelos de educación, porque entiendo que el mismo es diferente al concepto de la escolarización –que tampoco esta mal– y esto podría cambiar muchas cosas. Disculpa que no escriba en ingles, no manejo tan bien el idioma.
I wish I spoke better Spanish. I'll try to translate this later tonight...
It's an interesting view. I think getting married is a scam! https://steemit.com/sex/@mikebartolo/dating-economics-the-real-truth-behind-relationships-and-what-it-means-for-you
Great Idea, like it so much!
History does repeat itself. Could be the digital version of Lancasters founding public education system. Especially when they start teachin each other 'cause after all, isn't teaching the best way to learn?
definately the future!
This is an excellent idea. I have another account here I use for info regarding teaching kids economics. I'll get back to you under that account, the handle is @geke.