The road to a professional career is often paved by internships.
The old model was students and young professionals intern for a company to get their foot in the door, with the hope to be hired and begin their career. These internships acted as an important anchor for a community, retaining and training students for the local workforce.
This model now feels slow and out of touch with new models of work brought about by technology and the COVID pandemic. As web3 shows, it is now possible to engage workers in a more decentralized way with micro-tasks that provide income, experience, and credentials while building a valuable network.
It’s time to create a model of Intern to Earn (I2E).
The Birth of Badges
Whether Girl Scouts, participation ribbons, or letter jackets, we are always collecting badges - proof of our accomplishments. These badges are fun, visual reminders and signals, showing the world who we are. They are also antennae, attracting members of our tribe to us. If you want to date the football star, look for the letter jacket!
It is no different than brands. The brands we rep, the teams we support, the style we wear identifies our tribe as Seth Godin would say.
It should come as no surprise that learning could be verified, showcased, and shared the same way. We already do it with our college alma mater and our high school sport team - why not for the pottery class you took, the conference you attended, or your team building exercise ‘99 (tangential reference here).
Decentralized Power Comes in a Can
Never underestimate the power of pickled fruit. 🍅
Olena was sitting on her balcony in Ukraine when she saw a Russian drone buzzing nearby.
She reached down and grabbed a jar of her favorite homemade treat: pickled tomatoes with plums. She tossed the jar at the drone and knocked it out of the sky. 💥
You can always tell how old someone is based on when they learned to type.
For me, it was freshmen year of high school. The old computer instructor brought out cardboard boxes to hide the keyboard (f-f-f-f, j-j-j-j-j), and we slowly learned the “touch method.”
Today, my kids are already learning to type, early in elementary school.
The same pace of change will happen with web3.
Preface
This article is a part of a collaborative series exploring how web3 could impact education - what we call ed3. Authors Scott Meyer and Vriti Saraf look to prepare the education system for what is possible in the future of learning. Topics include: NFTs, tokens, DAOs, DeSo, XR, Metaverse, DeFi, & more.
Check out our previous articles:
A Framework for DAOs
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, are a new way to organize work and learning. This Cambrian explosion of decentralized organization creates unparalleled opportunity to solve major challenges, create innovative ideas, learn together, and simply have fun with likeminded friends. But, the growth in DAOs inevitably means competition - competition for both the attention and skill of members.
DAOs will need to be more specific about their audience and their topic in order to attract members and keep them coming back and working with the DAO.
The Meyer Matrix (who doesn’t love a good self-referencing alliteration) provides a framework for categorizing DAOs and identifying future opportunities for DAOs. As the Smiling DAO Curve shows, DAOs will be more successful when they are differentiated by subject matter expertise or when they are industry aggregators that offer the best way to discover people, ideas, and work opportunities.
Launching The Airdropped University
Academic records could soon be stored on the public blockchain, referred to as an on-chain credential. On-chain credentials would be permanent, transparent, and owned by the student. They would also unlock a new type of educational institution: the airdropped university.
The airdropped university creates competition for existing education institutions by using public information from on-chain credentials.
With this information, the airdropped university could launch and scale using a three step blueprint:
This article is co-written by Ryan Chadha, co-founder and director of the Shishya Jigyasa Academy, and Scott Meyer, ed3 educator and entrepreneur.
Building the Future of On-Chain Credentials
Ed3 - the intersection of web3 and education - imagines a future where students are incentivized to learn and able to transparently share their skills.
Instead of just imagining this future, we wanted to help build it. In the coming weeks the Shishya Jigyasa Academy will teach students how to:
Collaboratively written by Atish Mistry, Blair Rorani, Scott Meyer, Vriti Saraf
Key Insights
- Education is key to human flourishing, but current models are not leading to optimal learning for the majority of people around the world.
- Web3 has enabled creators to own their work online, ed3 enables students to own their education.
- Nascent ed3 models are improving access, affordability, and accreditation, but more work needs to be done.