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COMMENTARY: How blockchain can help the world meet the UN’s goals for higher education
Fox-Brewster, T. A report by the UK government chief scientific adviser. As well, the speed, and particularly the high energy cost of creating and maintaining blockchain are also concerns. Business Insider, 17 June, The future of financial infrastructure: An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services: World economic forum.
All resources preserved as blockchain records are secured and permanent. Economics 2. MIS Quarterly, 37, — Oxford, England: Macmillan. Recombinant identities: Biometrics and narrative bioethics. Transforming our world: The agenda for sustainable development.
Public domain, free to adapt
Online learning, probably in different formats blended with classroom learning, is here to stay. This change ensures the continuing importance of blockchain and open educational resources. However, there are challenges in using blockchain in education.
Policy-makers concerned with development in conjunction with educators should explore ways to address challenges in disseminating open educational resources with blockchain while advocating for the internet infrastructure necessary required to support it.
Open educational resources are not limited to textbooks, lessons or curriculum. They can also be educational games, podcasts, videos and applications. They substantially reduce the cost of content to students. They have also been used to empower teachers and learners through increased timely access to quality content, which improves learning. Blockchain can be described as a digital ledger or database that is distributed on a network.
Blockchain can support the dissemination of open educational resources on a global scale. Blockchain has become more widely known due to its use in Bitcoin as a ledger for financial transactions that are secured with encryption, verified and recorded by network nodes also called a digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is based on blockchain, but the technology has many other uses. The original records cannot be deleted or changed. All changes can be easily traced as each new block in the chain is time-stamped.
This matters because some authors of open educational resources express fear of not being attributed or being plagiarized. This fear is reduced with the use of blockchain, because the blocks in the chain cannot be altered.
The original creator can always be determined, no matter how much a resource is changed. Adaptations require the creation of a new block that is automatically linked to the original. The block-encapsulated open educational resources are incorruptible.
When every block in the iteration of a resource is time-stamped and recorded, plagiarism becomes obsolete. The tracing features of blockchain allow authors to see if or when their work is being misused and allows them to challenge any improper usage. Transactions cannot be hidden, and so every adaptation of the original source is traceable. New versions of the source can be uploaded. Handbook of economic growth, 1, — Koestler, A. The ghost in the machine.
Oxford, England: Macmillan. Kranzberg, M. Technology and Culture, 27, — Krugman, P. Bitcoin is evil. New York Times. Accessed 26 Apr Lemieux, P. Regulation, Fall 36, 14— Majchrzak, A. Technology affordances and constraint theory of MIS. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Malhotra, A. The dark side of the sharing economy… and how to lighten it. Communications of the ACM, 57, 24— Martin, C. The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?
Ecological Economics, , — Mattila, J. The blockchain phenomenon: The disruptive potential of distributed consensus architectures. Berkeley roundtable on the international economy BRIE. Berkeley: University of California. McWaters, R. The future of financial infrastructure: An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services: World economic forum. Nakamoto, S. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Consulted, 1, Applying blockchain technology in global data infrastructure. Open Data Institute. Pea, R. Practices for distributed intelligence and designs for education. Salomon ed. Potts, J. Disrupting governance: The new institutional economics of distributed ledger technology. Price, R. Business Insider, 17 June, Ranson, S. The structuring of organizational structures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 1— Reber, D. Bitcoins-hype or real alternative? Rizzo, P. Sweden tests blockchain smart contracts for land registry.
CoinDesk , June 16, Russell, S. Research priorities for robust and beneficial artificial intelligence: An open letter. A association for the advancement of artificial intelligence. Scholz, T. Platform cooperativism: Challenging the corporate sharing economy, New York. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Schumpeter, J. The theory of economic development: An inquiry into profits, capital, credit, interest and the business cycle. Seidel, S. Sensemaking and sustainable practicing: Functional affordances of information systems in green transformations.
MIS Quarterly, 37, — Trackability is maintained as each block or ledger is distributed on the network. This means that resources created with blockchain will have permanence online that preserves all content adaptations.
All resources preserved as blockchain records are secured and permanent. This can become very important if an institution disappears, or if a creator moves on to work elsewhere or retires. Another positive dimension of using blockchain is that it helps overcome the fact that many quality open educational resources are hard to find on the web, and are wasted because of this.
To date, there has been no efficient means of disseminating open educational resources that allows for maximum accessibility. Blockchain can effectively support accessibility to open educational resources, housed in publicly available, distributed global knowledge databases.
Applying blockchain in education has its own challenges. These include the difficulty of changing established systems, legal questions on the ownership of the data, limitations in storage space and the need for privacy protection. Recent news on Bitcoin has focused on the total loss of access to the blockchain if a password cannot be retrieved.
This human element of remembering passwords could prove a significant inhibitor of the use of blockchain in education. In addition, like other online databases, blockchain is vulnerable to unexpected failures. The persistence of blockchain can also become a hindrance: If unwanted, fake, unscientific or illegal content is accidentally or maliciously added to a blockchain, it cannot be removed.
There is also a lack of people skilled in implementing blockchain. As well, the speed, and particularly the high energy cost of creating and maintaining blockchain are also concerns. But more research and political will is needed to overcome barriers in implementing this technology.
Blockchain for Good? Digital Ledger Technology and Sustainable Development Goals
This means that resources ledger with blockchain will have permanence online that goals all sustainable adaptations. Read more: Demystifying the technology a digital user guide. Identity structures: Holons, boundaries, hierarchies, and the formation of the collaborative identity. Kranzberg, M. Lemieux, P. Geels, Development. The persistence of blockchain can also become a blockchain If unwanted, fake, unscientific or and content is accidentally or maliciously added to good blockchain, it cannot for removed.
Plagiarism concerns
Casalotti, A. Global carbon trading on the blockchain. Bitcoin and blockchain leadership forum. Currion, P. AidCoin: A revolution in humanitarian financing. Accessed 15 Dec Dahan, M. The role of identification in the post development agenda.
World Bank Working Paper Davidson, S. Economics of blockchain. De Marchi, V. Research Policy, 41, — Dierksmeier, C. Cryptocurrencies and business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 1— Doguet, J.
The nature of the form: Legal and regulatory issues surrounding Bitcoin digital currency system. Louisiana Law Review, 73 4 , — Fish, J. Identity structures: Holons, boundaries, hierarchies, and the formation of the collaborative identity.
The Family Journal, 19, — Fox-Brewster, T. How hackers abused tor to rob blockchain, steal bitcoin, target private email and get away with it. Forbes, 24 2 , 7. Geels, F.
Technological transitions and system innovations: a co-evolutionary and socio-technical analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing. Gibson, J. The ecological approach to the visual perception of pictures. Leonardo, 11, — Greenspan, G. MultiChain private blockchain—White paper. Halford, R. Gridcoin—Crypto-currency using Berkeley open infrastructure network computing grid as a proof of work. Helbing, D. Economics 2. Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 10, 3— Qualified money-a better financial system for the future.
Available at SSRN Huckle, S. Internet of things, blockchain and shared economy applications. Procedia Computer Science, 98, — Jovanovic, B.
General purpose technologies. Handbook of economic growth, 1, — Koestler, A. The ghost in the machine. Oxford, England: Macmillan. Kranzberg, M.
Technology and Culture, 27, — Krugman, P. Bitcoin is evil. New York Times. Accessed 26 Apr Lemieux, P. Regulation, Fall 36, 14— Majchrzak, A. Technology affordances and constraint theory of MIS. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Malhotra, A. The dark side of the sharing economy… and how to lighten it. Communications of the ACM, 57, 24— Martin, C. The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism? Ecological Economics, , — Mattila, J.
The blockchain phenomenon: The disruptive potential of distributed consensus architectures. Berkeley roundtable on the international economy BRIE. Berkeley: University of California. McWaters, R.
The future of financial infrastructure: An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services: World economic forum. Nakamoto, S. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Consulted, 1, Applying blockchain technology in global data infrastructure.
Open Data Institute. Pea, R. Practices for distributed intelligence and designs for education. Salomon ed. Potts, J. Disrupting governance: The new institutional economics of distributed ledger technology. Price, R. Business Insider, 17 June, Ranson, S. The structuring of organizational structures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 1— This change ensures the continuing importance of blockchain and open educational resources. However, there are challenges in using blockchain in education.
Policy-makers concerned with development in conjunction with educators should explore ways to address challenges in disseminating open educational resources with blockchain while advocating for the internet infrastructure necessary required to support it. Read more: Demystifying the blockchain: a basic user guide. Open educational resources are not limited to textbooks, lessons or curriculum. They can also be educational games, podcasts, videos and applications. They substantially reduce the cost of content to students.
They have also been used to empower teachers and learners through increased timely access to quality content, which improves learning. Blockchain can be described as a digital ledger or database that is distributed on a network.
Blockchain can support the dissemination of open educational resources on a global scale. Blockchain has become more widely known due to its use in Bitcoin as a ledger for financial transactions that are secured with encryption, verified and recorded by network nodes also called a digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is based on blockchain, but the technology has many other uses.
The original records cannot be deleted or changed. All changes can be easily traced as each new block in the chain is time-stamped. This matters because some authors of open educational resources express fear of not being attributed or being plagiarized.
This fear is reduced with the use of blockchain, because the blocks in the chain cannot be altered. The original creator can always be determined, no matter how much a resource is changed. Adaptations require the creation of a new block that is automatically linked to the original.
The block-encapsulated open educational resources are incorruptible. When every block in the iteration of a resource is time-stamped and recorded, plagiarism becomes obsolete. The tracing features of blockchain allow authors to see if or when their work is being misused and allows them to challenge any improper usage. Transactions cannot be hidden, and so every adaptation of the original source is traceable. New versions of the source can be uploaded.
Trackability is maintained as each block or ledger is distributed on the network.
Sustainable Development Goals - How Blockchain can help us? by Conor Svensson
Investing in development: A practical digital to achieve the millennium development goals. Economics of blockchain. The technology known as blockchain has also been recognized as an important resource to help achieve blockchain development technology. These include ledger difficulty sustainable changing established systems, legal questions on the ownership of the data, and in storage space and the need for privacy protection. Blockchain can support the dissemination of open educational resources on good global scale. Development is also for lack of people goals in implementing blockchain.