How web3 will transform education

Transcript

g m g m welcome to web3 Academy it is the weekly doer Spotlight a place for entrepreneurs businesses and creators to explore and learn how to use web3 to transform business models and build thriving communities I'm Jaybird and on today's interview we're talking with riti sarath about how web3 will transform education this was a fascinating conversation where we dive into the challenges the existing education system faces and what are the specific ways that blockchain and web3 Technology can improve that we talk about on-chain credentials and really dive into the problems that so many

people have with this archaic way in which we manage transcripts and really give some specific examples of a region in India that is using polygon to now move credentials on chain and what that has led to as well as some of the more negatives of some existing stories of people who have gone through education and haven't been able to get their credentials because the system that they're University or their college or their High School uses is just out of date so really exciting we also talk about metaverse environments which is super interesting and we dive into the way in which the metaverse environment can improve the learning for students but also we talk about when the

metaverse environment is not so great for students which was really interesting we're not saying free tree is not saying that the metaverse environment is the beyond all and the only way that learning works there is a very specific framework that she gives of when a metaverse environment is going to create a Better Learning environment for a student versus when it's maybe not the most appropriate thing and we're better off with the traditional crass classroom environment and then we also dive into why VT founded Ed 3 Dao and the three phases in which the Dao is aiming to reimagine learning really interesting perspective on both education but also on Dows and the manner in which Dows can scale and

Achieve incredible results in a short period of time um and Richie is really the perfect person to have this conversation with because of her experience she served as a teacher she served as a professor a dean and a director in public private and Charter Schools both locally in the US and internationally across K-12 and higher education her experience is just top level and spans all areas of academics and education and then more recently she is the CEO and founder of K20 Educators which is a metaverse space for learning communities and has been recognized as the world's top 200 Innovative edtech companies and she's

also the co-founder of ed3 Dao which is a community organization built on the blockchain for educators by Educators and as a bonus for listening to this episode VT wants to give you a free ticket to her upcoming Ed 3 virtual unconference with top Educators and leaders in the space from around the world taking place this week November 13th sorry November 11th to 13th so check out the links in the show notes there's only a handful of tickets available for free so first come first serve hopefully you can grab one you can attend I'm going to be attending would love to see you there really excited for

this conversation it's just an unreal conversation about the disruption that blockchain is going to cause in a traditional industry like education and really how it can make it so much better before we jump into Today's Show let's take a minute to hear from our sponsors the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of

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weekly doer Spotlight and today we have joining us vitri from ed3 Dow vitri welcome to the show so great to have you here it's great to be here So today we're going to be jumping into everything web3 and education which is just such a fascinating topic something we've talked a little bit about around credentials uh and US ourselves we have a an intro to web3 course and we developed a uh an nft non-transferable nft which you get as part of completing that so we've done a little bit around the credentials but we haven't really talked much about the education space as

the more institutional side from you know Elementary School all the way up to high school and then University education we haven't talked much about that side of the of the industry and how web3 really will impact that and with your background I mean you're there's really no better person to have on the show uh you were just mentioning before we start we hit record today that you were just at a traditional education conference in Mexico City talking about web 3. yeah that's right so yes we're really excited to dive into it so let's just start out by a high level tell us what are you seeing about the ways that

web3 and maybe you know you just were at this conference what did you speak about at the conference what are the ways that web3 at a high level can transform education yeah I mean we have to think about it from a few different ways right so we have to think about it from a principle and Ethos way so how does web3 sort of contributing to the larger sort of principal sets and then the other one is like the practical ways like how are like how is the technology actually changing the way that we think about education so if we think about those from the principal set there are all these like incredible um a set of ethos and practices that are emerging through web3 that have been around for decades but are actually uh much more popular in the web through

ecosystem so the concept of decentralization self-organization immersive learning regenerative learning um you know self-sovereign identity all that kind of stuff and applying that to education um is could be basically game changing for the education industry and then the other side of it is um you know there's particular ways that web3 can actually impact education from like an infrastructural level so um one concept is the concept of unbundling learning through on-chain credentials another concept is um changing the way that organizations are actually set up through the Dow model to contribute to education whether they're Ed Tech or or schools and then

another way is how we actually think about learning itself because learning is much more online these days um how can we leverage metaverse systems and blockchain to actually change the learning experience online so those are some ideas that we're thinking about in the education industry wow so much so much to unpack there okay so let's let's take these one at a time and let's actually start with I love what you said around the principles first approach so let's start with the principles first approach so I I'm not sure I'm equipped to tee us up here but you mentioned a few Concepts there regenerative learning that I I think are very interesting I myself

haven't been in education for years I graduated from University 20 years ago or so uh but but just talk to us a little bit about the principles and how the ethos of web3 maybe crosses over and supports that principle's first approach yeah so I think if we think about the principles that I've identified right now so let's say the concept of regenerative learning regenerative economics right it's been around for a while it's been around for about a decade um probably a little bit more and the the reason why it hasn't been able to proliferate in my opinion across Educational Systems is because we haven't had the right technology to

support the implementation of it and so what blockchain is allowing us to do is to take those Concepts like let's say self-organization or decentralization or the concept of like virtuous cycles of learning or virtuous cycles of Economic Development and it's allowing us to actually use the technology to proliferate those ideas in ways that we haven't been able to do before in ways that we wanted to but we haven't been able to so um I'll give you an example here so uh the concept of um of on-chain credentials or unbundled learning uh unbundled learning is you know has been around since you know moocs basically developed massive online open courses right and um you know people some people will say that moocs

haven't been like that successful at changing the way that you know uh people around the world access knowledge um because there's such a low completion rate um and there's still a barrier to entry um and the TR I I think the one of the reasons why it hasn't been as successful even though it has been like there are hundreds of billions of people taking online courses I think the reason why people don't consider it as successful is because um the culture of being online and learning online and building relationships online has not like been prevalent until 2020 right covid really accelerated that that that sort of existence for us and so I think what's happening with um with web3 now is that because we have these alternate ways of

learning alternate ways of recording our credentials of saving our data of saving our you know um our documents uh and changing the way that uh changing the ownership structure of like the credentials that we earn it's allowing us to actually reinforce the concepts and the sort of like learning structures that we developed 10 years ago but and it's just proliferating a lot faster because blockchain is able to help us sort of own our own credentials so it's sort of like all these Concepts like kind of existed a while ago but now we're like finally starting to realize them from an infrastructural level and so when we talk about unbundled learning because to me unbundled learning it uh really applies to like post and post-traditional education

right so would unbundled learning also apply to because if you're in school you don't you don't really have do you have unbundled learning is that is that a form of Education that students would go through now or is it more Are we more talking about the the sort of continuous education adult learning yeah I love that question uh I don't know about your experience but my experience in school was terrible okay I hated school school was boring school was like not motivating I didn't learn how to learn and the truth is there are a lot of people around the world especially in my generation and previously that say like well I went to school to learn um how to get to college and then how to get a job not necessarily to learn right

and the Curiosity that we develop as you know infants often actually gets like crushed and the creativity gets crushed in school because they're trying to sort of like get you to do to you know certain things for State tests or whatever that's not sort of like a blanket statement because I think there are a lot of school systems that are doing really cool things but um most Public School Systems um have been standardized and they haven't been standardized for bad reason right they were standardized because they were modeled after factories and they wanted to create systems to create you know scale in education right like if you want to educate millions of children then you have to have some sort of standardization so you can scale it like

that's totally you know valid and then on top of that if you want to be able to compare you know the outcomes for those students so that you can either you know reprimand a school for not doing a job or to reward that school for doing a job or you know get the kid to the right you know college or whatever like you have to have some way to sort of like compare their data so like this whole like standardization and testing model like exists for a reason right but I think what's happening is like the pendulum has like swung too far where like everything is so focused on testing that schooling is no longer about learning it's about getting a credential right or getting a certificate or going to college but not necessarily learning anything um you know from from inwards so when we

talk about like unbundled learning the concept there is really like the core concept there is personalization how do you create personalized learning systems so that each human can not only learn the fundamentals like literacy and numerous and all the things that they need to know but they can also strive towards their like interests and passions and be able to build the expertise that they want to build and so if we were able to start that in pre-k then we'd be able to sort of like help kids learn at their own pace and learn in ways that were really inspiring and motivating to them and the modern day concept or the current day concept app of that is something called the micro school so they're actually um uh thousands of micro schools out

there especially in the United States I think there are about six million more children in microschool since last year um because of the pandemic pandemic so like basically six million children um went from public schools to micro schools in the last year and a half about um so there's definitely an uptick in microschools and the concept of microscope it's essentially like a community uh coming together maybe it's one person maybe it's um you know 10 15 people and they create a very small uh informal institution that then gets formalized and that organization or institution uh holds you know a much smaller group of students and and all the engagement instruction pedagogy all that kind of stuff in that

school is like very much personalized to those students and yeah so it's like such an interesting way of doing it because um you know if that Community is choosing to rely on that small group of individuals to give their kids an education then they can actually not only you know have more influence over what's happening because it's a much smaller group but their students can also get much more personalized instruction in ways that you know that are much more helpful to those students so like that's sort of like a modern day so unbounded learning can happen starting kindergarten and I would encourage it to but yeah wow it's so it's so interesting and it

brings up so many questions for me then around okay so because we're we're I make a few things that come up for me one is that sounds like a Dao that's the first thing I'm like oh microscope sounds like a doubt cool okay let's talk about that the other before we get into that though because we definitely want to chat about Dao's later on um but so the one thing that seems obvious to me is the opportunity to if you talk about personalization being so important in a child or anybody's education which is so true and so interesting that you mentioned your personal background that you know you lost that you didn't have that Curiosity and that is so important to develop in

our youth uh well would you get that in a micro school I guess My worry is do you need that blend of like a micro school but then maybe also something online where you can find like a specialization that really appeals to you or maybe I'm actually thinking about older people and not kids because no no I need to specialize yet you know I'm trying to one of the things that like I think is such a misconception and such a like I think uh a like a concept that has been sort of like drilled into our minds is that adults and children learn differently okay they all doesn't try to learn exactly

the same way so sorry keep going what you're uh with what you're saying no so I guess what I'm trying to understand is um are you saying that micro schools could replace the traditional education system uh and that we would all be part of these micro schools would those be in person would those be online uh I'm just trying I think I'm trying to take what you're saying and continue with it because it's fascinating no I I I I love this sort of like path where we're going on so um I think the the thing to think about is like we shouldn't do anything just for the sake of doing it right so when we say like we

should have Micro schools I'm not saying we should just have Micro schools because like that's like the new thing we should only have my microscope in areas that are like more conducive to having micro schools that are serving a particular need like there are a ton of public schools out there and private schools out there that are doing great jobs right they're they're developing um you know creative uh kids who can do critical thinking who can do you know um a lot of different you know interesting things and can pursue their passions all that kind of stuff and so there is a place for traditional schooling but um the the truth is that and this applies to any industry um you will continue to move on the status quo if there is nothing challenging that status quo right and so if there's a micro School competing for

your resources and for your students because in public schools you know you get funding per student um and that micro school is showing better outcomes and it's showing more you know um happiness score satisfaction scores and showing better you know results in you know students going to college or or getting a job or whatever they want then the public schools that are around that market school will be like oh my God we have to actually like you know um up our game we have to like do something better here some of that happened with Charter Schools about 15 20 years ago but not as much because Charter Schools um I think were uh were a whole different beast but like micro schools um I think have a a better chance because they're on a much more

micro sort of like cosm they're a much more sort of small entity that are much more manageable and so the idea here is like how do we create competition in the education system that is healthy competition and that actually allows the product which is basically like the education that's being delivered to students to be of better quality right and today most of education is not good most of education is standardized most of education is not serving you know either you know kids who are in low-income areas or even high income area as well and so um so that that's basically the idea like can micro schools come up with Innovative models at a smaller scale test them and see if they can actually come up with like more

um efficacious outcomes and then can those efficacious outcomes then impact other schooling models to change the way that they operate um fascinating okay I want to come back to on-chain credentials which was sort of the initial way we came down this thread because I do think that on-train credentials is such a great use case for blockchain in education and web 3 in education so can you just talk to us a bit about the the current way that credentials are managed within education and what what the problem really is and then how blockchain technology solves that by moving on chain and then maybe you could give an example I know that in

an article you wrote um you mentioned an example of a state in India I believe that has built uh onshine credentials on polygon and maybe you could speak to that specific example sure yeah let me flip it on you like how did you get your transcript when you wanted in high school yeah great uh oh man an absolute nightmare of a process like um I I had to you know phone I think I actually did in person go to the registrar's office sign some papers wait like a month probably and then receive also pay a fee paid in bin fee for sure like a hundred dollar admin processing

fee and then wait and then receive it I was actually just talking to one of our team members lives in Albania and he did not finish his uh University level education he like got halfway and then decided to work because quite frankly the education wasn't doing it much good and now he's decided to go back and finish it for his own reasons and oh my gosh I can't I mean the process there in a country like that was it was basically he said the only way to really get it was to was through corruption he basically said he had to pay somebody under the table otherwise he was like it'll he's like you basically don't get it or maybe you get it in six months yeah wow I could not have set up that that answer better

so when you asked what the pain point is that's the pain point right the main point is that it's just and it's part of the pain point right because like efficiency is not necessarily like something that is going to ultimately change education right efficiency is important but it's more than that so like one one sort of like face of this is the efficiency piece which is like when you want to get your transcript you have to call your institution you have to pay a fee you have to wait a while um you have to like there's just such a you know such a a complex process for something that doesn't need to be that complex so what on-chain credentials allow you to do is when you get a a credential whether it's a transcript for your high school or maybe you're taking

like an after-school supplemental course maybe you're taking a class at a community college maybe you're taking like a career class at Google or whatever it is like you don't have to call any of those institutions to get your credentials they just get automatically deliver delivered into your digital wallet right and the benefit of that is like you have access to your entire academic portfolio not only for that span of time but for the rest of your life meaning that you can see your entire growth from birth to death essentially right with changes like this concept of like you know the idea of being a forever learner or an um you know an ongoing learner um so lifelong learner I think is like the the main sort of like you know phrase for it

um because we we often say that we're lifelong learning but there's nothing in our actual like education system in terms of infrastructure and Technology wise that supports that concept and so now with blockchain to be able to support that concept very very you know literally in addition to figuratively like changes the way that we can actually become lifelong Learners right so that's one thing and then the other side of it is um the idea of uh taking those credentials and creating your own um your own certificate or your own you know uh what's the word uh like diploma out of

it right so like if if I wanted to take a class um at Stanford or if I want to go to Stanford but I couldn't afford it or I didn't get in or um I wanted to take a class at MIT or if I wanted to take a class at a community college but I didn't want that on on my resume necessarily or whatever it was like I could put all of those um those uh credentials together and I could say well I am really proud of like going to that Community College because it like was it was an amazing course and I learned so much but I'm also proud of going to Oxford because that was an amazing course too and sort of like putting that together and and creating your own diploma um is is just like a whole nother concept right and it just brings so much

more autonomy agency to an individual to be able to say I created my own major and this is what it means to me and this is what I learned wow that's so interesting because I think about it mostly in I mean as a a founder of a company and I I hire people and I'm looking at reference checks like that's the main use case I think about it from is you know oh great I have a much easier way to see your education credentials but you think about it which is so interesting more from the learner's point of view and it makes me think of like how we we talk so much about like the metaverse and nft art galleries was one thing that popped into my head but okay now let's flip

that and think about more of like could you have like a gallery of your Learning Journey and your learning path and be proud to show that off or maybe even just build it for yourself because that matters so much to you is that is that sort of like is that what you're portraying yeah I mean I was portraying that in a very sort of practical sense but I love the idea of having a gallery of learning like that's a beautiful concept yeah yeah I think I think it just changes the way that you like think about learning right because you're able to craft it on your own you're able to personalize it and you're able to like control the narrative which is um very different than you know our data being controlled by all the other

institutions that we've been sort of a part of for those for our entire lives wow cool okay uh I want to move forward to oh wait the the India example I wanted to chat about that quickly do you know much about that the what happens so basically um the state of Maharashtra which is the second largest state in India it's about half the population of the United States um issued a hundred thousand credentials on chain um using polygon and so um they eliminated um I think about like 200 interim steps to be able to like issue a credential um and they like really just like created such a more efficient system um my like guess is part of the reason

they did it was because they wanted to experiment with the technology and sort of like you know get a little bit of a press for it but at the same time like the fact that they were brave enough and you know um and uh agile enough to actually be able to like implement the system is pretty um magical and there are a lot of students in India a lot of people in different countries that want want to take their learning and want to get jobs elsewhere so like they have made it so much easier for this group of 100 000 educate students to actually be able to go to different places and say like hey here's my transcript and I own it I don't have to call an Indian institution um it's funny the example that you gave about your Albanian colleague is interesting because my cousin who's from

India she was raised in India and she like went to college in India um she's in her late 40s early 50s now I was talking to her two nights ago and she was just like yeah um I have been a stay-at-home mom for my entire life but I like really want to get a job but um and I want to be a job as a substitute teacher but the doe is asking me for a transcript for my college and I called them and they don't have it like I went to school like 30 years ago and they don't they just don't have it because it's in India and so she has no way of being able to be a part of like the public school system today because like her transcript was just gone wow oh that's awful and I guess that brings up the the point

as well of as we become more migratory and we become more online which can sort of tee up the metaverse environments conversation that I want to have next but we we need to be able to take our credentials with us I mean this is I think a big use case that we all talk about for blockchain and for web3 is you know your whether it's your identity your credentials or your your wallet and your actual your money you know you need to be able to take those across borders in a simpler way as we become a you know a world that travels more moves more and isn't so stuck in where we're born so yes so that that need for online credentials or on chains sorry

credentials is even higher yeah I love that point um it's so true the world is is more Global now right like we have so much more access flights are cheaper um you know when I was uh in high school or college like it wasn't very common for people to travel and I would be like oh yeah I've been on a plane 50 times and people would be like wow that's so cool right like now it's just like so what everyone's been out of place and so like that concept of like the world being more accessible to us is really changing the way that we learn the way that we earn the way that we live the way that we build community around each other um all four of those themes are by the way our conference names which I'll tell you about later

um but but those sort of like ideas are are you know changing because the world is so much more close to each other and you know so much more Global and so like yeah to your point like these credentials really help you um accelerate that lifestyle right yeah yeah okay awesome wow uh okay let's off the top you mentioned metaverse environments as another way that blockchain and web 3 will transform education I think I'm just going to pass this one over to you because I'm so I I'm so curious is the way you see it from the education standpoint yeah so so here so um

the thing about metaverse environments that are magical is that you can uh you can simulate what you're doing in real life online right not completely not totally like it you know if you don't have goggles it's not fully immersive all that kind of stuff but like to be able to create um experiences that are live and relevant and sort of like you know immersive versus reading a textbook changes the way that you learn right so for example if like you are um no matter what age of a student you are you could be 50 you could be 12. um if you are learning about plant Cycles right or if you're learning about you know

butterflies or whatever your metamorphosis maybe you're not learning about that when you're 50. um and uh you are reading and looking at images in a textbook versus you're actually like walking into a metaverse environment as a butterfly and experiencing that change right it just changes the way that you you experience the actual um education and so what metaverse environments are really great for for education is a couple things number one is enhancing the learning itself and creating experiences that bring things to life right um so that's through simulations through immerse environments and stuff like that another really great use case for metaverse environments is the idea of social learning

um especially if you're not uh in a classroom and you're sort of like uh you know either remote or you're you know wanting to connect with people from all over the world so the idea of you know a classroom in Florida being able to connect with a classroom in Germany is is a pretty magical thing because again the world is getting so much smaller and so this is going to be another great way for students to start sort of experiencing that sort of global nature of it um another thing um so the first thing is immersive the second thing is social learning another idea here is um the ability to have agency so the ability to actually choose how you want to learn when you want to learn how you want to learn um and uh and what you want to learn so

basically being able to like walk around as an avatar and walk into one experience versus another experience like one of the um we we had a uh Think Tank last year for my company K20 Educators um where we worked with a platform to build educational spaces for them and I had seven Educators from around the world as part of this Think Tank and um one of them built a map where you could dive into the human body as an avatar and the the magic of it was that if a student wanted to like let's say everybody started off in like the intestine but if a student said like hey you know what I'm not super interested in this I'd rather go explore the brain they could just go and go explore the rain and have like all these activities

that they could do but then come back and convene with um the classroom right so like that sort of agency just changes the way that you like internalize and are motivated by the Learning because you're not told what to do and you can sort of explore what you need to that is still in the realm of what the teacher wants to teach right that makes me feel like it reminds you of the Magic School The Magic School I feel like I'm I'm Miss Frizzle and I'm but I'm driving the bus now and I get decide where the bus goes first right yeah yeah yeah so yeah go ahead no it's just one of the things I was going to say is like it's not all sort of like you know Rosy here right like we know that there's over stimulation um in metaverse environments we know

that social media hasn't had the most positive impact on students so like whenever I talk about metaverse environments like I I want to always sort of um be careful to say that like we shouldn't spend all of our time in metaverse environments we shouldn't spend our time in online learning because like it's not actually good for human development to stare at a screen all day right um there's this uh study that came out um uh from Stanford where they identified these you know four uh situations where metaverse environments should be used in education um the acronyms days and they said don't use metaverse environments for no reason right don't use them because they're shiny and they're fun whatever use them

if you have a lesson that requires an experience that is D too dangerous so if you want them to learn what it would be like to not have oxygen at the top of the mountain right um I if it's impossible so if you want them to learn what it would feel like if you were like a virus that is in your body you could actually simulate that through my metaverse environment see if it's counterproductive so like if you wanted to teach people like well what would happen if the bees got wiped off from the planet right that is not something that we would want to simulate but you could simulate that on the in a matter of environment and sort of like show what that would be like right that would be counterproductive and then e if it's too expensive so if you wanted to

take your kids on a trip to Rome or to you know Greece or whatever you could actually do that in a metaverse environment without spending any money so so those so the that acronym has been really helpful to me in like guiding Educators and school leaders and understanding when to use metaverse environments and when not to use it that's so great that's really that's very helpful uh okay let's um I we could keep talking about medicine environments but let's let's keep moving along because there is there's so many so much else that we want to talk about on this show today uh so let's let's chat about I'm not exactly sure how to tee this up but let me I want to talk about Dows

um and I'm not sure if we should approach this from the angle of uh of ed3 down as as an organization what you guys are doing or if we should approach it from the angle of more generally how Dows can can have an impact on education and more I guess more how like decentralization can have such a big impact in education which way do you think we should go at this yeah um why don't we start off with the at the redo and then move into like larger aspirations okay great so tell us tell us about that three down let's start there what is that three though yeah so

ad3 Dao is the first Dao for educators by Educators um adao as you know stands for decentralized autonomous organization the way that I like to describe it is it's like a co-op on blockchain um basically blockchain is used to automate um you know governance systems and and funding uh disbursements and so um at three Dao the goal of it was you know we know that web3 is going to fundamentally change the way that most Industries operate it already has been right um what blockchain has been incorporated into supply chain manufacturing since like 2015 you know and and credentials have been you know created by MIT and um by Microsoft um you know 10 years ago also so like we

um we we know that this shift is happening but as is the case with education as of 100 years ago education is really hard to change and you know technology is um often comes and attacks education in a way that like isn't always conducive to the industry or conducive to the way that you know students learn or the way teachers teach and so the thing that we're trying to do is we're trying to get ahead of it we're trying to get Educators to understand what's happening in the ecosystem and start taking those opportunities to actually incorporate web3 into education in ways that are actually helpful to their teaching and their learning

and yeah go ahead if you want to continue yeah no I was I was just gonna um talk about the way that we're doing that which is yeah that was gonna be my question um and so the way that we're doing that is um we're developing the the Dao in three phases um the first phase is we're educating Educators our goal is to educate a million Educators about web three so we have a bunch of free resources we've got a newsletter we have um you know these uh weekly chats we've got you know Mastermind groups we've just got a ton of resources um that are totally free then we have these micro credentials that we've created um that are one month uh courses that actually give you a verified credential

on chain um after the fact and these credentials will teach you about blockchain and web3 and metaverse and all that kind of stuff and then we also have this conference coming up in November that we'll talk about later um so so that's the first phase the second phase of our Dao is incubation and this is where the larger question comes in where you were saying like how can decentralization change education so we really think that um you know in the past 100 years the way that education has evolved has really been top down it's been through you know business people or technology people coming in and sort of like developing a new solution most of the time those Solutions aren't um sort of appropriate for Education because either the Educators aren't

ready for it or the infrastructure isn't ready for it or it's just like bad technology or whatever and it's like a slew of reasons and so our thesis is that if we really want education to change we have to get Educators to change it not people on the outside not like you know people who have a lot of money people who are actually on the in the field on the ground doing the work so our second phase is we're building an incubator um that will help Educators identify major pain points in education and use web3 ethos technology supports funding to be able to solve those pain points through micro schools at Tech products and at tech services and that to us is

sort of like the decentralization piece which is if we can create an infiltrate basically you know Educational Systems um and uh creating an ethos of self-organization and decentralization in them then we can create more Innovation because people will be more self-motivated to do that and then the third phase of the Dao is research because we want to be able to scale all of our efforts so we want to do a lot of research that is helping us figure out what we can scale and how we can scale it wow that's so great you guys are such an organized out how long have you been operating for uh it's been 10 months 10 months wow congratulations that's amazing well it is technically my second

company so it's I've learned a lot no but but also like you your second company as in your time too right like you're splitting your time between so even more impressive than in 10 months just give us some context around Ed three Dow uh how many people are involved uh where where are they all from uh how does somebody new get involved yeah so we've got about uh 1200 people that are sort of engaging in our Discord we've got about I think it's about 500 nft holders that are sort of like official numbers um and uh I think they're from 50 different countries around the world we've got like a big world map that one

of our community members updates every week um and uh the the people that are in the profile they're anybody who identifies as an educator or somebody who's interested in changing education so it can be somebody who's in the school system whether it's K-12 or higher education or it can be a parent or it can be you know someone who's in technology but like really cares about education doesn't really matter there just needs to be like some sort of like Mission or interest you know commitment to education and the way to join is you know you can join for free um in the Discord to just sort of like hang out with us but if you want to be a member and you want to vote and you want to get access to our perks and our conference and everything then you would just buy an nft

um and then if you can't afford an nft then you can do some work for the Dow and then you can get a malware too right I think it's so cool this the way you say you can just join for free we when we think about Dows in comparison to traditional corporations uh one of the things that is so apparent to me is that in order to join a traditional Corporation you can't just walk into a meeting right you can't just walk into the office and like walk around and experience the culture of it I mean maybe you could on like a certain day of the week if they had an open house or something but but this decentralized organizations you can just go into their Discord and in your case

like you said you don't even you can just come in for free I'm sure there's meetings that you guys have weekly that anybody could pop into and attend and and it's just such a it's sort of flipped on the head you know in a corporation you go through this interview process to join and the corporation decides if you're right in a dow you get to interview the Dow by showing up and seeing what it's like and experience it firsthand and then you decide if you want to join or not I mean obviously there needs to be an opportunity in a role for you in that Dao but I think it's so it's so cool to see how decentralization and then and then the way that can scale because I know one thing when we get back to

education I I I don't know but I would assume that one thing that is very difficult with education is scaling right you know as you said micro schools are the new the new thing but that's only what 12 people 10 people so is is scale one of the things that you think Dows can solve and and you also use the word uh and this might tie into what you said info infiltrate traditional institutions which I love uh it's like you know we're all trying to Trojan Horse everybody into web3 right now um so so is yeah I guess maybe this is more of like a future the way you see this all playing out do do you think that traditional organizations will adopt web 3 or do you think that it'll

be like new Dows that are created or new organizations they're created that will be able to uh guide and Lead this New Path um yeah how do you see it playing out for Education down the road yeah wow you've asked so many questions yeah sorry I tend to do that sometimes that's great I have so many cool ideas well I think um one thing that you mentioned was you know the idea of flipping the incentive bottle basically like you know we're now focusing on the user and the customer rather than the company and the power lies with the individual and not with the Monopoly like that's a huge thing that I think is is changing like the way that anything operates um

so uh in terms of like where Dows are headed um I I think that there's it's really hard for traditional like Industries to completely change and reinvent themselves especially if they have Legacy systems that are actually in some ways doing really good for for the world so for example like the public school system like even if the pedagogy isn't great it is providing shelter and food for like hundreds of thousands of kids around around the the country right and we can't just upend that we can't just say like okay your school model sucks so we're just like going to you know not provide you know this basic service that kids need um so I think I think everything is

going to come sort of like with this time but I think there's like this parallel train to to train sort of like running on on two parallel tracks one is like this Innovative group of people that are trying to do things differently and create these micro schools and attack products and dowels that are like changing the way that we think about education and then education traditional education systems are continuing to sort of like run along this path also and and I think what's happening is like there's like people in the train sort of like yelling across to the other Trains being like hey you should try you should try like you know this pedagogy or this lesson or you should try using crypto to like simulate what microeconomies could be like and then the people over here are

like oh that's an interesting idea so basically like what's what I think is going to happen is like they're never gonna I think touch because they think they're always going to be parallel but I think the traditional system is going to elevate I think it's going to elevate from the ideas of the non-traditional and it's going to actually go into a better path and it's going to learn how to do things better because not only is it learning from like the people that are taking the risk but it's also learning from the pressure right if they're going to be more people flocking to to the untraditional systems then the resources are going to dictate you know whether this train continues being traditional or you know is adopting better Pathways but I don't think that

they're ever gonna like necessarily intersect because they're just maybe in like 100 years they might but like I don't I don't think it's like fully intersect right now but so we're optimistic we believe that it's possible so I mean you speak at conferences and you mentioned that you just like traditional education conferences what's the what's the reaction you get when you're at these traditional conferences and you talk to that audience about web3 and about blockchain I I think it's like it's like [Music] um I would say it's like it's like a spectrum so like some of them are like you were just like whoa I haven't like heard of these ideas before these are really interesting I'm gonna go think about this for the next like 30 days

right like it's like very sort of like excited and like intrigued and like all that kind of stuff um and and there are some of those people then like either go do something about it or they just get continue to get stuck in their ways um because the sort of systems around them are not conducive to change and then other people are like oh that's a really interesting concept that I'm largely skeptical because like I don't know enough about it I would say I've never encountered an audience that after I've done a keynote they say I don't agree with any of that like most people will say yes kids should learn critical thinking kids should have personalized learning experiences could should be in immersive environments we should push regenerative learning like nobody's saying no to any of those

things but it's about um what gets prioritized and how to do it um and that's like where the sort of sticking point is like how do we actually prioritize those Concepts over State tests how do we prioritize those Concepts over like you know assessment bodies that are sort of like lobbying for bigger you know all that kind of stuff well what they should be doing is going to ed3 Dao taking one of your courses and getting a micro credential yeah that should you know and that starts you down the path of learning about it that's right all these different pieces of Technology okay let's let's hear a little bit about uh the web 3 and evolution of Education virtual unconference that's that's something else

for its name you can say N3 con 22 for short that's our hashtag that's nice okay so basically um you know we wanted to create an experience that uh was sort of conveying and illustrating the concepts that we really believe in and so this is actually one of the world's first events that is concentrating on web3 and education entirely and it's totally virtual it's an avatar based environment and days one and three are a little bit more traditional where you get to pick from like a learning lab or an ed talk or a networking experience or whatever but as an avatar you can basically go wherever you want and walk wherever you want and then on day two it's what we call an unconference which is people actually get to decide their own agenda

and they get to create their own learning experiences so for example Jay if you wanted to come in and you were like you know what I'm going to hold a meet up on day two for people that are interested in biker schools like you could do that and then make an announcement and then people would come and hang out with you so like this sort of like unconference experience basically allows people to like create their own learning Journeys and and and share their knowledge with each other and get to work on projects that with new partners that they might have not met anywhere else before the the cool thing about this yeah go ahead oh no I was just gonna say and I love that you're doing it in a metaverse environment it is so web free which is so fascinating because I would think

that uh it might be easy to tiptoe around the technology when you're talking to you know a a user who is a little less comfortable with I mean should I haven't even spend that much time in the metaverse right I mean in the metaverse I guess you know all online experiences are the metaverse there's a debate about what is and what isn't the metaverse and whatnot but a good way to think about that is think about the Big M metaverse and the Little M metaver versus so the big end metaverse does this yet but the Little M metaverses do exist right oh I like that I like that that's a good one uh sorry but I cut you off was there anything else you wanted to say about the uh yeah no so I was just saying that um the cool

thing one of the cool things about this conference aside from all the other stuff is um this is like a convening of literally all the minds that are working on web Theory and education from some angle um this is like all of the people in that sort of world it's a pretty small community right now and so I've invited them all and they've all agreed to speak or to host a vendor or something and so they're all going to be there which is you know you don't get to have an experience that often where you like have this like very concentrated group of people that are basically leaders and innovators in their in their fields and that's what we're like sort of able to

do here just because it's still very early and we're still very very small group and I and I think it's just going to be magical to sort of like talk very intelligently um and very practically about how blockchain can actually change the way that education operates wow I love it thank you for being such a great leader in the space I mean it's we need people like you experimenting with these these things but then also doing it where like you said you're bringing together all these people to have these conversations because the truth is none of us are experts on this yet right it's all learning it's all new and we need to just get together and by getting together you know we'll figure it out and we'll try things and I think like

you said you know you you when you mentioned uh the the state in India that is put some credentials on chain uh you you mentioned that you know maybe they did it a bit for PR and and there's definitely I think that's part of it but I also feel like as you also said they're just experimenting right now and I think that one thing that we talk about so much here on this show is the importance of just playing in the sandbox you know you don't need to know I think a lot of us get caught up on well I need the perfect plan and oh I need to make sure that I you know interview all my stakeholders and my users are on board and they're all comfortable with web 3 and the truth is they're not going to be a lot of them

won't have digital wallets do you access sucks sometimes it's difficult to use but by playing the sandbox you are you know you're you're you're learning and everybody learns together and that's just so so important as we as we dive down this space and sort of figure it out all out together yeah I love what you said there and the concept of like constantly iterating and prototyping Solutions is a much larger ethos and web 3 than ever before especially with no code Solutions and I think that's really what drives uh Innovation and change being able to like continuously iterate um without like having to like have the perfect model yet you know well if you want to attend the web 3 and evolution of Education virtual

unconference what was the hashtag again Ed 3 con 22. add three coin 22. if you want to add three con 22 in the show notes there will be a link uh and there also might be a link for a discount uh as well so if you get there quickly we have a few discounts that we can give out so make sure you go check that out um okay before we we move on to the speed round uh I just want to give you a chance to tell people where they can find you online uh or talk about any other and chill anything you want to show if there's anything else you want to talk about um where people can find you yeah go ahead yeah so I'm mostly on Twitter uh Rudy saraf on Twitter and we also have a

newsletter that is pretty comprehensive that will sort of like give you everything under the sun about web3 but in a way that's really curated each newsletter is basically like a course essentially on a different concept so we have you know intro to Dow intro to XR and Joe to you know psychology of avatars there's like a lot of cool stuff in there and that's uh newsletter.k20educators.com um and then yeah just uh you know if you want to support ed through Dao and uh you don't necessarily want to be a huge part of the education movement but you want to support in some way um we would love for you to buy our nft too um it's uh it's towards a good cause cool I've I've seen the nft it's great great art who did the art for it 3D designer but the art was

conceptualized by one of the original founding members and uh Michael Cohen and then I am sort of like conceptualized it cool yeah I love the art and uh if it's got a great profile picture for yourself on Discord which I've seen a few times so I love it I love it okay let's wrap up with a speed round just a couple fun questions coming at you uh first what's an nft you'll never sell um I really love my crypto Kevin I I have a thing for witches you're you're actually not the first a few people on the show have mentioned their crypto covens so uh that's it that's a that's a very popular one

that's awesome uh favorite person to follow on Twitter uh I have learned so much from biology uh I just in fact I I've learned so much that I don't think I've retained most of the stuff that you said because it's just like so dense um so I could often like read his tweets over and over again totally totally didn't what was the podcast he just did a podcast there was a Tim Ferriss podcast he did that was like four uh four and a half yeah but I feel like I saw one that came out recently that was eight hours yeah did you see that yeah and um I'll probably consume it over like 80 days or something yeah totally yeah no that's such a deep thinker have you read

his book I haven't had a chance the network statement I have a copy of it but I haven't um you know gone too deep into it yet yeah me neither I've said it's on my list but like you said he's he's the type of reading that you've got to be prepared for some deep stuff you'll read the same thing 20 times okay last question if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it [Music] um this might sound silly but I would write take your kids outside okay yeah there's just so much time that we spend inside and like I feel like we've lost the sort of like love of the outdoors and like the love of nature or travel or whatever and I think it's

important for people to like get back to that what if you don't have kids um take your self outside yeah that's great and and very a very ironic way to finish an episode where we've been talking about online the entire time well I mean I think that's an important thing right it's like you have to have a balance like anything that so there are all these people out there that think that we're like pushing this sort of like extremist dystopian future of like us being online all the time and it's so important to understand that that you should only be online you should only be in metaverse environments part of that whatever when there's utility you should not do that all the time and like I try to emphasize that as

much as I can yeah yeah I mean it it just brings up the question for me of how do you see when we think about traditional education environments so classrooms you know maybe K to 12 uh classrooms do you think that there will be a mix of in classroom and online will will all classroom be online we'll all be like how do you how do you see that happening yeah I I think hybrid learning is the future um for more practical reasons and pedagogical reasons like I think every learning generally I think is a really good way to personalize the education and to

um you know to also spend time in the classroom but I think practically speaking uh there's always going to be some sort of phenomena that happens that is going to sort of like change the way that you know kids have to engage with like a physical School setting whether it's you know a virus or if it's you know a hurricane or some sort of disaster right and so I think the more people encounter those experiences the more they're going to realize well we actually don't have to lose days of learning if we can create a very easy hybrid system that works for everyone and so I think hybrid learning is is really where we're headed um and and the important thing there is

again I'm going to emphasize that like we don't want to be in a totally online environment and so the hybrid situation sort of maximizes on all the you know positives of both environments which I think is the way to go see he thought he thought it was done and I snuck another question in there I was gonna say we think we could go all day Well what we'll have to do is get you back in maybe six months or a year would love to get an update because we're moving so fast it would be interesting to see you know as you said what are the things that have caught and are being used on more of a you know mainstream way

um yeah we'll definitely have to get you back we should have an eight hour podcast fast I don't know if I'm ready for that Holy geez I'd have to do so much prep to be prepared to sound intelligent on an eight hour podcast I believe in you I think we can do it that's that's it I I like ambitious goals let's let's shoot for it well virti thank you so much for joining us today it's been an absolute pleasure and uh to everybody listening uh definitely go check out the ed3 Dao con 2022 I think I got it right that time uh and um yeah hopefully uh we'll see you online and in the meters thanks so much for joining us today awesome thank you

have a great day everybody have a great week cheers thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one