How Blockchain Can Revolutionize the Education System in Australia
Blockchain is an emerging technology that gained prominence since its inception thanks to Bitcoin. It was initially used as a peer-to-peer ledger used to eliminate the need for third-party intermediaries, allowing users to transact directly.
Since then, the use of blockchain technology has extended far beyond the financial sector. It has found applications in the medical, insurance and energy industries, with education being one of the more recent areas it’s found use. Only a few educational institutions rely on blockchain technology, and of those, most use it for validating and sharing academic certificates.
Blockchain technology has the potential to fundamentally improve areas of education like security and provide the means to deliver more students with an increased number of learning opportunities, first and foremost, by exposure to blockchain projects for students.
Securing student records
The financial and medical industries have historically been the most prone to cybersecurity breaches, with the educational sector following not far behind.
A lot of people don’t consider student data as being valuable because of the lack of immediate uses outside a school setting. However, hackers are out for student data because of its potential use once the owners enter the workforce.
Blockchain is a decentralized network of peer nodes, where each node in the network:
- Holds a copy of all the data
- Only writes data after receiving a consensus from the rest of the network.
- Broadcasts all transactions to other nodes in the network
- Regularly checks if the data it holds is identical to what other nodes in the network hold.
Since everything on the network needs confirmation from other nodes on the network to write, forging fake records is nearly impossible. To improve cyber security system, with its unique capabilities for immutability, trustworthiness and transparency blockchain in education offers new applications for the technology that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with the current state of tech.
Test prep and learning
Blockchain learning could also be useful for helping teachers and students prepare for their exams. Russia-based apps Disciplina and TeachMePlease already offer functionality that gives students access to questions and answers from past exams.
With these and more apps in development, blockchain projects for students will become more prevalent than ever. Elsewhere in the world, Edubirdie helps with assignments across all Australian states, taking care of another crucial aspect of student development. Not only your data is highly protected by the service, but it also makes sure your assignments are not used by anyone else.
Digital identification
Schools are quickly becoming the first place where people are equipped with information on how they establish and how to safeguard their online identities. With the continual rise of the blockchain technology, it could very well find itself integrated into schools as part of areas such as identity verification processes.
Such a system would be much simpler to scale to national levels than traditional systems. Of course, this application of blockchain in education also offers security, immutability, and trustworthiness when in use.
Academic transcripts
Another potential use for blockchain in education sector is in the production of academic transcripts. There is a need for them to be universally-recognized and easily-verifiable across schools. Today, this remains a largely manual paper-based process.
Learning blockchain technology and applying it in schools could streamline the verification process, by and large reducing the number of fraudulent claims of additional educational credits.
This is already in application today, with companies like Learning Machine providing an open infrastructure for creating, issuing and verifying blockchain-based certificates.
Securing student records
The financial and medical industries have historically been the most prone to cybersecurity breaches, with the educational sector following not far behind.
A lot of people don’t consider student data as being valuable because of the lack of immediate uses outside a school setting. However, hackers are out for student data because of its potential use once the owners enter the workforce.
Blockchain is a decentralized network of peer nodes, where each node in the network:
- Holds a copy of all the data
- Only writes data after receiving a consensus from the rest of the network.
- Broadcasts all transactions to other nodes in the network
- Regularly checks if the data it holds is identical to what other nodes in the network hold.
Since everything on the network needs confirmation from other nodes on the network to write, forging fake records is nearly impossible. To improve cyber security system, with its unique capabilities for immutability, trustworthiness and transparency blockchain in education offers new applications for the technology that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with the current state of tech.
Test prep and learning
Blockchain learning could also be useful for helping teachers and students prepare for their exams. Russia-based apps Disciplina and TeachMePlease already offer functionality that gives students access to questions and answers from past exams.
With these and more apps in development, blockchain projects for students will become more prevalent than ever. Elsewhere in the world, Edubirdie helps with assignments across all Australian states, taking care of another crucial aspect of student development. Not only your data is highly protected by the service, but it also makes sure your assignments are not used by anyone else.
Digital identification
Schools are quickly becoming the first place where people are equipped with information on how they establish and how to safeguard their online identities. With the continual rise of the blockchain technology, it could very well find itself integrated into schools as part of areas such as identity verification processes.
Such a system would be much simpler to scale to national levels than traditional systems. Of course, this application of blockchain in education also offers security, immutability, and trustworthiness when in use.
Academic transcripts
Another potential use for blockchain in education sector is in the production of academic transcripts. There is a need for them to be universally-recognized and easily-verifiable across schools. Today, this remains a largely manual paper-based process.
Learning blockchain technology and applying it in schools could streamline the verification process, by and large reducing the number of fraudulent claims of additional educational credits.
This is already in application today, with companies like Learning Machine providing an open infrastructure for creating, issuing and verifying blockchain-based certificates.