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10 Steps to Teach Web3 in 60 Minutes

March 03, 2022

What a week. 😞

Last week, it just didn't feel right to send out a newsletter about education at the same time war was breaking out in Ukraine. I realized this week, however, the importance of thinking of education as a path to opportunity.

Web3 creates opportunity and should be democratized through education. Educators are key to this effort.

➡️ That's why this week's article is all about how to teach web3 in the classroom: Crypto Curriculum - 10 Steps to Teach Web3 in 60 Minutes.

This curriculum is based on my experience teaching web3 online to everyone from 5th graders in India to college students at the University of Texas at Austin. Think of it as a composable lesson plan on web3. Take it, use it, remix it, and add to it. 💿

By helping more educators introduce web3 to all students, we ensure web3 is a force for good, helping everyone - especially refugees and those who lack access. I look forward to your feedback and will share a short preview in this email below.

Keep fighting the good fight. 💪

-Scott

You can always tell how old someone is based on when they learned to type.

Portable Opportunity with Web3

Over a million Ukrainians are now refugees, pouring across the borders in Europe in an echo of the great migrations in the 1990’s and World War II.

Portable, verifiable education might be the fastest way for these individuals to find opportunities in their new home.

Understanding web3 is a skill that creates opportunity. The rate and importance of learning about web3 will only increase.

Equitable Access to Web3

Unfortunately, web3 understanding is not equally distributed.

  • Men are more familiar than women

  • Millennials are more familiar than older generations

  • High income individuals are more familiar than lower income groups

How do we provide equitable access to web3? Education is the answer.

By teaching all students core competencies in web3, they have the ability to go deeper and create opportunity for themselves. The portable, verifiable nature of web3 means that this opportunity is available for everyone, regardless of location or background.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of web3 education happening, especially in the halls of traditional institutions. Instead, companies like Rabbithole and Buildspace or DAOs like Invisible College are helping people get started. Tellingly, popular courses on Udemy on Ethereum Development and Cryptocurrency Trading were actually built by the Blockchain at Berkeley student club.

The proliferation of training is a positive step, but most of these opportunities presuppose knowledge of a wallet or a curiosity in web3. How does someone who doesn’t even know that web3 exists get started?

The answer is democratizing web3. Just as we brought keyboarding into the classroom so all students could master the foundational skill, it’s time to bring web3 into the classroom.

10 Steps to Teach Web3 in 60 Minutes

Three frameworks emerged while teaching web3 regardless of age.

  1. It's not about web3 tech, it's about impact

  2. Doing > Discussing

  3. We are all Pavlov's Dogs (we need rewards)

With these concepts in mind, I developed curriculum to cover key concepts students should learn about. Specifically, we wanted to cover:

  • Community-led businesses (DAOs)

  • Internet money (wallets + cryptocurrency)

  • Finding job opportunities and earning crypto in web3

This led to the following ten steps. I'll share quick overviews in the Tweets below (follow me here if you want to read on Twitter), but you can get all the details and amount of time to spend on each step in the full article here. It's a tight 60 minutes, but the goal of this curriculum is to give them what they need to continue to explore on their own.

Let's dive in:

Educators are Everything

Web3 creates potential solutions to problems facing our world. However, it isn’t a guarantee that web3 technology will be a force for good. It is up to us to make it so.

More specifically, it is up to teachers to make it so.

As Simone eloquently highlights, it is the teachers who will bring opportunities to our communities. They need to know what web3 is and how to best teach it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thank you for thinking through how to onboard the next generation of learners to web3. Find all the details, exercises, timeframes, and images in the article below.

New opportunities are emerging to help teachers co-create and learn together.

  • Ed3 DAO is a great starting place. As a DAO by educators, for educators, you can learn about web3 from other teachers and discuss how to use it in the classroom. The DAO will open soon to the public. In the meantime, you can get started with their k20 Metaverse

  • Invisible College is a great place to learn about web3. While not specifically for educators, watching how they are reimagining a university provides inspiration.

Most importantly, keep fighting the good fight. There are dark days ahead. We can be the light of the new future.

Much love. ❤️

-Scott

You can always tell how old someone is based on when they learned to type.