Homeschool Dapp? Steem For the Win!
So this idea struck me tonight as I was talking to my wife.
Our eldest has reached kindergarten age. As someone who worked around the education system for 13 years as a tutor (most of that time) and a teacher (a short part of that time), I want to keep my kids as far as away from that as possible. Add in some John Taylor Gatto, some John Holt, some School Sucks Project, and voila! Unschooling/homeschooling hybrid.
But there are challenges. In Georgia, like many (most? all?) other states, you are required to submit an education plan to the state each year. You are also supposed to keep logs to prove your child is being educated to their standards. This is done by recording time spent on various topics and maintaining a portfolio of work done.
As it turns out, Georgia doesn't require this until first grade, so we have time but Florida requires it from Kindergarten.
Side note: in my many years of tutoring students directly, I have proved to myself over and over again that 1-on-1 time is about 6 times more efficient than 1-to-many classroom settings. This agrees with the research. The "standards" set forth by various governments are garbage.
So as my wife was telling me about the things our daughter did today, I got to thinking. You know what's a really good system for recording text? Steem!
The idea is to create a system where homeschoolers can keep logs on blockchain. In version 1, this would simply be an on-chain transaction that posted the student ID, the number of hours spent and the topics covered as pre-defined tags.
Something like:
Student: 1402 (anonymized for privacy)
Hours: 3
Topics: #math, #science, #writing
Then, when the parent needs it, a script can be run that compiles all the transactions with Student 1402 and #math, then computes the hours spent this school year (determined automatically by block timing) on math topics. Automatic proof, fully audited (blockchain dontcha know).
In future versions there would be a mobile app, video & photo uploads to image hosting platforms (maybe appics and d.tube?) to create automated portfolios, and a full-featured tribe for students and parents to communicate (down with FB groups!).
So that's my idea.
As far as monetization, the app can be sold for 99 cents or so. Maybe ads can be placed on a freemium version. Tribes can now be somewhat monetized. There will be costs to account setups so that users have enough RCs.
I was thinking that maybe I could create an SPS to hire a dev if the steem community at large is interested enough. Otherwise I'll end up funding this out of my pocket.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Constructive criticisms? Tech skills to share?
For stuff like record keeping, where the reward pool would be irrelevant, I suspect a better approach would be to use
custom_jsonbecause you can store arbitrary data.The technical issue comes along when you want to retrieve the data. In that situation, you would store the data in another database. In which case, why put it on the blockchain at all? Well, you would do both. One to make it easier to retrieve (database) and one to verify (blockchain). Also, the blockchain version of the data would allow you to rebuild the database if something goes wrong.
One way to get both at the same time is to have a smart contract using a sidechain. It stores the data on the blockchain and stores an index to the data so there's no need to have an external database (because the sidechain is a database).
Unfortunately, running an entire sidechain for one app is usually overkill. So hopefully some day Steem Engine will allow arbitrary smart contracts for apps like this.
Hmm, assuming NFTs become a thing on steem-engine, do you think it would be possible to create a family of linked NFTs? Each NFT would represent the block data of the corresponding on-chain post and then the family would have some kind of identifier that puts them in the same index group?
Maybe just as a gimmick to get all the kids enrolled on STEEM blockchain. Integrate assignments with voting for grades!
First thing I thought of was a Tribe for this or SMT community, or both. I like where you are heading with this. There are plenty who would like to talk about home schooling.
I hope so! There are a bunch of us techno-granola types running around.
This pop'd up in my feed so fitting More Parents HomeSchooling...
Just left a comment. Nice find!
Would be a good idea, just gotta figure out how to explain HF day to the kids lol
Steem snow day!
Interesting idea.
There are still some homeschoolers on Steem. I used to compile a list but not updated it for a few months...
There is currently a move to set up a Discord.
That's awesome.
What is involved in setting up a discord server?
That's @minismallholding
Hi, yes, I'm just setting up a server at the moment. https://discord.gg/v5nTaE
Would be more than happy for you to drop in and make suggestions, even help if you want. 😁
I'm actually, officially, approaching the end of my homeschooling journey, but even adults still learn.
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Click the plus sign at the bottom of all the channels.
It's more about recruiting and keeping people there.
We could SOO gamify education, especially on Steem!!!!
I wrote this a couple of years ago....
https://metametheus.net/gamifying-educational-settings/
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Great article. This would fit perfectly now that we have tribes and SE tokens.
Once you gamify things, balancing becomes an issue. What is value of a 10-year old learning about basic grammar versus a 20-year old learning about organic chemistry?
My kids really enjoy the gamefied Khan Academy for Kids program. There's no scoring though, it's just fun and interactive.
I think each ‘course’ would need to be designed by those who ‘get’ their student cohort.
Obviously adult students would need higher levels of complexity that challenge higher levels of intellect.
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Thought you might be interested in this @redrica. Redrica's a very active Steemian who homeschools in the UK @nealmcspadden. Although I see @pennsif has provided a list for you so she will probably be on that too. 😁
the only thing blockchain proves here is that somebody said "i did x hours of.. ", does that make sense towards the official instances?
i would make centralised solution which would post to blockchain as "proof". if you take blockchain as base, you need to constantly scan to see if anything needs to be updated in a more efficient database (as @inertia illustrates).
if time is absolutely not a big issue, i can make something like that :-) i played around with posting json through python in the last months, the Steem part should be peanuts for me now
the headache is creating that public centralised API or scanning bot + some interface through app or website. I am going to delve into this issues anyway in the coming months
Will you come to Steemfest Bangkok?
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From my understanding, the parent saying "I did x hours of..." is what meets the legal requirements. My kids are just getting old enough where this is an issue though, so I'd love to hear from some parents of older children to see if that is indeed the case.
Time isn't a big issue for me, go for it!
And no, not going to Steemfest. If there were one in North America I would probably go.
I want to keep my kids as far away from the public education system as possible.
When I did public school teaching I hated doing all the daily reports. So meaningless. I think a major win would be finding a veteran teacher who you think does a good job and digitizing all their daily plans and figuring a way that the homeschool parent can submit, edit, and organize those notes.
There are lots of prepared curricula out there that you can buy or download for free.
For myself and my kids, I'm much more interested in an unschooling/self-directed approach where we explore the world through the child's interests.
This is a constant discussion between my wife and I. She wants a much more structured kind of approach, where I am much more free-form. Literally any single thing you want to learn about is connected to all other things when you dive into it.
Right, unschooling doesn't have to be unorganized though. It can be anything, but having some kind of plan makes sense.
Hello!
Why you downvoted my post?
https://steemit.com/palnet/@saleg25/quest-rewards-from-september-06-till-september-12
What is the reason?
See https://steempeak.com/dtube/@nealmcspadden/re-saulos-pxmyz5