The Art World Goes Blockchain — from protocol.com by David Pierce

Excerpt:

The NFT explosion is tied up in the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which is tied up in a general frenzy of investment, and so who knows what will eventually crash when the rest of it does.

  • But there’s something here. You probably don’t want to spend half a mil on a Pop Tart cat, but the idea that digital goods can be authenticated and verified — that you might someday buy a GIF the same way you buy a painting or a Rolex — is transformational.
 

4 Projects Using Blockchain to Help Learners Document and Share Educational Records — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

Four blockchain projects have received funding with the ultimate goal of helping learners take control of their educational records. Each of the projects will receive $150,000 from a competition overseen by the American Council on Education (ACE). The Blockchain Innovation Challenge supports collaborations involving K-12, higher education, technology providers and public agencies, to facilitate more secure, streamlined sharing of learning records and create stronger links between education and work.

Also see:

BLOCKCHAIN INNOVATION CHALLENGE

Excerpt from About the Challenge (emphasis DSC):

The challenge sought technology-enabled solutions that reorient the education and employment ecosystem around the individuals that they aim to serve. It invited teams to articulate a vision and design pilots that address the following themes:

  • Empower all learners: How can learners exercise agency over their digital identities, including all records of learning, so they can share them in a secure, validated, and machine-readable way?
  • Unlock lifelong learning: How can learning be better documented, validated, and shared no matter where it occurs? How can control or ownership of learning records improve the way underserved learners connect and unlock disparate learning opportunities?
  • Improve economic mobility: How can blockchain help learners to find in-demand education in employment-relevant skills to advance economic mobility and to fulfill the promise of higher education?

 

 

UK hospitals are using blockchain to track the temperature of coronavirus vaccines — from cnbc.com by Ryan Browne

Key points:

  • NHS facilities in England are using tech developed by U.K. firm Everyware and U.S. blockchain organization Hedera Hashgraph.
  • The aim is to keep a tamper-proof digital record of temperature-sensitive vaccines and pick up on any irregularities in their storage.
  • Blockchain saw much hype in 2017 as cryptocurrencies like bitcoin skyrocketed, but the buzz around it seems to have died down today.

Addendum on 1/27/21:

 

The 12/31/20 EIEIO from Michael Moe 

The 12/31/20 EIEIO from Michael Moe 

Excerpts:

The 10 Megatrends Shaping Our World

  1. Knowledge Economy
  2. Global Silicon Valley 
  3. Digitization
  4. Smart Everything
  5. HomeWork
    The Office has become optional but the Zoom Room has become essential. 88% of companies encouraged or required employees to work from home during the pandemic. A near term problem that is rapidly being solved is that only 1 in 4 people are set up currently to work efficiently from home but 99% of employees say they like that option. Overall, due to reducing commutes, office distractions etc., productivity on average rose for most knowledge workers up to 20% greater.It is expected that many knowledge workers will continue to work from home even post the pandemic.
  6. Winner Take All
  7. Data King
  8. Sustainability
  9. Everything is a Subscription
  10. Mission Corp

 

 

Marni Baker Stein on What’s Next For Higher Education — — from gettingsmart.com by Getting Smart Staff

Excerpt:

On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, we’re talking with Marni Baker Stein, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Western Governors University (WGU).

For example, with regards to skills: WGU put together a skills architecture team alongside national competency networks. They then used EMSI, a common way to describe skills, to tag them to a competency and execute dynamic audits of performance.

“Learners desperately need education to organize itself around what they need it to become.”

 

Digital Credentials: A Better Way to Capture and Communicate Learning — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark, Rebecca Midles and Rashawn Caruthers

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

There is an invention opportunity to better credential units of learning, to open up individual learning pathways, to better communicate capabilities, and to reduce friction in talent transactions.

The pandemic is accelerating this shift to verified credentials. Enrollment in short-term credential classes increased by 70% over last year while freshman college enrollment dropped by 16%.

There are six opportunities to better capture and communicate learning.

 

The Opportunity for Personalized and Local Guidance — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark, Rebecca Midles and Rashawn Caruthers

Excerpt:

There is a big opportunity to create tools that complement advisor efforts to help learners better understand themselves, spot and try out possible futures, make informed decisions about what’s next, and persist through challenges.

 

The Observatory is an interactive platform that allows you to do a preliminary analysis of 600+ legal technologies in the market today

The Observatory — from orrick.com with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for mentioning this resource in his Lawtomatic Newsletter (Issue #112, 11/18/20)

The Observatory is an interactive platform that allows you to do a preliminary analysis of 600+ legal technologies in the market today (including some developed by Orrick):

  • Gain insight into features of legal tools
  • View leading categories of legal tech, from artificial intelligence to workflow automation
  • Understand tech use-cases for litigation, transactional and general solutions
  • Identify legal tech companies with diverse leadership

Excerpt from Gabe’s newsletter:

  • The Observatory: the tech-savvy biglaw firm, Orrick, has a new interactive platform offering data on 600+ legal technologies currently on the market.  A user can click on the type of tool they’d like to learn more about (e.g. document automation or contract management), click on various filters, then get a summary of what it does.  It also includes a narrative box for what makes the tool unique.  It’s easy to use, free, and also gives a nice preview for clients on the type of value the firm might offer them beyond run-of-the-mill representation.

Explore The Observatory from Orrick dot com to help you identify potential fits for your legaltech related needs

 

From DSC:
In the future (or is it already here!?), I wonder…will we see more 5K runs/races/walks, as well as marathons and half-marathons be done virtually?

If a secured network/solution could be leveraged, such machine-to-machine communications would be interesting. Each time a runner/walker gets to the 5K mark, their machine submits their time to a Global Time Keeping System. Who knows, maybe this will run on a blockchain-type of environment.

 

Virtual 5Ks and Virtual Marathons -- perhaps blockchain based over a secure network to allow M2M communications.

 

From DSC:
Now I just need to get *some type of exercise!* Geez.


And speaking of emerging technologies, also see:


Addendum on 12/19/20:

#CYBATHLON2020GlobalEdition winners of the functional electrical stimulation bike race (with interview) — from robohub.org by Daniel Carrillo-Zapata

#CYBATHLON2020GlobalEdition winners of the functional electrical stimulation bike race (with interview)

Addendum on 1/15/21:

 

 

From DSC:
Along these lines…

Sometimes, I think we need to be very careful with Artificial Intelligence (#AI) — which elements of it and which applications of it that we use in our society and which we don’t move forward with. But in the case of cloud-based learning profiles (some might say competency profiles), AI makes sense. Algorithms could make sense. Data mining could make sense.

A cloud-based learning profile might not make sense always to us — as it could be very large indeed. But AI-based algorithms could assist with finding appropriate matches between jobs, competencies, passions, skills, and candidates.

Such services will likely be part of a next-gen learning platform.

 

DC: You want to talk about learning ecosystems?!!? Check out the scopes included in this landscape from HolonIQ!

You want to talk about learning ecosystems?!!? Check this landscape out from HolonIQ!

Also see:

Education in 2030 -- a $10T market -- from HolonIQ.com

From DSC:
If this isn’t mind-blowing, I don’t know what is! Some serious morphing lies ahead of us!

 

Learning experience designs of the future!!! [Christian]

From DSC:
The article below got me to thinking about designing learning experiences and what our learning experiences might be like in the future — especially after we start pouring much more of our innovative thinking, creativity, funding, entrepreneurship, and new R&D into technology-supported/enabled learning experiences.


LMS vs. LXP: How and why they are different — from blog.commlabindia.com by Payal Dixit
LXPs are a rising trend in the L&D market. But will they replace LMSs soon? What do they offer more than an LMS? Learn more about LMS vs. LXP in this blog.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Building on the foundation of the LMS, the LXP curates and aggregates content, creates learning paths, and provides personalized learning resources.

Here are some of the key capabilities of LXPs. They:

  • Offer content in a Netflix-like interface, with suggestions and AI recommendations
  • Can host any form of content – blogs, videos, eLearning courses, and audio podcasts to name a few
  • Offer automated learning paths that lead to logical outcomes
  • Support true uncensored social learning opportunities

So, this is about the LXP and what it offers; let’s now delve into the characteristics that differentiate it from the good old LMS.


From DSC:
Entities throughout the learning spectrum are going through many changes right now (i.e., people and organizations throughout K-12, higher education, vocational schools, and corporate training/L&D). If the first round of the Coronavirus continues to impact us, and then a second round comes later this year/early next year, I can easily see massive investments and interest in learning-related innovations. It will be in too many peoples’ and organizations’ interests not to.

I highlighted the bulleted points above because they are some of the components/features of the Learning from the Living [Class] Room vision that I’ve been working on.

Below are some technologies, visuals, and ideas to supplement my reflections. They might stir the imagination of someone out there who, like me, desires to make a contribution — and who wants to make learning more accessible, personalized, fun, and engaging. Hopefully, future generations will be able to have more choice, more control over their learning — throughout their lifetimes — as they pursue their passions.

Learning from the living class room

In the future, we may be using MR to walk around data and to better visualize data


AR and VR -- the future of healthcare

 

 

What is blockchain technology? The ultimate guide for beginners. — from cryptocoinsociety.com by Jesús Cedeño

Excerpt:

The purpose of this article is to address three central questions that should be discussed to fully understand and appreciate this revolutionary and disruptive technology called blockchain. This will include historical details about nascent technology and its evolutionary progress through the first decade of existence. We will also explore the different types of this technology and explain why the blockchain name is a misnomer and introduce a more proper name for the technology.

Why do we Need Blockchain Technology?
To answer this question we need to state what is the value proposition of Blockchain Technology. Blockchain’s value hinges on decentralization. Without decentralization blockchain technology is no different from regular databases. Decentralization removes the need to have an intermediary or a single authority that acts as gatekeepers of truth or having to trust an entity to ensure the trustworthiness of any transaction. Through blockchain, people will be able to transact with each other directly without having to worry that transactions will push through and will not be reversible.

 

 

Credential blockchains could help student mobility. These 4 efforts explore how. — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

More than 70 efforts are underway around the world to use blockchain technology in education, and most set their sights on better connecting people with job opportunities, according to a new report published by the American Council on Education.

The report is part of the Education Blockchain Initiative, organized by the American Council on Education and supported by $2 million from the U.S. Department of Education. The initiative aims to study whether and how decentralized digital ledgers can give students and workers more control over their academic and job records and improve the flow of data among schools, colleges and employers, leaders told EdSurge in February.

 

 

Blockchain Can Disrupt Higher Education Today, Global Labor Market Tomorrow — from cointelegraph.com by Andrew Singer
Blockchain can play its part in the education sector — record-keeping in 2–3 years and then adoption by the labor market?

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In the post-pandemic world, individuals will need to seize ownership and control of their educational credentials — documents like degrees and transcripts — from schools, universities and governments. That notion received key support last week from the American Council on Education in a study funded by the United States Department of Education focusing on the use of blockchain in higher education.

“Blockchain, in particular, holds promise to create more efficient, durable connections between education and work,” wrote Ted Mitchell, the president of ACE, in the foreword to the study published on June 8, adding: “In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, learners will be more mobile, moving in and out of formal education as their job, health, and family situations change.”

A key theme of the report is personal data agency — i.e., how “distributed ledger technologies [DLT] can ‘democratize’ data and empower individuals with agency over their personal information.”

 

Blockchain has been described as a hammer in search of a nail. If so, academic credentialing appears to be as obvious a nail as one can find. The current international trade in fake academic degrees, after all, is “staggering,” as the BBC reported, and with a global labor market increasingly mobile, the world could badly use a decentralized, borderless, tamper-free ledger of verifiable credentials — both for education and the broader labor market.

 

 

 

Future Today Institute's 2020 tech trends report

Key takeaways of this report:

  • Welcome to the Synthetic Decade.
  • You’ll soon have augmented hearing and sight.
  • A.I.-as-a-Service and Data-as-a-Service will reshape business.
  • China has created a new world order.
  • Home and office automation is nearing the mainstream.
  • Everyone alive today is being scored.
  • We’ve traded FOMO for abject fear.
  • It’s the end of forgetting.
  • Our new trust economy is being formed.

 

Why law librarians are so important in a data-driven world — from Oxford University Press (blog.oup.com) by Femi Cadmus

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Looking ahead, the integration of technology in the work of law librarians will only increase. Over 90% of government law library employees say that artificial intelligence or machine learning has already affected their workflow by automating routine tasks. Over a quarter of law firms or corporations now have at least one active artificial intelligence initiative. Of those, more than half involve the library. It is therefore not surprising that the skills law library employees plan to develop in the next two years include artificial intelligence or machine learning, data analytics, and blockchain (in that order).

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian