Learning Is Earning!

Introducing Edublocks and The Ledger:

Welcome to the year 2026, where learning is earning. Your ledger account tracks everything you’ve ever learned in units called Edublocks. Each Edublock represents one hour of learning in a particular subject. But you can also earn them from individuals or informal groups, like a community center or an app. Anyone can grant Edublocks to anyone else. You can earn Edublocks from a formal institution, like a school or your workplace. The Ledger makes it possible for you to get credit for learning that happens anywhere, even when you’re just doing the things you love. Your profile displays all the Edublocks you’ve earned. Employers can use this information to offer you a job or a gig that matches your skills. We’ll keep track of all of the income your skills generate, and use that data to provide feedback on your courses. When choosing a subject to study in the future, you may wish to choose the subject whose students are earning the most income. You can also use the Ledger to find investors in your education. Since the ledger is already tracking income earned from each Edublock, you can offer investors a percentage of your future income in exchange for free learning hours. Our smart contracts make these agreements easy to manage and administer. The Ledger is built on blockchain, the same technology that powers bitcoin and other digital currencies. That means every Edublock that has ever been earned is a permanent part of the growing public record of our collective learning and working. (source)

If the excerpt above is not nauseating/scary or interesting/exciting enough for you - here's the full video:



Other similar efforts include OTLW and BadgeChain, especially when combined with something like Knewton.

The Quantified Student

Adam Markowitz and Ryan Craig have proclaimed 2016 as the Year Of The Quantified Student. For context, Markowitz is the Founder and CEO of Portfolium and Craig a Managing Director at University Ventures. Here are two quotes:

Quantified Students will be able to map current skillsets against the requirements of target careers, evaluate the gap, and then select the educational program or path that gets them to their destination quickly and cost effectively.

As Quantified Students declare majors and continue to accrue skills, four years of academic work will find a permanent home in the cloud rather than in the trash. All of the underlying data will be indexed and eventually cashed in by students to prove competencies to skills-hungry employers.

Not surprisingly, Markowitz and Craig propose/promote e-portfolios for that 'permanent' home in the cloud - in some ways a logical extension of Claim Your Domain! and adaptive-learning tools like Knewton.

Of course, why would a Quantified Student spend 4-year on the campus of a small public college as opposed to filling the skill gaps identified by Big Data on the vast international private market of higher education? For a more nuanced discussion, consider From the Quantified Student to the Quantified Self by Audrey Watters.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-05-11