#workingfromhome: EdTech: The Rise of Online Schooling
The widespread corona virus has been wildly affecting many public sectors, one of them being education.
In order to stop the spread of Coronavirus, the beginning of March saw the closure of many globally ranked universities such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Tsinghua, and the University of Toronto. Most exams are deferred, and classes are now run online.
Both public and privately funded school boards were quick to follow suit, and cancelled schooling for students from kindergarten to grade 12.
According to the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), almost 800 million children are currently affected by these closures. This raises the question: how can students of society continue to learn during a time of pandemic, in a safe and secure way?
Thankfully, the online education sector has been seen as a booming industry over the past few years.
With the emergence of apps such as Google Classroom and Google Hangouts, virtual education has been made more accessible for all age and educational levels. However, education on a centralized platform poses some issues. Not only are centralized platforms easy to hack into, but reports state that most students are turning in assignments over email. Email servers are prone to glitches and hacks. As well, there are limits to the sizes of files that can be sent out.
By building educational apps on the blockchain, as well as utilizing file sharing, decentralized storage systems and communication apps, online education can be more streamlined and secure. File sharing for assignments safer and quicker on a P2P decentralized network and is less privy to hackers. This is also more beneficial for exam and report distribution, which are more sensitive documents.
What’s also is important is to be able to collaborate on a safe and secure network. This ensures socialization, which is important for the younger students. It also ensures that students are still able to earn marks for classroom participation. Through audio and video calling, discussions are able to take place for classroom, or even for group projects.
Debrief provides a safe and secure network and middleware for educational platforms to enable secure blockchain communication functionalities for educators and students of all ages to learn and collaborate on.
