Jimm Wayans

Blockchain technology is regarded as another disruptive technology after cloud computing, Internet of things and big data, which has received high concern by the governments, financial institutions and the enterprises. Essentially, blockchain technology is a kind of technical scheme to maintain a reliable database by means of decentralization and high trust. Its core technologies include distributed accounting technology, asymmetric encryption algorithm and intelligent contract. Furthermore, it has the distinguished characteristics such as decentralization, consensus mechanism, traceability and high trust. Nowadays, as the underlying technology of bitcoin, #blockchaintechnology is not only applied in the field of finance, but also has great potential in education.

What’s more, blockchain technology is expected to play an important role in the construction of internet +education ecology to promote the reform of education system. According to the experience and enlightenment from the application of blockchain in the financial field, the blockchain in education is mainly embodied in six areas of application: establishing individual knowledge on big data, creating intelligent education platform, developing degree certificate system, constructing new ecology of open education resources, achieving “self-organization” operation of networking in learning communities and developing the decentralization of education system.

As seen:

• In the financial field, global banking giants have formed the R3 Alliance, including more than 40 large international financial institutions such as HSBC, UBS, and Bank of America, to jointly develop blockchain technology. Nasdaq in the United States took the lead in launching Linq, a securities trading platform based on blockchain technology, which became an important milestone in the trend of decentralization in the financial securities market. Clearly, it is necessary to pay close attention to the impact of blockchain and other technologies on the financial sector.

• In the field of technology, IBM and The Linux Foundation have established a dedicated blockchain open source project Hyperledger Fabric, which has entered the substantive development stage. The company will provide Watson API on the Watson IoT platform to help enterprise customers and developers develop and test IoT applications based on cloud computing, in order to realize the use of blockchain to lead the autonomy of the Internet of Things.

• In the field of energy, foreign companies have launched energy blockchain projects, such as: Germany’s Siemens and New York’s new ventures have cooperated to apply blockchain technology to the microgrid power trading market; American energy company LO3 Energy and Bitcoin development company Consensus System Cooperated to build TranActiveGrid, an interactive grid platform based on blockchain system, for a small number of residents in the Gowanus and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York.

• In the field of food, a research report from the University of Saad in the United Kingdom pointed out that if the blockchain technology is applied to the food supply chain, by making the data of food transparent, it may reduce the phenomenon of food waste, thereby solving the problem of food waste. In addition, Walmart is also trying to use blockchain technology to record the source of food, trying to let consumers have more food information, so as to improve some of the current chaos in the food industry.

• In the medical field, Philips Medical and Tierion have cooperated to allow Philips Medical to use blockchain technology to complete the authentication of medical records and the privacy protection of patients. Blockchain technology helps to solve the large-scale data quality problems that the medical industry is currently suffering from, and provides the medical industry with a unique source of authentic data, so that the system will no longer suffer from human errors or manual data reconciliation, thereby solving the problem of medical data trust.

Enlightenment on the application of blockchain in the field of education

The application of blockchain technology is bringing disruptive changes to the financial sector and creating new business opportunities. By studying the application mode of blockchain technology in the financial field, it is found that its value to the innovation and development of the financial field is mainly reflected in: eliminating intermediate trading platforms, reducing transaction costs; realizing real-time transaction settlement, improving transaction efficiency and asset utilization; distribution The transaction data is stored in a format, which cannot be tampered with and has high security; the automatic operation of the transaction process is realized based on the #smartcontract. The application scenarios and models of blockchain technology in the financial field provide the following enlightenment for its application in the education field:

(1) Strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and build an educational trust system. The traceability of digital currency can reduce the bank’s expenditure on compliance verification and auditing such as anti-money laundering and anti-fraud, and effectively control the occurrence of illegal activities such as tax evasion and money laundering. In the field of education, the traceability of blockchain technology can be used to realize the copyright protection of educational assets and intellectual achievements, and solve the problem of intellectual property disputes from the source. In addition, digital currency storage on the blockchain has high security and reliability. In the field of education, important information such as student grades, personal files, and academic certificates can be stored on the blockchain to prevent information from being lost or maliciously tampered with. , build a safe, credible, and non-tamperable student credit system, and help solve the current problems of lack of student credit and global academic fraud.

(2) Optimize the educational business process to achieve efficient and low-cost educational resource transactions. In terms of cross-border payment, the blockchain uses the characteristics of decentralization to abandon the role of intermediary banks and realize point-to-point fast and low-cost cross-border payments. In terms of educational resource sharing, the use of distributed ledger technology to realize the direct connection between users and resources can simplify the operation process and improve the efficiency of resource sharing, so as to promote the open sharing of educational resources and solve the problem of resource islands. In terms of educational resource transactions, the use of decentralized features eliminates transaction intermediary platforms and realizes point-to-point connections between consumers and resources, thereby reducing expenses, simplifying operating procedures, and creating an efficient and low-cost educational resource transaction platform.

(3) Use the characteristics of decentralization to build a decentralized education system. Blockchain technology is applied to supply chain financial business. By eliminating intermediate transaction agencies and reducing human intervention, costs and operational risks are reduced. Wave has reached a cooperation agreement with Barclays Bank to put the letter of credit, bill of landing number and documents of the international trade process on the public chain, and conduct authentication and non-tamperable verification through the public chain, establishing completely transparent “rules of the game” to achieve verification Decentralization of rules. In the field of education, blockchain can be used to develop a decentralized education system, breaking the monopoly of traditional education services by schools or government agencies, so that any institution with educational qualifications can provide educational services and issue valid academic certificates. The effective integration of formal education and non-formal education promotes the reform of the education system for all people to participate in.

(4) Distributed storage and recording of credible learning data to achieve efficient connection between schools and enterprises. Blockchain technology makes the securities trading market more open, transparent, green, fair and efficient, turning the traditional model that was highly dependent on intermediaries into a decentralized flat network transaction model, and realizing distributed storage and recording of data. In the field of education, students’ personal information, academic performance, growth records and other content can be stored in a similar way, distributed in the education system, and can be shared with other schools or recruiting units on the basis of ensuring the authenticity and security of the information. Data content, as an important basis for student job interviews. Use distributed ledger technology to show employers their academic achievements and professional skills, build a bridge for communication between students and enterprises, and establish a new model of school-enterprise cooperation, so as to achieve efficient connection between students and employers.

(5) Develop educational smart contracts and build a new mode of network resources and platform operation. The smart contract technology in the blockchain can automate a large number of manual and semi-manual verification and management tasks in the current financial transaction process, and improve the intelligence of the transaction system. In the construction of open educational resources, using the transparency and automatic execution of smart contracts can realize the automatic execution of resource uploading, certification, transfer, sharing, etc., reduce the cost of resource sharing, improve the efficiency of resource sharing, and build a new form of network resource circulation . In addition, smart contracts can be used to build an efficient and intelligent online learning community, realize the “self-organization” operation of the learning community, monitor the ecological environment of the community in real time, automatically block and delete inappropriate speech, and create a positive community atmosphere.

Challenge of Using Blockchain in Education

Blockchain technology achieves the anonymity effect by isolating the connection between the transaction address and the real identity of the address holder, and prevents the disclosure of user privacy due to the transparency of transaction information. However, such protection can still be achieved by observing and tracking block information and user IDs. Track down the user’s personal information. Therefore, the application of blockchain technology in the field of education faces the risk of the privacy of teachers and students being leaked, mainly from the following two aspects: First, all transaction information is open and transparent, and any information can be tracked and queried, and then certain conclusions can be inferred. Or predict the status and behavior of teachers and students, which is not conducive to the protection of personal privacy of teachers and students; second, the security of the blockchain is guaranteed by algorithms. In theory, only more than 51% of node users are hacked at the same time. Data information however, with the development of mathematics, cryptography and computing technology, it is difficult to guarantee that the algorithm will not be cracked in the future, resulting in the leakage of teacher and student information.

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