Ed3 Weekly: Navigating Changes
The web3 landscape is changing. Some of these changes contradict each other. For example, we are seeing more universities adopt metaverse and immersive learning technologies, but we are also seeing companies cutting back on their investments in the metaverse. There are also more people of color using cryptocurrencies, yet statistics show that financial literacy rates are down for POCs versus white demographics.
The reality is that we are living in a rapidly changing world where many of our traditional paradigms are shifting right in front of us. This means that legacy systems of finance and work are changing along with them.
This has broad implications for learners and educators in general. According to Jay McTighe one purpose of schools and learning is “to prepare students to use their learning and to transfer it and apply it in a new way.”
We want to see our learners have the ability to take what they experience in school and apply it to what new future emerges. Understanding concepts around web3, metaverse, cryptocurrencies and other technology will play a key role in building this understanding.
The resources for this week cover those topics. Please enjoy learning about the following:
This article does a great job contextualizing two main value adds of immersive learning: safety and risk-free. Two examples are simulating child care or installing copper wire. These are examples of how immersive learning will be used in health and social care, childcare, construction, and engineering.
Steve Grubbs and XR Learning continue to push to the forefront of immersive learning in schools and universities. His company isn’t looking to replace all in-person learning with the metaverse but rather to enhance the learning done in the real world.
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If I were to hand an educator one article about web3 right now it would be this one. Ryan Wyatt, CEO of Polygon Labs (and former senior executive at YouTube) shares the most important lessons that he has learned about web3 in the past year.
These are extremely informative. Here’s the outline, but I suggest you read the article for the details:
I wish the metaverse and web3 were all smiles and rainbows. Based on this news it might have been a rude awakening for anyone who made the shift from their “normal” job into the web3 market.
Many tech companies have been forced to lay off workers to help streamline their operations. This article from Business Intelligence from BC describes how this has impacted the web3 and metaverse job markets. One example is Dapper Labs cutting 22 percent of its staff.
Web3 is still a niche industry and some people who jumped on board were probably well ahead of the curve. Give this sector some time to evolve and I believe we will see an enormous increase in work available in web3.
The statistics around the wealth gap and financial literacy in the United States are not favorable for African-Americans. This study by TIAA-CREF shows white Americans answered 55% of the financial literacy questions correctly compared to 37% for African Americans. To contrast, a 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 18% of Black adults had invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency compared to 13% of white adults.
This new program discusses how a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) partnered with Circle Internet Financial to increase access to learning on “the evolution of money, Bitcoin and blockchain technology, Ethereum and tokenization, layers and interoperability, Web3 and applications, policy and regulation.”
The emergence of programs such as these has the potential to address the gap in access to financial literacy programs and also leverage the interest in cryptocurrency.
Thank you for stopping by for another issue of my web3??education newsletter. You can join over 300 others and?subscribe to the newsletter on LinkedIn?or?join the SubStack here. Link to all my work by checking out my?blog.