Topic: My Bitcoin teaching approach - page 4. (Read 925 times)

If you can provide more details and informations about your job, the environment and the people involved on it, you could ask for donations in order to acquire new computers for the school. I think it's too problematic and maybe even expensive to borrow it, so buying is the best alternative thinking on long run. It's absurd to imagine a computer science teacher doesn't have access to computers during his classe, neither the students, as that should be the basic tool disponible for everyone for increasing the effectiveness of the content taught at its maximum. That must be a big challenge for you, Pokapoka124.

First before start talking about any asset, including bitcoin they have to understand the basics of investing otherwise they would start doing emotional actions like panic sell or greedy buying with closed eyes which can be risky for them.
As I said this can be an option to talk about technical stuff like how the mining works, smart contracts, etc ... but you should consider the knowledge level of the students, for me when I was speaking about it in my undercity where people have a higher level of education they didn't understand most part of speech, now for the students who are in lower education level this cannot be a good idea to make it hard for them to understand.

A good teacher is when you show your seriousness in implementing knowledge. Be creative in areas that make it easier for students to understand what you are saying. I think your efforts have been commendable because honestly I am also a teacher at a school, but the degree was not attached because the pandemic made me quit. My hope is in your current job, which is to provide students with basic knowledge regarding the world of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. Hopefully the learning process goes smoothly, let us know the progress at a later date if it has been realized.

The best initiative so far. Bitcoin technology is somehow related to the computing system, so it's a part of computer science. If you teach your students about Bitcoin technology then it's fine and you are helping Bitcoin adaption. Your student would learn everything related to Bitcoin from the beginning perfectly. It will be a good focus on Bitcoin technology and how cryptocurrency works, storing crypto and crypto scams as well. Just give them a better experience and introduce with the forum.

Why would you emphasize on investment when teaching about bitcoin?

Why not tell the students about blockchain technology and teach them how to develop smart contracts and how does stuff like staking, and mining work. Let's not ask students to invest in the crypto as then their focus will be only on earning and not on learning.

Yes, the same when I was in secondary school we had jet clubs which was an extracurricular activity but was something students took pride in and participated wholeheartedly. They even organized events and competitions. If OP can make the subject interesting and fun enough for the students to enjoy then he can be able to succeed.

It's a noble idea to want to integrate a bitcoin teaching plan in your educating curriculum. This is surely an innovation that isn't very much seen and for a reason. As someone that have been schooled in Africa and have been part of the formation process of students in the past, its not always in the best interest of the schools board to divert from the scheme to a scheme of your own. Curriculums for different classes are always designed based on what is expected of students in certain  grades to be thought and I'm pretty sure bitcoin haven't featured yet, looking at the fact that, cryptocurrency isn't accepted in many African nations yet but, they might allow teachings on blockchain technology.

As much as I admire the plan, it would to some extent disrupt the intent of the system but in some way, it might aid the students not to be so traditional on a system that is being out dated. New information have to be brought in the schools system and pulling this off means, you've got to go the extra length of not disrupting normal lecture time or curriculum but still, find the time to inform these students of the cryptocurrency or bitcoin innovation around them. Most of us are behind in these because we never knew, it wasn't thought in our schools and as such, you would be opening there minds to new developments and being aware of there societies.

Perhaps an extra class or lesson plan could be used to design a lecture period and using of projectors with pointers could fill in for the absence of computers. You have to see a way of being more practical about it and I'll advice yiu start from the basics, perhaps a summary of the history of money and how bitcoin came into the picture to mitigate for certain difficulties. Then, you could start explaining what bitcoin truly is, stands for, how it's used, the networks involved and how it has evolved over the years. Just take things slowly enough and ensure they get to digest the informations in each lesson before moving over to a new lesson.

I'll like to see some progress on this!

It's great to hear you have time to educate them on bitcoin. I recommend that you do that in your spare time since, based on what I've read, you've been assigned as a computer science instructor. I believe that you should educate them more about computers or, if you have any spare gadgets or laptops that represent computers, show them how to run them. So that pupils do not fall behind in technological usage. What you have to do is make them familiarize themselves with bitcoin and provide the basic information that they need to know. I believe that if they are trained and learn how to use the technology or computer, that's the time that you are going to explain all the benefits on how you can earn or make a profit through the use of bitcoin. 

This will be a better idea. Doing it as an extra curriculum activity.
When I was in high school, there's a day set aside as a social activity day, usually Fridays. This day, the students come up with different activities as debates, dramas, poems presentation, paper presentations. If such a day exists in your school, it will be a nice opportunity to lecture the students about bitcoin. This time it will not be only your class but the whole students and also your fellow teachers who are interested, that will benefit from it.

I think it will be bitcoin would fit in well if you were an economics teacher. You can talk to the economics teacher at your school if he/she is interested in introducing bitcoin as a currency in her class, but then again if the teacher doesn’t understand what bitcoin is, there may be misleading information taught to the students. A better idea would be for you to be invited to speak to the class.

Although the facilities are still very limited, the lecturer only provided materials and explanations for us to visualize when we learned about the programming language Pascal, C +, and although it was difficult to understand, everyone was very serious with the knowledge from the teacher. the test takes place on paper, and if you make a mistake in a certain symbol, the test will not be accepted, I think the difficult physical conditions also make the motivation to study more attentive, so feel free to convey what you already know to those students.

I have some suggestions as someone who already did some teachings at my university for a few months about bitcoin and investment skills. Since the students can have different levels of knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, there can be some students who don't know a word about it. So, You can start with the basics of investing and why we need to invest, and then you can start with different investment options and markets and why we chose bitcoin. I suggest you do not get into the technical-related stuff like understanding the mempool and hashing algorithms because this can be boring for the students.

Wow, op, I think it's great that you got an opportunity to work with kids. I'm really sorry, though, that the conditions are so dire, I can't imagine learning computer science without computers (we always had them at my school, and everyone else I knew also had them, even though I'm from a third-world country). Do they have smartphones, then, these kids? If they do, they can learn some things via them, so that borrowing computers isn't required all the time. If it's high school students, they aren't likely to be as loud and openly disrespectful as younger kids (in terms of ruining the discipline to the point where it's impossible to conduct a lesson). But it's important to show them something they can relate to. If it's a very generic course about computers, why not talk about things like building one's own setup, the GPU craze and things like that. I'd suggest Linus Tech Tips for the inspiration on that part. Also, why not card about cyberattacks, even something very simple like DDoS attacks, and show them how it's done? And when talking about GPU craze, you can bring up mining, and thus cryptos. I'd try to do it that way, at least. Then again, if they don't have computers and aren't likely to build their own systems any time soon, it's probably not the best choice of topic. But you can talk about cyberattacks, and how they're a part of contemporary wars now. Also, if these children completely don't know how to use computers, maybe you should start with the very basic things like how to turn them on, paint, write texts etc. It strongly depends on the context, and I have no idea which country this is, which level of digitalization is has etc.

Agree, I know it is a ton of effort to demonstrate it but still difficult. I just remember the post in social media that there was a teacher teaching how to use microsoft word which he draws the MS Word in black board and start explaining it tools, we are amazed with the effort and eagerness of the teacher but if we think the student i think they would having difficulties on gaining or learning it because they havent experience it and also havent really touch and do it by themselves. So if you have a chance to have a computer , learning curve would be easier

You want students to learn about bitcoin and it's backend technology is good approach and one step ahead benefit is you are assigned as Computer science teacher to them so I think it would be easy for them to learn about it and you can explain them in much better way.But the problem with the school is they are not focusing on expanding students knowledge about bitcoin and just burdening them with the regular stuff showing the best in their written books.Will the school be offended if you go off the tracks alongside with your course?

I remember there was one member on the forum who was giving some technical bitcoin projects to the students like creating a Lightning Channel payment system as assignment and have a thread for the same on the forum so is the case with you but don't have clarity on the restrictions by the school or how children react to it.But you could explain them about bitcoin usage and let them be familiar with the real usage of bitcoin in much creative way or showing some practical exposure through your cell phone if you can in some free time.

You have already your plans like buying computer and integrating courses so choose some variety of topics on different aspects like keys,wallets, security and usage as technical aspects and also the economic concept and how bitcoin can help in it through decentralisation.This will take efforts but if you can it will be good for the students.

My goodness! Teaching computer science without computers wouldn't do much good, I hope you can borrow those computers you say. Where you live, do the students have a mobile phone with an internet connection? I think everyone has one nowadays. I say this because for them to get an idea of what bitcoin is, they should have experience with the internet.

You have a very outstanding idea. From this you can be able to raise another Satoshi. But ensure that you make the bitcoin class very simple so that the students can understand it at their level. For me you don't need a special class for the lessons because you don't need to go into the complex aspect of bitcoin except they show much interest.

But it is important to note that the subject you are assigned to teach is a very important one. Most student have not even touched the computer before and some know nothing about the internet. And this computer skills are needed for them to be exposed to bitcoin. Hence, I suggest you concentrate on the computer class. Use the computers you are getting for practical computer classes. Organise extra classes for the computer lessons and just use the bitcoin class as a spice.

First of all you will have to create an excellent mindset for those students and then understand who is really interested in the technological stuff like blockchain and crypto space as whole.
I mean there wont be a point to keep the whole class engaged with the bitcoin lectures. There are students who love arts, who love history or geology! Not all of them are really into maths and coding stuff.

The choice is theres. There is no point in creating unwanted distractions to such students.
However, loving the way you working towards this. Hope so your management will also agree upon the same.

Spontaneity is a wonderful thing when it is taught, I am sure that something like bitcoin is not in the curriculum at the course, so the pedagogy required to teach bitcoin must be accompanied by spontaneity to make a difference teaching.

Perhaps an important point is not to confuse being a disseminator with teaching, bitcoin may be your passion but it does not have to be that of your students and that is where pedagogy and spontaneity do the magic.

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^{I don't think it's necessary to add photos of your students or anyone involved with your environment.}

over the years i have spoken to many people in africa trying to teach others about bitcoin.. here is what they found:
1. remember the difference between bitcoin and other things pretending to be bitcoin.
if you going to teach people about bitcoin ensure its about the bitcoin network stuff.. and not about CEX(centralised custodial exchange deposit databases balance). nor other networks that pretend to be bitcoin but dont have blockchains, mining, standard bitcoin transaction fee's, confirmation times
EMPHASIS: ensure your teaching them about bitcoin when doing a lesson about bitcoin. dont confuse them with other things that pretend to be bitcoin but dont have the bitcoin benefits, features and limitations.

truly understand africans utility of daily life and what possible things actual bitcoins can bring to them as benefits/limitations. give an honest lesson about bitcoin. no fluff, no subterfuge, no utupian hopes/dreams. in short be honest and accurate

2. you WILL if your educating them on bitcoin come into the debates with students about fee's/confirmation times and the comparison to things with less fee's like altcoins, altnets and their current african currency experiences like m-pesa and fiat that have less local transaction fee's

3. when showing them the actual bitcoin network they soon learn trying to get 30 students to do 30 transactions on the bitcoin network where they see confirmations happen within the same lesson time(meaning adequate fee for quick confirm) they soon learn that they have just witnessed a payment each that cost them EACH enough value on just the fee's that could have bought them several school books and even their lunch per student.., just in fee's per payment alone

4. due to this many gave up educating students about bitcoin being a plausible option of using bitcoin as a 'digital cash for the unbanked to spend on daily stuff' EG comparing it as a second option to using m-pesa/fiat as a daily spend network. and just advised them of using bitcoin as a possible savings /wealth hoarding (store of value) without all the banking bureaucracy.

there is a big big reason why in the last 12 years. we have not seen the likes of africa's 1billion population, india's 1 billion population and asias 1 bill population adopt bitcoin en-mass. and why it seems that only the developed countries like US/EU/UK/RU(combined sub 1bil population) have delved into adopting bitcoin somewhat.


pre-empting the obvious typical boring replies of certain people on this forum:
..
i know i know. im going to see the same clan of idiots reply and want to say how the fee's can be cheaper if you just pay less/ use other networks/coins/use centralised exchanges as bank accounts/custodial services . but then the kids will be:
a. waiting more then an hour to see a confirm if paying less than adequate fee's on bitcoins network.. (not a great experience to wait around and not see money move in a class that suppose to show money move).
or
b. not even experience bitcoin.. if you are just demonstrating centralised exchange balance/altnets/altcoins
..
i know i know. im going to see the same clan of idiots reply, argue, insult and want to advertise their other network as the 'bitcoin' they would want to see you teach the kids. and argue how somehow i turned this topic into a discussion about their preferred network.. (even though i obviously told you above that you should be trying to teach them about the actual bitcoin network not the idiots preferred network)
..
but heck you will see the certain idiots advertising their other networks, show off their desires/happiness that they helped suck up to certain coders to stifle bitcoin scaling and stifle low fee possibilities. and watch them same idiots scream and shout out insults while they try to explain that their vision of bitcoin is not to serve the unbanked and not to be used by those that only have say ~$5 of value a day to spend(basically they want africans exempt from using bitcoin daily)

(maybe by highlighting their screams and shouting and insults they do in other topics. this might actually make them not reply. in which case my pre-emptions have worked)