Topic: My class had their first practical Bitcoin exercise (Read 482 times)

People who are teaching about bitcoin and cryptocurrency are increasing lately, This could be the result of people finding the importance of the technology we have and it's advantages. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have been dramatically increase it's popularity last bull run. Because of the price going up, People are interested in learning it and make profit over it's volatile aspect. We all know what lays in the future and you learning bitcoin and cryptocurrency will never be late.

Having a teacher to teach you is a great advantage but If you caught your interest in bitcoin without having anyone to teach you, Internet will be your best friend here. You can gain massive amount of knowledge about bitcoin in the internet and over in this forum, I'm sure that most of your question have a thread in this forum.

What you’re doing is great. I really appreciate that you are teaching students about bitcoins. I wish I had someone to teach me when I started my journey. I would suggest you teach them every aspect of bitcoin like its durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability. It is important to know how it is based on properties of mathematics rather than physical properties. Tell them that bitcoin is emerging now but it may be the future.

This is a really fantastic and bold step. Not many schools and teachers do not bother to update children with new technologies and remain confined to their text book syllabus. I think this is really a good move.

Congratulations Op on your achievement.

At first it is not easy to control a class of 40, kudos.
Again, you chose to teach them about Bitcoin itself rather than telling them about investment. Continue to teach them you never can tell if the next Satoshi is among your students.

You can consider to introduce them to different types of wallets, so that they will understand that it is not only Electrum that is in existence.

I do think that exercises like these tend to educate the younger generation- though the topics that were introduced were somehow complex.

I mean, to be honest, I do not even know how to create my own private key, yet these people had the privilege of creating their private key and signing a message! I do also think that opportunities present themselves. These types of exercises, which I frequently see nowadays, are so helpful in the cryptocurrency community that it affects readers like us also.

This somehow gave me the inspiration to take my learnings to the next level. If these people were able to learn and to create their own keys, I think there is no more reason for me not to follow their footsteps. Good job, OP.

BitcoinGirl.Club made a very good suggestion, it will surely help the students learn faster if their parents are Bitcoin enthusiasts. They will support their kids with whatever they need.  But accomplishing that will not be easy. Parents are usually busy with their jobs, it will be difficult getting them to make out time to learn.
It's not a waste of time. It is too early to start preaching the "you can make money with Bitcoin" sermon, that's the wrong introduction many newbies in the crypto space have, I'm not making that mistake with my student. Bitcoin learning should never start with making profits.

Thank you for the correction and suggestions.

The Q&A session by Andreas Antonopoulos was a good way to introduce the class to the task at hand. It was a fine prelude to the subject in my opinion. The history of Bitcoin have been covered in previous classes, those have been theory classes, this is the first time they get to do what they are being taught.

This is so good. I think such basic skills should be taught in each and every classroom, even if you decide not to use Bitcoin in future you should still know how to use a wallet. And the best thing was you were taught how to use a private key wallet and find the best wallet and not an exchange where you are not even the owner of your own keys. Such skills along with banking skills as well should be taught in every school for sure.

Applause what did you do how to teach forty students to learn about cryptocurrency specific with bitcoin wallet called electrum, but need continue after teaching them with electrum wallet then they need way how to fill their electrum wallet. Waste time when knowing all detail with bitcoin but do not know about how to invest and get profit with bitcoin, maybe you miss detail about your student background, are all them richest family or not. I think if they are don't have enough money for investing looks waste time how to teach them with bitcoin or cryptocurrency, but you can begin after teaching with electrum wallet and give your student several way how to earn money with internet trough bitcoin or cryptocurrency world.

At the risk of going off topic, let me throw in this last one on that. Those are high school students and in Nigeria (which is OP's nationality) their ages should range from 11 to 17 maximum. 18 for them would be if they didn't enroll into school on time. That age is characterized with youthful exuberance and deliquescence.

However, I quite agree with you on the part of making youngsters become financially independent on time.

You have nothing to regret for because you did a great job. The moment you introduce Bitcoin to those young people, you have already planted good knowledge enough for them to be enlightened on how crypto works. It's a great thing that you have initiated teaching them on how to create a wallet and how to keep important private keys in starting things on crypto. I hope you could impart more to them in your next sessions. Kudos to you, Op!

Good job OP, following through on your idea. It's a great start and actually something that's usefull without being too theoretical and unpractical. This is something to inprove upon and if they show interest, they can always get more info or your classes can be expanded.

I did not have 18+ in mind 😉
At least they should know our existence that we have a big community supporting bitcoins and it's network. I think it's time to have an academic guideline for cryptocurrency so that schools, college and university students can make a choice like they make choice if they want to take a subject. Cryptocurrecy should not have to be bitcoin only.

It is really nice you took out time to educate these children on how to create an Electrum wallet and best way to store seed phrase, but I think it would have been best if only you have executed at least one live transaction for them to have seen how to send and receive Bitcoin. So I will be glad if you do that your in your next class

OP has become a Bitcoin evangelist. That's cool. I believe he's forever going to leave an indelible mark on those students for the rest of their life, even after he leaves that school. Nothing excites and refreshes like teaching someone what is worthwhile. This is what Bitcoin has become in this century.

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I think it will be too early to bring them here now, given their youthful exuberance they're more likely to get into trouble than more mature minds. The sound and smell of cash excites youths more than grown adults. It can make them go gaga and they throw caution to the wind. This forum has a set of rules that users are compelled to adhere to and I think those youngsters are likely to miss them. Give them some time and they will be ripe to take responsibility, then bring them in here.

You might want to revisit the subject of this thread. It came with a little bit of repetition having you say 'My class had' and 'with my class'. Like of you have to read that, you'll see that it's a repetition. Something like,
'My class had there first bitcoin exercise/lesson' or 'My first bitcoin exercise with my class finally kicked off' would sound more better. Its your thread anyway but, am just saying.

On your choice of lesson, is that really important basic? Looking at the fact that, this is there first time getting to learn about cryptocurrency not minding what they must have heard from friends or seen online, I think the approach should have started with a more basic kind of lesson. Like from the historical approach and a better understanding of what bitcoin is. You could maybe adjust your scheme to carry that or support a formate that graduates through levels.

Well, the obvious next phase in their Bitcoin education is going to be the installation and use of the Lightning Network via Electrum. https://www.electrum.org/talks/lightning/presentation.html#slide1

The advantage of using the Lightning Network over Bitcoin (on-chain) transactions are the reduced cost of the transactions and also the speed of the transactions. 

Well Done..... you are doing a great thing in educating the youth and the future of Bitcoin. 

Good move ops and congratulations on your program and haven't taken the bold step to start a crypto education in your locality most especially among young students, I like your teaching technique dividing the students into smaller groups of 10 will reduce the stress and speed the process of learning in them. I will suggest that you make more efforts to get more computers so that the number of students with a computer will reduce.

Yea I agree, essentially what the OP is doing is planting Bitcoin seeds which will germinate
later on, some wont and some will take longer than others.

Thats all any of us can do when introducing others to Bitcoin.

Maybe thats something for Pokapoka124 to expand on, introduce the parents to Bitcoin also?

First, I would like to say a big congratulations to you on this initiative once more, it's indeed great how you and your students have progressed since your first post.

My comment is on the part I quoted, i believe you are not going to advice your students to keep this address they created as well as the private keys as them keeping it and using this address in the future might be a big mistake.
Remember you said you rented the computers which you downloaded electrum wallet on and which they (your students) created a bitcoin wallet with, and I believe you are going to return the computers to whoever they owns them, you might think they already know, but please sound it as a warning to them not to use that address for any kind of transaction, just incase any of them saved the private key and the address to make use of in the future, they are newbies and might not understand fully yet, how this thing work.

We are seeing the "explosion" of knowledge about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular to the younger generations. It will have a ripple effect sooner than later. Don't be surprised that from the group you going to have traders, web developers, technical writers, venture capitalist and many others who would go on to do great things in the crypto space. I am interested in teaching kids and want to know if you plan on using any offline resource(s) during your other classes.

Educating your students on bitcoin is a wonderful thing and to be commended.  This is a great start to keep them ahead of the curve they may not even know is coming yet.

Mostly if OP can show them how to make pocket income from signature campaign and can hook them in the forum. Maybe they will then talk to their parents and they will find it interesting. An educated parent can teach their children better than anyone else.

I would prefer to see these kids are growing up with the dream that they will someday work and get paid in crypto or they will have a business to accept payment/service charge in crypto.

These days faucets are no profitable like it used to be. It's completely a waste of time. They might lose patience.

I think you did a good thing. You taught them about a good wallet, something easy to use and also secure. You also told them how to sign a message, which is not something everyone knows how to do.
As for private keys, that's indeed not so easy to decide on, as a passphrase can be forgotten if you don't have a very good memory, storing it online isn't safe, and writing it down on a piece of paper is probably alright if you're at home, but when you're in class where everyone's doing it, it can be weird and feel unsafe. If it was an introduction into basics of using Bitcoin, I think it was a good one.

The problem about using bitcoin faucet is that it entails some financial or privacy related risk. And I think that it would do more harm than good.

The time-consuming process and several small payments associated with using faucet are one of its main drawbacks. Multiple small payments (input) increase transaction size, thus increases the fees related with each on-chain transaction[1].

While I am aware that this might be a potential topic, it might lead to more confusion as they will need to learn how to combine inputs in order to reduce the transaction size and associated fees [2] as a pre-requisite.

As for any privacy and security related concerns, you can't be certain if a faucet website is legit. Back then, some faucets requires their user to download an application which might contain malwares that could compromise those laptop. Plus, they are also susceptible to some incentive-based activity that openly encourages referral spam, which is a terrible practice.

[1] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/96125/does-number-of-inputs-or-outputs-affect-bitcoin-transaction-fee
[2] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/aug-2022-mempool-empty-use-this-opportunity-to-consolidate-your-small-inputs-2848987

It would be ideal for the students to see some Satoshi's appear in their wallet and then to
be able to send further on to one of their fellow's addresses.

I wonder would many people donate a small amount of Satoshi's to your address, if a lot
of people gave a little it would accumulate to something you could work with?


Yes some history about Bitcoin and its leading figures would surely be interesting to the
students particularly the mystery of Satoshi and the Bitcoin wallets left abandonned.

No need to be sorry but you did a great job on those 40 students so they know about the bitcoin training you taught them.
This is indeed a short lesson and they certainly understand faster than the material you provide so I think you will continue to provide other initiatives for them to know more about bitcoin deeper.

If you don't have enough bitcoins to splash them on how to do bitcoin transactions the testnet way like @Maus0728 said maybe with that step they can try without having to use your own bitcoins.

@Pokapoka124, regarding the issue of not having enough Bitcoin to send them so that they could see a real transaction happening, I could only suggest to introduce them to the LN, and then, you could raise some funds for that cause and distribute those funds to your students, via Electrum, which already supports LN. Maybe that could be an interesting addition to your classes!

Why not introduce them to bitcoin faucets so each of their wallet can have a small amount then after they accumulated enough, teach them how to send/receive bitcoin. I don't know if there are websites that are really paying now but I'll drop a link for some faucets that you can try. I'm only familiar with freebitcoin on the list but trying some of them could be worth a shot for your students to learn more about bitcoin.

https://sensoriumxr.com/articles/best-bitcoin-faucets

Why not give the Electrum Testnet Client a try? This way, you will be able to demonstrate sending and receiving bitcoin in real time, much like an actual bitcoin transaction.

Running Electrum testnet, on the other hand, can be as simple as downloading the Electrum client itself as it is inlucded upon download. Alternatively, you can also make a copy of the shortcut created by the installer and change the target using the --testnet commandline argument which is best explained in this guide[1].

Now, I pretty much don't know if @notblox1 is still giving free tBTC though in the Service he offered[2].

[1] https://bitzuma.com/posts/a-beginners-guide-to-the-electrum-bitcoin-wallet/#testnet-mode
[2] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5278247

You should teach them how to use Electrum single signature wallet and multi signature (co-sign) wallet.

Need to be clearer. Private key or mnemonic seed?

In Electrum wallet, when you create a new wallet, what the software gives you is mnemonic seed, not private key. To get private key (after you create your wallet, you must do other steps.

Furthermore, write down mnemonic seed is easier and avoid mistake than write down private key.

You should teach them to recover their wallets by typing their mnemonic seed or recover a single receiving address by importing its private key.

Choose "I already have a seed"
or click on Wallet, Private key, Export and get a file for private keys of all addresses in that wallet
or click on Addresses tab, choose a receiving address, right click to choose Private key and get it.

I don't prefer to use this method, dump private key. I would like to back up and recover with my mnemonic seed that is simpler and I can secure it better. With a file of private key, I see it more vulnerable to hack.

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In addition, when creating a wallet, after typing a wallet password, always choose "Encrypt wallet file". It activates a security with wallet password and secure the wallet file.

If anyone use the same computer and see that wallet, to access it, must know a wallet password or has to brute force it.

Yeah, as others say, there should be no regrets on your end, you did your part already and I think that's enough for them at this time.

And maybe it will really interest some of them, Electrum UI might be boring with no colors and it's simply. But I guess that's it the strong suit of Electrum and for sure your students will fine it later if they dig themselves in Bitcoin later in their life.

You did an excellent job and it's really just a little bit away from your student's first bitcoin lesson to come to a perfect end. It would be great if we could set up a simulated environment in which students can experience bitcoin trading first-hand. Students will feel how different bitcoin works when comparing them to fiat.

I have a suggestion. This is very effective for all especially those who are starting to use Bitcoin.
They should aware of some basic security on the internet, like avoiding phishing sites, and how to secure private keys. How to spot scammers and avoid it.
How to spot some fake websites or platforms that will attempt to scam or some malware or phishing.
By doing this, we can protect our Bitcoin, especially the wallets.

congratulations on the initiative, it is very good that you are helping people and about not being able to have bitcoins for all of them to test in practice, I would suggest that you send your bitcoins to one of the students, and then that student would send it to another student, and so on successively until the last student would send it to you, that way everyone could have the opportunity to practice, of course they would have to deal with the issue of delay in confirming the transaction and high fees, but also this experience will be good for students to see in practice that they will be able to face this type of situations whenever they deal with bitcoin

That's a good start actually. Electrum needs small space unlike the bitcoin core wallet.
So practically, this is a lot easier to install and start their journey in bitcoin.
Other wallets can come next as they get a good understanding about custodial and non-custodial wallets .
Some of these students will be thankful to the OP in the future, as some of them will make a living out of this market.

First, it's a great initiative that you've taught them about Bitcoin and how to store it safely.  But I think, not only Electrum wallet, teach them about other open-source wallets that can be used.  Next is, different wallets that they should be aware what are custodial and non-custodial wallets and also hardware wallets.  But at least you get their interest in Bitcoin and that's enough for now, it might they will have their own research as well since you've mentioned that some of them showed interest.

They must understand the true meaning of the utility of Bitcoin or show them the roadmap of Bitcoin, not just by making a profit.

This is a great initiative. You are doing a really great job, despite the challenges you are facing. Your students are fortunate to be learning about bitcoin from a veteran member of this forum. The regular school curriculum denies these students the opportunity to learn about new innovations. I’m not surprised the students are still learning Fortran program when the world has moved on to more advanced programming language.

You have done enough OP, there's no need for regrets, renting 10 laptops must have already cost you something. You have set the pace, for others who want to follow to follow. These important role you have played in the life of these students can help shape the financial life of those who take cryptocurrency seriously.

As a suggestion OP, you can consider creating a WhatsApp/Telegram group for the students who are interested to join so you can continue to render guidance to these younglings from anywhere you relocate to.

This is a follow up post from him as he indicated, from the previous post which he referenced, he mentioned the kids to be in secondary/high school, so assuming their age range, It should be from about 11-21years.

Nothing to regret. You gave them a start now they will drive their car. It needs interest too. Keep feeding them with interesting events of Bitcoins like Bitcoin Pizza. History of bitcoin. Introduce them legends like Hal finny, satoshi. Give them idea how to earn bitcoin by working for it, how it's easy to send money to others to any corner of the world, how can they cash out to fiat etc.

Give them the idea that Bitcoin is the future money or at-least an asset that store better value than gold and property. "bitcoins" Is Financial Freedom.

I wish all these bitcoiners best of luck and looking forward to see their existence on the forum.

Don't regret mate. You tried your best and it's a good initiative to teach your students. Once they will be more interested in Bitcoin definitely they will come to you. So then you may teach them practically how to transfer Bitcoin from wallets. Also, there are a lot of videos on YouTube on how to transfer Bitcoin. They would learn if they are curious enough. From your end, you are doing great to adopt Bitcoin. Your students are lucky, to be honest, they are learning the perfect thing in a perfect way. Keep it up, mate.

Quite a lot of transformations have happened over time and knowledge about Bitcoin and wallets is needed at an early stage, but also since you did not specify the age level of your students and their grade level we may not see it as necessary for them to make a transaction, giving them the basic knowledge is enough at whatever age so anyone that picks interest may indicate and go further to make a purchase and sending using the electron wallet you thought them.

A few months ago,  I made this post here. And after reading all of the suggestions, this is what my class did on the last week before the Salah break.

I teach a class of forty students. To begin the class, I needed a projector, 10 computers and my personal computer to use as an example. I had to rent the computers for the day, that morning I downloaded Electrum wallet ( because it's my favorite) on all of the laptops and made sure the program ran smoothly on the PCs.

All Good!!!

The morning of the lesson, I divided the class  into ten groups of four with each group having a laptop each.  The 10 laptops were evenly placed across my classroom.  I had the advantage to do this before the assembly meeting because I had the first period. We began the class with a little revision. We watched Bitcoin Q&A: How Do I Choose a Wallet? by Andreas Antonopoulos on the projector.

The instructions for the exercise were as follows:

1. Create a personal wallet on Electrum

2. Write down your private keys

3. Each student is to decide how best to store  their private keys

4. Sign/Verify a message with their address

Observations

The students were impressive, the exercise didn't take them long to complete. Some of my students who had taken a strong interest in bitcoin before the lesson were already familiar with Bitcoin wallets and had a very easy time using electrum. I observe they were not very secretive with your private keys - a point I will emphasize more on in our next class. Electrum wallet seem boring or should I say less colorful for them. I could see they enjoyed signing a message with their address, they had the same expression as when they first did "Hello world!" program on fortran.
My only regret is the students didn't have the opportunity to o perform a real transaction with their new Bitcoin wallets. Unfortunately I don't have enough bitcoins to splash for them to practice how to send/receive Bitcoin.