Topic: UPDATE: Am I Doing My Students a Disservice? (Read 406 times)

What you are doing is a very good thing sir, I hope the teachers out there are broad-minded like you who are not looking at things from one aspect of me but from all fields.
This is a very good thing to do because it will definitely be very good and very supportive for their next life. at least the generation you teach can be able to choose and sort about what will be done in the future and you have taught a good thing to make their mindset in seeing bright future prospects here.
In the future, maybe you can use this as an advanced method that must be adjusted gradually in order to build a generation mindset that is wiser and understands crypto.
you did a very extraordinary thing sir.

Indeed. OP is doing a great favor for the students by teaching them about these things, the things that are actually being done and attended in real life at this moment, that could significantly impact their future careers. I think that OP should do more of this topic in your lesson plan, and even further the scopes of which can give better understanding for the students.

This is what we all have missed in our school days because we were busy making crafts and other useless projects which don't teach us any good in real life and same is happening at this time also in most of schools as they are not giving away practical lessons to the students which can help them in life.

I really appreciate your efforts and maybe their mind could not incapsulate all the technical aspects of LN as they have made errors but they might become familiar with working because they are using it in real use case which is far more effective in learning than reading books.These kind of projects are the baseline for buliding better blocks for nation and make them technical sound at an early age.

You reminds me of that super hero teacher like in movies who explains lesson in practical and fun manner that whole class and audience like and appreciate.Keep this the same way and you will see the progress in students.

In case you didn't know yet: franky1 doesn't like LN and has been spreading lies about it for a long time. It has earned him negative feedback from 3 highly knowledgeable users, and an "informal ban" from the tech boards (meaning his posts will be deleted on sight).
TL;DR: you're wasting your time trying to explain things to him.

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Keep up the good lessons! I'll repeat myself:
As a student, it doesn't get any better than that

You seem to be excited about it and that you're students had fun with the classes you've conducted, unless you're not telling the full story, I don't think that you're not doing them any disservice at all, it's not like you're going to get any big benefits out of it besides being fulfilled so you're doubts are baseless.

I don’t see any form of disservice in what you have done here. You’re even doing a good favor to the students by teaching them something that any other teacher is unlikely to teach them. Seriously, not every teacher would have that kind of time that you had to be teaching their students about cryptocurrency and how they can be able to go through this long process of making a purchase using the lightening network and all that.

So, you really did a great job and I commend you on that. These kids will get home and also talk to their families about cryptocurrency and kind of practical they did, and that would encourage their families to be part of a community like this.

the 2 quotes above imply the kids were going to learn about bitcoin and blockchains. with the hope it inspires the kids to become bitcoin devs that maintain the code and support the blockchain

but then.. drum roll
you didnt teach them about bitcoin after all.. so didnt inspire them to get involved in bitcoin. but instead LN pretending to be bitcoin.

yes i took your quotes and looked at what you said without the noobish disbelief that LN is bitcoin. because LN is not bitcoin.

heck even you said yourself you did not want to teach the kids bitcoin, or blockchains or bitcoin transactions.

so yea a disservice.


literally contradicting yourself
saying he did teach bitcoin, but then admit its not the same network and not even bitcoin but testnet pegs.

one thing you missed out on is LN payments are millisats which are not compatible with testnet or bitcoin network.
so again, not teaching bitcoin, but instead teaching 'LN msat of testnet coin pegs'

titular literally said he didnt specify the lesson was on bitcoin(in this forum topic) as his final honest admission, even if he was telling the kids they were learning about bitcoin..

..
as for your IOU contradictions



what you dont realise is in LN there are 2 'promises' there is the 'state' promise(millisat denominated(HTLC)) and there is the commitment promise.. both of which are not settled when signed. meaning its an IOU sitting around waiting to be fulfilled. which is the very definition of still owing someone something.

as for the 'pony up any time without permission' what you forget is the conversion of the state contract(HTLC) measured in millsats. vs the secondary commitment that rounds up/down values to whole sat denomination and also decides on who is going to pay the onchain fee out of their value allotment. this does require signatures too meaning more permission and agreement

its not a system where people can just broadcast the 'state' HTLC payment without anyones permission. it requires a secondary agreement on what a possible settlement should be and the terms/conditions on when and how it should be settled. (the punishment)

the settlement is later thing when they agree its time to settle up whats owed and broadcast the right settlement.
which still needs the other consent in the form of them not activating a punishment.

if you think LN payments in-channel are so finalised and not an agreement to settle later. then such finality of just signing the state would be the end of it. they would not need the sat denominated settlement contract and no need to add punishment clauses.

the reason why there is a settlement is because the in channel promises(iou's) are not final. you cannot guarantee you get paid unless its confirmed. even if someone handed you a signed transaction for you to push to a pool. until its confirmed. you have not yet been paid and thus the other person still owes you.
the reason for the punishments is that the other party can mess with you before it gets a confirmation. and even after confirmation if the transaction in question was not for value that had been in the latest agreed promise.

again. try to learn why there are terms like commitments, settlements and punishments.
and realise these things exist outside the LN payment 'states'(htlc) because it actually does require agreements and permissions on whats owed and then terms for how to settle up later and punishments if trying to settle the wrong promise

It's a game theory. Another game theory is that we'll constantly have honest miners which will work on extending the chain, punishing those who attack it with their computational cost and rewarding themselves. Does that mean it can always work? Of course not. We've seen lots of 51% in other chains. However, it remains a game theory which works most of the times.

I have been ripped off more times in real life than stolen from my partner in the lightning network. And I've only been ripped off once.

I don't ignore them. They are part of LN. Their existence is what makes it a non-debt-based system.

There's no time when you've updated your state without having a valid signature. Even before you deposit your money, the node has already given you its signature. You can always force-close the channel without anyone's permission.

It's an IOU, but you're the one who can pony up at any time, without anyone's permission. Fair enough?

The kids are kids. Don't make me repeat myself. Their interaction with bitcoin is more than enough and the teacher has gained my respect.

Never pretended it's the same network.

They did transfer tBTC, though.

- C'mon titular, how didn't you teach them about public-key cryptography? Now they can't understand the way digital signatures work...

And where did he specify he handed out his coins to a hub?

will not cheat each other? ooooo you fell down a hole there.. are you sure about that.. you might want to check with even the LN devs that have themselves been cheated out of funds by their channel partner.. hense the invention of LN punishments.. so please have a honest discussion with the devs about the flaws and not just the pro-PR stuff.

your quote above is where you are trying just a little too hard to hide the flaws and pretend there are none.
"commitments" and "punishments" and "settlement" are actually terms that are part of LN... even if you want to ignore and pretend they are not part of it.

no ones permission?? um.. you might need to check on that.. theres this little detail called a signature. and also some other things about which promise is the most uptodate/active promise.

but thank you for now contradicting yourself by now admitting (within same post) that there is a IOU (debt) based system. where they can claim the debt to be settled later.
..but not at anytime. because the locks usually have a set period, and even punishments and stuff have locks too. like most credit cards have..
payment due at end of month. must be paid within x days from due date

but thanks for atleast admitting that the ln 'payments' are not settled value but just later to be settled commitment /promises.. and yes commitments/promises are actually a thing thats described in the code.
(worth mentioning twice)

.. the kids didnt experience anything blockchain when doing their test transactions.. even titular self admitted that he thought that the blockchain stuff was boring and slow.(not entertaining)

bank 'account' .. emphasis account.. is comparable to channels..
in regards to joint-bank-account. co-signing

where as hubs.. those who are running as financial businesses by co-authorising hundreds/thousands of their 'customers' channels.. would be the banks

people lock their btc into onchain locks(vaults) with the hub(bank) and need the bank to agree on any payment. where the hub(bank) wants its customers to be disgusted by onchain fee's(close account charge) and not want to exit with their btc(gold) and instead offer them cheap exits via different currency(pennys and dimes)

Come into those children's mind. Do they really want to know the difference between these two networks? Nope. They can't comprehend the difference as it's too difficult to even understand the way transactions work.

Everyone except you likes the Lightning Network.

You keep lying and confusing people about LN. The Lightning Network is not debt-based/IOU. Your analogy is incorrect as the credit cards are by design, debt-based while the lightning payments are made in a way that even done outside L1, both parties will not cheat each other.

Yes, they do keep a supposed debt (the signed tx), but they are free to release it and get the money whenever they want with none's permission. Why is that so hard to understand?

No he hasn't.

What's the bank in this case? The lightning node? Clarify, 'cause the lightning node keeps nothing.

What a costly lesson! Impressive. You guys aren't just teaching your students, you directly helping Bitcoin adaption. Once your students will understand fully about Bitcoin technology then they would teach more people, friends, and family. On the other hand, they will be always on the right track since they are learning from the teacher. The teacher wouldn't give the wrong lessons at all. I am pretty sure these students definitely will thank you once in a time. Please continue teaching and introduce your students to the forum. So they could learn more easily if they have intended to do so.

by avoiding using a bitcoin transaction to lock funds up. by avoiding the settlement.. you have completely avoided bitcoin entirely.

you have only exposed them to LN payments. which is a totally different network. using a unit of measure called millisats which is a something the bitcoin ecosystem does not understand.

so by asking the question did you do your students a disservice. then yes.

the funny part is the only people giving you merit are the altnet LN lovers.

...
its much like doing students a disservice in economics by not explaining the difference between a credit card and a debit card. and just giving them free fiat and saying go spend it. not explaining the pitfalls of credit cards. where all they think about is that money comes to them for free and they can spend it without repercussions or debt or problems later.
without explaining that at the end of the month they need to do something to settle up.

if you really want to teach kids that bitcoin is a network that doesnt have a blockchain. doesnt have consensus, doesnt have confirmations.. you have succeeded.. but what you have succeeded at is teaching kids nothing about bitcoin. but some other network being falsely called bitcoin.

your ASSUMPTION is that LN is a 'layer' because altnet promoters called it so, even if the altnet has none of the features of bitcoin. the units of measure are different the invoice format is different to a bitcoin transaction. the 'pass the parcel' routing is different to the relay-confirm process.

if you fail to explain the differences, then you have done a disservice

as blackhatcoiner subtly hinted at:
the students now have a experience where they think "bitcoin" is instant. has no 10minute confirms, and no large fee's. when they later come to use it they will probably be convinced to use LN via depositing fiat into an exchange and then handed millisats into a LN lite wallet.

but then when they find out a month later that they need to settle up and suddely the issues prop up they were never aware of, like confirm times and how the channel partner can abuse the process so the student needs to exit quick. he will not like using real bitcoin, due to the fee's and delays. and so will as many LN supports hope to see. have the student atomic swap his millisats for an altcoin like LTC which is faster and cheaper to settle. thus giving the channel co partner the btc settlement in full.

and yes thats the game theoriy most of the large 'hubs' of LN want to see. lock up the gold, let people play with paper money, and when people want to settle give them copper/brass/nickle coins and thus the 'bank' keeps the gold..

its not innovative. its old school economics. its a game thats been played for centuries.
LN lacks the bitcoin innovation. lacks the whole point of blockchains. co-signed accounts(channels) is old school, its joint-bank-accounts. something married people have been doing for centuries.
when the guy wants orange juice for breakfast the next day, he asks the wife to pay the milkman who then pays the orange juice supplier. and the next day the orange juice arrives for the man.

just remember. when having a joint bank account the money is not yours untill its all settled in the divorce

@titular
It's crazy how your sixth-grade students probably have more off-chain/lightning experience ^{[regardless of using testnet]} than someone like me, who has been in the community since it was introduced for the first time!
^{- Shame on me for not having enough experience [I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one], but I salute you for the effort you've put into this [don't change]}

While I do agree he should have mentioned the difference in layers, you should not forget that they're 11-year old kids. Even I had to struggle to understand the difference between L1 and L2, let alone students who don't even care as I do. Whoever does, can find out what's true and what's not by themselves.

Now, as for the following, I very much disagree;
The Lightning Network is innovative (& cool). A decentralized system that's adopted globally can't scale seriously. While changes in the block size can satisfy the users to some extern, it's just a temporary solution. People must have a ledger of their own, unless we want bitcoin to remain a non-recognized, alternative payment method. Period.

I'm convinced half have understood why mining is necessary, from the bitcoin dot org video. Now as for the LN, again you can't expect them to fully understand it. They don't even know how to solve a quadratic equation yet. Honestly, I'd do the same if I was a teacher.

And what did you want him to do, smarty-pants? What if they formed a biased opinion about the 10-minute interval and in their later life, got attracted by some shitcoin that's faster? Again, he taught as he should.

So would it be better if he didn't make this lesson at all? Get serious. It must have been an awesome time for those 2-3 who will get involved in the future.

Nowhere in the post did I mention anything about "lots" of issues/failures. There were two minor issues to fix and they were both fixed in less than 5 minutes. Also, classes that day were only 35 minutes, not an hour.


False. They knew that there was a difference between bitcoin and its L2 counterpart. They were learning the importance of scaling technologies and how they bring flexibility to the ecosystem.


False. My students were well aware of the different choices in wallets. They understood that electrum is just one of many wallet options. Your statement makes zero sense.


It doesn't make for a very entertaining or efficient lesson when you are waiting for 10 minute block times. Setting up channels would also prove to be a waste of class time as that would have been too advanced for many of my students; especially on electrum. Not sure if you have kids, but "settlement processes" don't really grab an 11 year old's attention.



The goal was to expose the students to bitcoin's ecosystem. Never did I specify lesson would be on bitcoin's base-layer. It's evident you had to make a lot of assumptions before posting this rhetoric.

so teacher wants to teach about bitcoin. but instead of teaching bitcoin. he was getting kids to use a lite wallet with a different network.. whereby to do 3 transactions took the class nearly an hour and had lots of issues/failures..
i would not call that a good 'show of outright innovating and cool technology' nor a show of bitcoin

so what did they learn.
a. what they think bitcoin is, is some instant payment system that doesnt involves confirmations/blockchains.
      problem: when actually using bitcoin in the future, they realise their lesson was nothing like what bitcoin performs like
      problem: they think they get free already loaded up value. again not what bitcoin actually is like
      problem: they get shocked when the see confirmations needed on actual bitcoin transactions.

b. what they think bitcoin is, is some electrum lite wallet
      problem: they dont learn about blockchains or network security or consensus
      problem: they think their lite wallet altnet experience is the same security as bitcoin because teacher told them its bitcoin

c. whether using titulars linked video or blackhatcoiners link.. both are describing bitcoin.
     problem: yet what titular taught in class as a practical expereince is not bitcoin. its LN.
     problem: titular pre-set up channels to avoid his students even experiencing a blockchain transaction
     problem: kids think the payment for coffee is final and settled without seeing the real settlement process

all in all titular did not teach bitcoin. but an altnet crypto

so yes it was a disservice
your lesson was not preaching the blessings of bitcoin. but was showing the inferior protocols of inferior networks

EG LN has no 'public ledger everyone can see and agree on' for its instant payments.
and the students never got to experience the ledger and protocol stuff of bitcoin

There's always this genius in the class! I, on the other hand, hope he won't end up working on some shitty chain for money. A really unethical attitude prevails nowadays and lots of developers wanna make money dishonestly with the “blockchain technology” as an alibi.

I suspect they'll be forced to get comfortable with it one way or another. The cool part of your lesson was bitcoin. Of that I'm sure they'll never be.

Give that man praise, his lightning faucet hasn't even be used once!  

We all need to make some contribution to our society. As a teacher, you have done your best for your students. The whole class was very instructive and exciting as a math lesson. Such assignments and group work will go a long way in helping children develop the ability to do accounting with joy.

Here @BlackHatCoiner also deserves praise. His "testnet faucet" was used for teaching purposes. I also appreciate his service especially for the Lightning faucet, it is also a very instructive initiative for newbies.

Did you know that being a multitalented teacher is hard to find nowadays, but you became part of the rarity. Especially during the pandemic, everything becomes an obstacle and we see children getting left behind from the technology education. We are currently experiencing an education crisis where until now the pandemic has required children to study from home which most of their parents cannot fully control. For me, children who study at home are not at all optimal. Seeing what you apply, then they can be the forerunner to the start of a more sophisticated technological era.

This class sounds so much fun !
I do think that you are an absolutely amazing teacher, teaching kids the basics of certain things from the books are for sure your duty and are for sure very very important but would they remember it ?

Or would they remember the practical that they did? Which would definately help them out in the future as well, we all know that bitcoins is here to stay thus this makes even more sense that the new kids start learning about this, plus learn how to buy/sell! The kids who made outrageous purchases that's an ouch! For sure but I do hope most of the kids only took the good experience home with them and not a smirk of alleviating of your balance. I do wish my teachers could have taken some time and taught me this, that would have been amazing for sure! Hands down!

I figure if they can get comfortable with this technology now, by the time they are adults they will have no issues using the blockchain for whatever monetary adventure they end up getting themselves into.

If I am to be honest, though, I hope to see one of my students (particularly those who have already taken an interest in bitcoin and love coding) become a blockchain maintainer.

It would be extra special to know one of my students became a bitcoin dev!

A good teacher is he who provides learning that will make an impression and benefit his students in the future. Honestly, I will learn a lot from the method you apply, it could be attached to a Lesson Plan. Successful teaching is a prop, as you prepare it so carefully. I don't care how it turns out, but for now you have started with something innovative learning method and encourage all students to be even more friendly with Blockchain technology.

Nice going, guys! I probably say this too much but you could also spend time selecting short videos from Antonopoulos' vast resource videos on YouTube answering some really common questions people ask. They're surprisingly relevant even today when considering those 3-5 years old.

Should get together and vote about what you'd all like to do together on mainnet to pop your collective cherries

What a pleasure to know that I helped a teacher show this outright innovating and cool technology to their students right before their holiday break. This will definitely be part of their long-term memory now.

Good move, but for the ones who want to dive in, consider suggesting them to watch this one: But how does bitcoin actually work?

Whenever you've run out of tBTC, you know where to get more.

Earlier this December I made this post.

Special Thanks to BlackHatCoiner & LoyceV for providing some amazing resources.

After reading all of the stellar suggestions, this is what my class did on the last day before the holiday break:

Before the lesson could even take place, I needed to get about 10 loaner laptops from the schools library. I had to get these a couple of days beforehand so that could configure electrum on all of the laptops. I had to make made sure that all of the electrum instances were configured to run on the testnet. I then proceeded to add tBTC to all of the wallets configured. This took a lot longer than I anticipated due to me overcompensating how much tBTC I put in each wallet. Afterall, these wallets would need to have 6 lessons worth of tBTC. (Ended up only being 5 lessons because 6th Period wanted to act like apes.)

The morning of the lesson, I loaded all of the testnet wallets and opened channels for each. I had to do this very early in the morning as I wanted to allow enough time for the channels to open. I wanted to use the channels electrum suggested as I was hoping I could get the students to exchange some tBTC toward the end of the lesson. I tried to ensure all channels had a 50/50 capacity but was unable to with a couple for some reason.

When students entered the room 10 laptops were evenly placed across my classroom. As they were walking in, I would assign them a laptop to go to. I average about 26 students per class, so I was able to get 2-3 per laptop.

After watching the "What is Bitcoin?" video from bitcoin dot org as well as a quick tutorial on how to use electrum (dear god), we began the lesson.


The instructions were simple:

1- Visit this website: https://starblocks.acinq.co/

2- Once in the store, go ahead and order you and your partner coffee! Once you have added that to your cart, go and find another group in the classroom and take their order as well!

3- Once you have a complete order. Click checkout!

4- When you get your Lightning Invoice, copy your invoice address and paste it into your electrum wallet. After double-checking you have the right amount, go ahead and send your bitcoin!

5- Now you and your partner are going to do the same thing except this time, you're going to get yourself enough coffee for the week! After successfully purchasing that order, now get yourself enough coffee for an entire MONTH! Make sure you get enough!

6- Once you have completed all of your purchases,  go on the class Microsoft Teams Chat and exchange invoices with any group in the classroom. This is your opportunity to send some bitcoin to any one of your classmates. Make sure you don't send your entire balance! (Plenty of them did.)

7- Once you have finished, add up all of your bitcoin transactions you made this class period to determine the amount of bitcoin you started with.


Prior to the lesson, I was unsure of how much time this would take. I was very concerned that this lesson would only take about 20 minutes to complete. As it turned out, the lesson took the entire class for most classes to complete. Some of my advanced classes were able to complete the lesson rather quickly. Some of my students who had taken an interest in bitcoin well before the lesson had a very easy time with it.

Most importantly, though, the students had a blast. There were a few fires I had to put out late in the day as wallets started to become more and more lopsided balance wise. I had a couple students place some outrageously large orders that drained one of the wallets. I also had a problem with a couple of the channels, but those were quite easy to mitigate.
 
Aside from that, I cant wait to do this lesson again!