How Blockchain works in education
By Juan Gabriel Gomila Salas, visiting professor at the MUII and CEO of frogames.es.
Without a doubt, in recent years there are two words that we have introduced into our slang and with which we feel very familiar: procrastinate and blockchain. Although we have associated the first with the large number of hours we waste on social networks, boring tasks or waiting for a message to be answered to be able to proceed with a task (something that before COVID was fixed by having a quick coffee), the Second, we have associated it with money, the economy and investment. However, nothing is further from reality.
a chain of blocks or blockchain It is a technology that was born in the 90s as a result of some emails sent between several people where a methodology was proposed to store information in blocks. Each of them would carry a unique electronic signature generated from that content (commonly known as a hash) that would be quick and easy to generate from the content, but impossible to forge or modify by making a small change. This is known as the avalanche effect, where when generating with an algorithm such as SHA 256 the signature of a block from the text it contains, a string of 64 unique hexadecimal characters is obtained, and in such a way that a simple change in a blank space, an accent or a point additional trailing causes the hash to change drastically.
The word string in the expression blockchain It would arise precisely because each new block would have to add the hash of the immediately previous block, thus generating a kind of chain of blocks. Here the concept of security would appear: if each block has to contain the hash of the previous block, the link between the blocks is so strong that it is impossible to falsify the content of any of the blocks in the chain, thus becoming an immutable ledger by double reason: on the one hand, because a change in the content would change the hash of the block, but also because every hash is incorporated into the next block, forcing an additional validation to guarantee that one block follows another.
If all this already seems safe enough, to guarantee that the system does not run on a single machine giving control to a single user or company (as is often the case with the titans of the current era such as Google, Facebook or Amazon, that they are lords and masters of all the records they own), that complete copy of the chain of blocks is stored in a distributed way, in a P2P network where each machine has a complete copy of the chain and each new insertion in the chain of blocks it must be validated by the rest of the nodes in the network, of which at least 50% must agree to the new validation, so that we cannot simply hack one of the machines, since the rest of them would deny adding the new node to the network.
The technology has been associated with money and the economy because, on the one hand, the information that goes into each block is usually an economic transaction in cryptocurrencies, and also because each time one of these nodes is mined, the miner (computer of the P2P network mentioned above) receives an economic benefit in the form of cryptocurrency. However, this is a very specific concept and it leaves behind the real reason for the technology behind it: any type of information can go in a block.
¿Quit is a Certification Blockchain?
If the information that we kept within the block were subjects passed, grades, credits obtained, papers presented... we would have a blockchain whose function would be to validate and certify academic objectives.
By way of example, students who enroll in courses offered by Frogames Formación (https://cursos.frogamesformacion.com) and complete a course, a theme, a level or a route, they will have their additional reward not in PDF format (and therefore falsifiable) but in the form of a certification blockchain (with the drawing of a badge that reflects the difficulty and theme with a system of colors and little frogs drawn inside). In this way, through a digital certification validated by Blockchain, students will be able to ensure the veracity of the evaluations and titles they have obtained, being able to add value to their curriculum by adding this badge to their Linkedin profile.
This Certification Blockchain It is therefore a validation agreed by the nodes that guarantees that the information provided will be protected in its immutability and its integrity thanks to the decentralized system through which the data navigates. Thus, this entry certifies that a certain work with a certain content has been made on a specific date, verifying its authorship in case of dispute.
Those who seek training in video game programming, artificial intelligence, machine learning, application and web development, trading algorithmic and data science, among other topics, can do it in Frogames Training, a training platform online that offers different levels of learning through courses and thematic itineraries or by level.
With more than 500.000 students around the world and certifications blockchain endorsed by the certifying company Accredible, this firm not only guarantees the quality of its contents, but also the possibility of accessing Certificates Blockchain education for those who have successfully completed a course.
Carrying out training through this platform is an ideal alternative to increase the possibilities of accessing the labor market, since recruiters they will be able to access the certificates and validate the issuer, the receiver and their newly learned skills thanks to the use of technology blockchain.
