The Bootstrapping Checklist is a Student Social-Entrepreneurship Learning Network & Teacher Resource Grades 6-12
“At Reimagine Education, we’re keen to reward pedagogical initiatives that are equipping students with the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st-century economy, valuing as we do the positive formative effects that education should have on employability. In ensuring that students learn – from a young age, and in an engaging, carefully-conceived way – the modes of thinking and hard skills necessary to foster entrepreneurial success, The Bootstrapping Checklist deserves this global recognition. In particular, our Judging Panel commend it for its integration with GitHub, which is a shining example of the project’s efforts to integrate classroom learning with contemporary innovation tools; and its focus on learning as a social, collaborative experience.” Reimagine Steering Committee, 2020
TBC 2.0 is proof of concept. It is located on GitHub and is meant to scale for students, by students – they write the code and administer the site with my mentoring and the mentoring of other caring adults. In the 2020-21 school year, online student participants received digital badges from HighTechU and mentoring from the African Coding Network. The collaboration within our virtual classroom mirrors at the micro-level the way the African Coding Network collaborates at the macro-level (using Github, Google Suite, Discord, and storytelling), thus the techniques, technology and competencies are globally scalable and increasingly accessible.
The key to active student participation is attribution, and attribution is ensured and incentivized in our online learningverse using the concepts of blockchain – in GitHub, student participants’ work is forever attributed to those who do the work, and this increases their reputation and thus learning.
Physical borders have been transcended. Bricks-and-mortar schools might still need to exist, but they are now parts of emerging local and global learning ecosystems. Online peer-to-peer learning communities are where participants are able to develop their reputations, their skill sets and their competencies, receive actionable feedback for continuous improvement, which inevitably will lead to employability and a global culture of information abundance which will rival and hopefully compliment our aging global capitalist economies.
What TBC 2.0 demonstrates is the power of decentralized learning spaces, governed by blockchain assured attribution of participants’ work. The next phase of the program – our learningverse – will be determined by the students who reside here – they will determine how the space will be used for peer- to- peer learning. Thus, TBC 2.0 will continually evolve as student participants see fit, giving the power to the students, their families and their mentors.
The disruption toward decentralized peer-to-peer online learning networks where attribution of student work will be ensured by blockchain, thus compelling competent participation of community members thereby attracting mentoring, investment, HigherEd and employers, in order to address present local/global systemic inequities and propel a global information [r]evolution, has already begun. TBC 2.0 is a step toward this [r]evolution as it puts the power to the students in a decentralized global learning network, unified by a five step workflow.
Best,
Rich Baxter, BFA, LLM, BEd
Founder and Principal
Rich Baxter is founder, educator and advocate for social innovation, the arts, and entrepreneurial education. The Bootstrapping Checklist was Shortlisted in the Teaching Delivery Category and Showcased in December 2016 and again Shortlisted in the K12 in December 2020 at the Reimagine Education Awards. We won Bronze for the 2021 USA & Canada Regional Awards.
Special thanks to Seyon S. for building the new website, to Ellen Z., and Allen H. for the artwork, and to the Bootstrapping Club and the students of Grade 7 Virtual School – you are inspirational!
We would also like to thank Kristan Uccello, Dr. Paul Kim CTO of GSE at Stanford, CTO at TDSB Peter Singh, Salar Chagpar at Prepr, Marc Lijour, Tam Le, Serena Ricci and Jack Moran at Reimagine Education, Robyn D Shulman, the OISE Alumni Association, Warwick Vlantis at the African Coding Network, and Andrew MacLean at HighTechU.
…and a special thank you to all my #bootstrappers – you know who you are!
A very special thank you to my wife, my family and friends, and to the kids at Robert Service PS class 2016 in Toronto – #urock #neverstopinnovating #neverquit #2legit
#OpenSource #OpenInnovation #BootstrappingChecklist #bootstrappers #ReimagineHEdu #SocialInnovation #entrepreneur #SocialEntrepreneurship #SocEnt #NeverStopInnovating
*This work is shared on a Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Related Media:
http://www.ednewsdaily.com/21st-century-project-learning-the-bootstrapping-checklist/
Innovation in Education 