Tomorrow is my first day of class for my summer Blockchain course. This is the first time I’m teaching it in a six week format and I have no idea how I’m gonna get through it all.
I created this class a couple years ago, knowing that my entrepreneurship students needed to learn about Blockchain and all the opportunity that it presents. But it is like teaching nothing else. Each semester, there’s always things that are now out of date, or have been supplanted by something more pressing.
I usually would teach this class twice a week, Monday and Wednesday, and by the time I went from Wednesday to the following Monday, there would be at least 16 new things that have happened that I need to start with. When you teach math, you don’t suddenly come in to the next class and let everybody know that now two and two equals 14. But that’s exactly what happens to me almost every week.
This space moves incredibly fast. My job in teaching this is to introduce the basics and the resources so that they can learn more when the course is done. I can only introduced them to the tip of the iceberg. It would be impossible to teach everything there is to know about Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the other existing Blockchains, defi, NFTs, DAOs, all the regulatory and legal aspects, as well as how this all applies to the entrepreneurial space, and the disruption of business. So for the next six weeks, I will attempt to introduce all of these topics, and hopefully give a little direction and guidance on how they can learn more about each.
One of the best byproducts of this course is that each student leaves with a wallet and how to use it. That’s a big win in and of itself. The bigger win, when it does happen, are the students who continue to learn and grow in the space. They will have an opportunity that others won’t by being exposed to the technology early and all that goes with that.
There is no textbook for this course, because none exists. And it would be outdated anyway before it could be printed. But there’s always recommended follow up reading and listening. I think I assign more podcasts than I do books.
The challenges of teaching this course are also the joys of teaching this course. I never get bored. Ironically. And I bet you it’s one of the few courses at a university in the whole world where students get a POAP for attendance.
Which reminds me, I better go work on that POAP for this week.
So if you were teaching a course on Blockchain basics, what podcast or book or blog or other resource would be on your list?
