FRANKLIN, Tenn., Feb. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The Lifelong Learner Project is proud to announce its selection as a recipient of the first phase of the Blockchain Innovation Challenge, a competition funded by the U.S. Department of Education to identify ways in which blockchain technology can provide social mobility and equitable access to economic opportunity. The Lifelong Learner Project is a collaboration of teacher-centered organizations focused on teacher preparation, assessment, licensure and professional learning working alongside technology integration and standards partners.
“The Lifelong Learner Project is the introduction of the next generation of technology into education. For some time, the higher education community has been building momentum to introduce this type of data ownership and agency for students,” said Marty Reed CEO and Futurist at RANDA Solutions and convener of the The Lifelong Learner Project collaboration. “The Lifelong Learner Project introduces this technology at an influential level, the teacher, and that community will drive adoption into our next generation of learners.
The goal of Phase 1 is for The Lifelong Learner Project to deliver a blockchain-based digital wallet solution to educators where they can securely receive, store and publish the verifiable credentials necessary to support teacher licensure applications and evidence of professional learning. Partners in this project include:
RANDA Solutions has spent twenty years building statewide teacher licensure and effectiveness workflow and data management systems.
ETS, a leader in advancing quality and equity through assessment, provides the Praxis® tests for teachers in a multitude of specialty skill areas.
Digital Promise was created with the mission to accelerate innovation in education to improve opportunities to learn.
University Instructors envisions a world in which schools, organizations, and communities effectively partner to provide students with purposeful learning experiences led by inspirational educators.
The Utah State BOE leads by creating equitable conditions for student success: advocating for necessary resources, developing policy, and providing effective oversight and support.
BlockFrame, Inc. Leads with third generation distributed Ledger solutions that support indefate transaction scalability and versatile support for new use case adoption.
IdRamp provides decentralized identity and credential management services for enterprise and public sector ecosystems.
Evernym envisions a world where consumers are in complete control of their digital identity, where privacy is a basic human right, and where consumers and organizations can foster a new relationship rooted in trust.
Fluree offers an open-source semantic graph database that guarantees data integrity, facilitates secure data sharing, and powers connected data insights — all in one pluggable stack.
Crocus (formerly the UPD Tech Group) builds resilient capacity into how organizations use data to manage change. Organizations turn to Crocus to improve their technical conditions for using data to improve equitable outcomes in education.
IMS Global Learning Consortium is the world-leading non-profit collaboration that advances interoperability and innovation in edtech and digital credentials to improve learning impact.
Credential Engine is a non-profit whose mission is to create credential transparency, reveal the credential marketplace, increase credential literacy, and empower everyone to make more informed decisions about credentials and their value.
The Blockchain Innovation Challenge is part of the Education Blockchain Initiative, which launched in 2020 to explore the potential of distributed ledger technology to equitably empower learners to translate their educational outcomes into economic opportunity. ACE is partnering with the Presidents Forum, which managed the application review and selection process, to provide technical assistance to the winners. Independent reviewers and the Education Blockchain Initiative Steering Committee evaluated the proposals using a rigorous, three-round review process that emphasized three main criteria: quality of design, technological approach, and sustainability.
“Now more than ever, our nation must be willing to explore and implement new innovations that help underserved learners more seamlessly transition between education and employment,” said Paul LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire University, chair of the ACE Board of Directors, and member of the President’s Forum. “These projects demonstrate the potential of blockchain as a new and promising tool to do just that: empower learners to share their skills and pursue opportunities for economic mobility, while also forging tighter connections between education providers and the world of work.”
About The Lifelong Learner Project, Powered by Teachers
The Lifelong Learner Project is poised to unlock lifelong learning for educators and every student they impact. A digital identity solution focused on educators and offered through a comprehensive ecosystem including diverse blockchain architecture providers will bring to market a Teacher Wallet that is standards-based, sustainable, interoperable blockchain technology. This ecosystem gives teachers agency and control over their verifiable teaching credentials, certifications, and the learning resources they collect. Control of their own information will allow educators to connect directly with teaching positions in classrooms of virtually. Breaking down the four walls of the school building provides economic mobility for educators by providing expanded opportunities to impact students across schools, districts and states. For more information, please visit http://www.lifelonglearnerproject.org.
ACE is a membership organization that mobilizes the higher education community to shape effective public policy and foster innovative, high-quality practice. As the major coordinating body for the nation’s colleges and universities, our strength lies in our diverse membership of more than 1,700 colleges and universities, related associations, and other organizations in America and abroad. ACE is the only major higher education association to represent all types of U.S. accredited, degree-granting institutions: two-year and four-year, public and private. For more information, please visit http://www.acenet.edu or follow ACE on Twitter @ACEducation.
SOURCE The Lifelong Learner Project