Bitcoin Forum

To give a little information without completely doxing myself, I am a 6th-grade middle school mathematics teacher. This is my second year in the classroom, and since my very first day, I have had bitcoin strewn all around my room. Hand-drawn logos, ATH date trackers, common boards with paper bitcoins on them. My students are very aware of my admiration for bitcoin.

On the surface, this seems great but I have ran into an issue.

There are a couple of times per year that we are able to have true free days. On these free days, instead of doing more math, we create our own ERC-20 token as a class. They get to see how the smart contracts are written and how they are deployed on the blockchain. I have 6 classes so we end up with 6 new tokens. The students have an absolute blast with this.

My concern is that I am preaching the blessings of bitcoin, yet I'm showing them the "wonders" of inferior protocols. How can I create a classroom project that interacts with the bitcoin ecosystem? Creating an ERC-20 token is simple enough and it's inclusive because all the students need to do is input their opinions as I create the token on the projector. I attempted doing a Lightning Network project where we would pass around small amounts of sats in the classroom using Wallet of Satoshi. I then ran into the issue of not every student having a phone, so this did not work.

So I beg the question; How can I create a class project centered around bitcoins ecosystem that can be inclusive to all students regardless of the technology they may or may not possess?

Won't creating your own token and then trying to launch it a good project for them? I think that you're not doing your students a disservice, they're lucky you're their teacher because you're introducing them to other things outside the academia, in my opinion make sure that your project would be something related to the math that you're teaching because at the end, you're still a teacher and it's not your obligation to pursue further in the crypto field for their sake.

I think it's great that you're providing an opportunity that most won't ever come across, despite those "inferior protocols" you're mentioning. Despite not all students owning mobile devices, or having technological barriers, you'll be showing them something that the majority of teachers won't, you're thinking out of the box, presenting them with knowledge that's hard to come across.

I take my hat off to you, you're doing great, continue being innovative and supporting of your students.

If you are a teacher, maybe you know how the theory of developmental psychology of early childhood learning? I don't blame your way of teaching and to be honest for that age isn't it too much to introduce abstract stuff? while children aged 2-12 still need learning that is in accordance with the concrete operational level.
I'm not questioning the amazing material you teach, but I still don't understand how you teach things that are not at the appropriate stage for a child's development?

Your level of understanding adults with those who are still early? aren't you talking 6th grade elementary school kids?

The students are in the 10-12 age group. I do not expect these students to completely internalize what I am teaching them. After all, their favorite part is naming the damn thing. In my country, 6th grade is considered middle school.

firstly, I would say you are doing an impressive job introducing your wards to futuristic technology at a very young age, as that would give them a soft landing when they eventually might want to go deeper later in life. However, their interactions should be somewhat limited considering their age and exposure; like not too much about the financial aspect (speculative) or none at all.

About what bitcoin centered project to engagement them in which would be inclusive; I would suggest an artwork that describes what bitcoin means to them. Everyone would be able to participate as there is no technology barrier and it would make them relate to the network a lot more.

I'd say it's great, if you know what's really appropriate and age-appropriate for them. The middle class for that age is not the same as the one I described above.
Would it be better if you include the lesson plans based on the unit curriculum? isn't it good for us to review? Usually formal schools have it to determine a learning material under the guidance of a teacher.

If you meet the requirements, why not continue? I really appreciate what you are trying to implement for your students.

Hello, I have a couple of questions to answer and then I would answer yours.

- First things first. Does the school approve of what you're teaching to your students? Teaching blockchain, smart contracts and Bitcoin are something that even computer science departments in higher education don't do. Curious to kniw the circumstances surrounding your teachings.

- Do your maths students have prior dev experience before going off to learning how to create tokens?

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As for your question, there are plenty of things about Bitcoin (if it's allowed in the school) that doesn't necessarily involve development activities or everyone to have a phone. You can just teach them the theories and concept of bitcoin and open finance. There's more than enough topics to cover.

The school has no issue with me teaching anything blockchain-related. I had already taken that up with my bosses before attempting. Remember this is only for a total of 2-3 days over the entire school year.

My students certainly do not have any dev experience outside of using coding dot com. As far as "just teaching them the theories and concepts of bitcoin", theories and concepts do not make for a very exciting project. Especially the day before Christmas break.

Perhaps they could benefit from some sort of word association game. Maybe a word jumble. Maybe a crossword puzzle. I also found a resource that offered a teaching plan for the 6th grade for Bitcoin.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bitcoin-Lesson-Plan-6th-grade-5222102?st=1edf7d58d6041903033b1dac051641e1

Also a neat little to the moon drawing.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bitcoin-Price-Tracking-Chart-Coloring-page-for-kids-Crypto-DOWNLOADABLE-PDF-6683747?st=1edf7d58d6041903033b1dac051641e1

I hope that helps a bit. I wish you luck!

what about the parents? have they been informed about you teaching the kids about blockchain aside from the subject that you actually teach? I admire that you try and teach and introduce them to blockchain and cryptocurrency but knowing how parents can be sensitive(sometimes too sensitive) to what teachers teach in school, I'd be surprised if all the parents of the kids that you teach are ok with it.

Like email, you can't really use Bitcoin without a device that connects to the internet. Don't you have the same problem with the tokens you created?
Can they use for instance a school computer? I've never tried a LN desktop wallet myself though, and it's going to be more complicated if it isn't custodial.

Even if they don't all have their own wallet, it can still work as a demonstration. You could use another wallet (BlueWallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5168527.0)?) on another device to make it more interesting.

Why else would the school come up with "free days"?
I like the idea: the few classes I've had on a subject the teacher was truely passionate about were amongst the most memorable of my school time.

Depends on what you consider “Bitcoin's ecosystem” and which part of it to teach. Have you considered learning them how it works, technically? The interesting part of Bitcoin lies on these little-details that made the difference and led to a censorship-resistant, free speech promoting innovation.

I don't recommend against on teaching them stuff about block chain, but showing them the steps to create a token isn't really the stuff I'd expect; especially if they have those free days once in a blue moon.

I'd start with:  “What does it really mean to own a bitcoin?” — Short, explanatory and catches the eye.

Its not a Disservice,I would consider this as prepping them for the future as digital currencies are here to stay and its better they know these things while they are young & once these guys grow up they will have no problem familiarising themselves with it. I also see this as an investment idea which their parents would be interested in taking part, maybe invest a $100 for them now and see how it grows in the next few years.

Let's not overthink this. Blockchain is simply a new technology. I understand that some parents may be sensitive to political, philosophical, or religious issues, but why would they oppose teaching their children about new technologies?

I'm not sure teaching them something they can never use in any real world scenario is useful. Token creation is only for fund-raising and not much else.

In any case you don't have to use LN or even mainnet bitcoin that would have some costs, you can use TestNet for free and in there you can teach them how bitcoin smart contracts, aka the only smart contracts that are being used in real world, work.
For example you could propose some problems they could solve using these scripts. One popular case would be a payment scenario with multiple parties at different levels of a company involved. Hint: uses a combination of OP_IF, OP_CHECKSIGVERIFY and OP_CHECKMULTISIG.
Or another popular case for swapping bitcoin with another coin on a different chain. Hint: uses OP_CHECKSIG, OP_SHA256 OP_EQUALVERIFY and OP_IF
Or simple scenarios like inheritance. Hint: uses OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY

You could also dive deeper and play around with SIGHASH types and how they could be used in different scenarios like in a fund-raising or donation scenario! Could be involved in the payment scenario above too.

You could also explore the less used and complicated OP codes like OP_CODESEPARATOR and how that can be used to skip parts of the script when signing and how that could be used in different scenarios.

You could also create complicated scripts that anyone can spend and show them the script and see who can solve it faster and take the coins.

Based on the age bracket that they're at, I would go with a fun game like "SHAmory Bitcoin Card Game (https://shamory.com/product/shamory/) ^{[How To Play SHAmory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXTH50ujYxM)]}".
^{- I'm not sure if you're fine with spending that much for just a couple of days in a year, but you can develop your own game [with a similar style] while focusing on other BTCitcoin related fields.}

• Quote from: https://shamory.com/product/shamory/
  It is the perfect mixture of fun and education for anyone interested in learning about Bitcoin. Learn the basics of how mining works while earning Bitcoin rewards for each block you mine.

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^{Note: I prefer to not vouch for that website [kindly DYOR]!}

Hmmm looks fine to me. Probably try some puzzles maybe or is that too complicated perhaps (I have no prior experience so idrk)? I'd honestly want to go for something more on the theoretical side, the knowledge that they'd pretty much end up using as part of their common sense in the future but considering the age bracket you're teaching, something fun and challenging would probably be a lot better, something that can stimulate their brains to think. I would recommend some mini-quizzes but when I was their age, quizzes were far from what I'd honestly like to do.

there is nothing to lose, as long as you do not take away their rights, to learn what has been determined at school, you only give them a little extra learning, to mentally prepare them to face the digital world, as long as you don't burden them to keep learning bitcoin , and eliminate other subjects..

Firstly, a very thank you sir because you are doing a great thing by encouraging your students to learn more about bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole.
I would have been very luck if I had got a teacher like you. To answer your question, I think there is one way you can do a short project related to the bitcoin ecosystem.
Taking your own idea into consideration lets assume not all the students will have a phone but you don't even need all the students to have a phone.

You just need 2 phones. Setup a lightning channel between the 2 devices and then call 2 students at a time and let them make a transaction from one to another.
Similarly you can call all the students 2 at a time and make do transactions with each other on the same lightning network.
This will save you on the fees and will limit the resources for the project.

This reminds me: OP, have you seen Starblocks (https://starblocks.acinq.co/)? It's a great way to play around with (testnet) LN with zero cost.

And if you don't have tBTC:  [Merit] [Faucet] Hey Bitcoiners! Wanna try out the lightning network? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359454.0).

You must be in a third world country or a very poor area for some students not to have cellphones? Well, a lightning network node does not have to run on a cellphone ..and you surely have some computers or notebooks that you can use to demo these transactions?

In a way, I think you are doing something that might deviate from your love of Bitcoin. The more Alt coins we add to the Crypto currency scene.. the less interest will be in Bitcoin and that is your passion ... right?

It's interesting to hear that the school approves of your extra curriculum subjects. Since your students don't have the basic building block knowledge/foundation for their developer career and then just skipping the ABC to teach them how to make smart contract might be a little too much. This is just my opinion but if it works great and they enjoy it, I'm good.

Couldn't be further from the truth. I live in a considerably powerful country that has one of the highest standards of living around. 10-12 year olds are at that age where some parents want them to have a phone, and others dont.

I do agree with the second part of the statement, I really want to avoid promoting alts as to not distract the students from the true store of value.

Since you're a math teacher: how about an exercise to calculate how much Bitcoin they would have had if they would have invested 25% of their entire allowance since the first time they received it?
That's probably also a good moment to emphasize that exponential growth in value will probably turn into an S-curve at some point.

Very interesting you say that. We are beginning a unit after Christmas centered around % increases/decreases. I am sure I will be able to incorporate this into a highly effective lesson.

That's what I told the OP about the concept of implementing education that is in accordance with the psychological realm of children with a concrete operational stage. which means that game-based learning refers to providing a stimulus to the stimulation of the child's brain. Because if this is passed, then I'm also not sure how the memory of a child who is not given an education that is not optimally developed can be achieved.