BEN Pays Students Bitcoin to Create Blockchain Course

[Posternut]

The Blockchain Education Network (BEN) has had a busy fall semester introducing, educating, and giving away Bitcoin. The initiative believes wholeheartedly that students should understand cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Now the organization is ramping up its efforts to educate the academic masses, offering a bounty to students who help build a syllabus.

https://news.bitcoin.com/ben-blockchain-course-bitcoin/

[Kprawn]

Some of the Bitcoin companies should pick up on this initiative and offer some Bitcoins for a prize to see who can come up with a project

that attracts the most attention {going viral} or something that cause the most adoption. This should be open to everyone, and the

panel should be totally independent. { reputable people in the community } 

[krishna1]

there is really a lot to learn with bitcoin. students can experiment with it and can use things as the like not all the subjects are so intresting nowdays :p but learnig about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencys is really am good decesion

[franky1]

a blockchain course?? lol thats about 10 minutes of explanation. because blockchain is only 10% of the 'features' that make things like bitcoin secure.

here is the low down of explaining "blockchain"

imagine there was a clump of data.. well lets call it a block of data(reason becomes obvious later).. ill use short example of only 3 entries. instead of thousands.

DAVE: 0.2 sends to ADAM: 0.1
FRED: 1.2 sends to ABBEY: 0.2
PETE: 0.6 sends to MARY: 0.1

instead of sending all 3 (thousands) of entries to compare with other people to ensure they have it too. we can send a single bit of data that represents all of the entries.

for simple explanation. lets use MD5.
by hashing the block of data we get the md5 hash:
f48190892e689319fa01fc5378a2815a

this hash would change if any of the data was missing or altered. so by sending that exact hash, if the other person has it, then they both know they both have the same entries. and all the entries are identical..
cool right? able to validate a block of data without having to send the contents

now here is the next fun part.

imagine we have another block of data,

MIKE: 1.8 sends to TIMMY: 1.1
CLIVE: 0.2 sends to CHRIS: 0.1
JIM: 3.6 sends to DANIEL: 3.1

hashes to
c2f4298a37a830cb219d8539f1b10b80

now lets say you want to ask someone else if they have both blocks of data, and check both blocks of data are accurate.
you dont need to send the 2 hashes. instead you can send one hash.
and here is why

you simply add the hash of the previous block into the data of the current block, thus linking them together
eg

MIKE: 1.8 sends to TIMMY: 1.1
CLIVE: 0.2 sends to CHRIS: 0.1
JIM: 3.6 sends to DANIEL: 3.1
f48190892e689319fa01fc5378a2815a

this block of data now has the hash:
b73c1e9409095b30d1e5a4b3c64fe71e

again knowing that changing any of the data of the first blocks changes that hash and if that hash or the entries of the second block changes, the new hash would change.

so just sending b73c1e9409095b30d1e5a4b3c64fe71e to another person and if they too have that same hash then they both have the exact same
data of both blocks.
now imagine you add the hash to another new block. linking all the blocks to each other and only needing to send the latest hash to prove you have accurate data of all blocks.

this linking of block data via adding a hash to each block is called chaining blocks.. or simply blockchain.

now some notes:
using different hashing methods to achieve this, EG SHA1,2,3 or other hashing variants is within the realm of "blockchain"

but things like double securing the hashes EG ProofOfWork, ProofOfStake and other proofs, are optional extras outside the scope of "blockchain",

now imagine what comes next is great for colleges... (a course 'selling point')
but please feel free to sign up to a proper 'course' on POW (technically detailed)
but please feel free to sign up to a 20 minute 'course' on POS (doesnt need to be technical)

you can also learn about securing individual entries of data and proving the writer of the data has ProofOfAuthority
but please feel free to sign up to a proper 'course' on ECDSA keypairs, messages and signatures  (technically detailed)