Ok, I probably should have led with my question rather than such long introduction/overview! In short, my question is:
Should this be a "Bitcoin only" scholarship or should other cryptocurrencies been included too? Is it worth the effort, or are the risks still too high to support other cryptos?As a non-profit education consortium we need to be as safe and secure as possible, but on the other hand we want to help as many at-need teachers and students as we can. The pros/cons at the moment are:
On the one hand it would make a LOT of sense to make it as easy as possible for anyone with any form of crypto to help this cause, but on the other hand there isn't much in the way of infrastructure to accept Litecoin, DogeCoin, Peercoin, and others. For example, thanks to systems such Coinbase and BitPay, we can easily accept Bitcoin and fully account for all donations (for reporting and tax purposes). And, at least to some extent, these commercial-grade service take away much of the concern over being hacked or otherwise having the donated coins "lost" (corrupted wallet, crashing servers, or for any other reason).Below is my original post, which my question was buried at the end of, so hopefully "leading" with the question would help this time around? Your collective advice would be greatly appreciated!
With thanks for you thoughts,
Barbara
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Hello everyone. I am new here, and wanted to introduce myself and also ask for your advice on an upcoming Bitcoin scholarship that the Immersive Education Initiative (
http://ImmersiveEducation.org) is announcing next week.
My name is Barbara Mikolajczak. I'm a faculty member at Boston College, where I teach using immersive technologies and work with the Immersive Education Initiative (a non-profit education consortium). I teach my BC college classes using virtual worlds and simulators, and I also teach elementary school students in Boston with these and other immersive education technologies (I started the Immersive Education's K-12 "Scratch" programming and "Creative Computing" clubs in Boston).
A major part of my work with the Initiative is to work with other non-profit and philanthropic organizations to give teachers and students (primarily public school K-12 teachers & students, where budgets are practically *ZERO* for this type of work) a chance to attend educational conferences, receive training and certification on immersive technologies for education, and enroll in camps, clubs and classes that they could not afford otherwise. In the past three years we have donated over $100,000 towards this effort, and next week the Initiative is announcing a Bitcoin scholarship to reach many more in-need teachers and students.
The very first objective of the Initiative's Bitcoin scholarship is to raise funds for teachers and students (and some budding but financially challenged young entrepreneurs) to attend the entire IMMERSION 2014 conference that is in Los Angeles next month.
If you visit
http://summit.ImmersiveEducation.org you can see the conference program (I'm presenting during the Education module, actually). Over the past two months I have been working with five different non-profit and education organizations to identify teachers and students who want to attend (and would benefit from being there) but cannot afford the registration fee. The organizations I have been working with are the California Community Foundation, Catholic Education Foundation, Philanthropy Roundtable, United Teachers of Los Angeles, and the LA Fund.
With their help we have set aside 100 "All Access" teacher and student tickets to IMMERSION 2014, the total cost of which comes to $30,000 (the cost per ticket is $300 at the normal registration rate).
Next week the Bitcoin scholarship will be announced, enabling anyone with the ability to contribute any amount of BTC to help offset the cost to support these teachers and students.
I am writing to let you know about this in advance, but also to ask for your advice. The big question that the Initiative has been wrestling with is if this should this be a "Bitcoin only" scholarship or should other cryptocurrencies been included too?
On the one hand it would make a LOT of sense to make it as easy as possible for anyone with any form of crypto to help this cause, but on the other hand there isn't much in the way of infrastructure to accept Litecoin, DogeCoin, Peercoin, and others. For example, thanks to systems such Coinbase and BitPay, we can easily accept Bitcoin and fully account for all donations (for reporting and tax purposes). And, at least to some extent, these commercial-grade service take away much of the concern over being hacked or otherwise having the donated coins "lost" (corrupted wallet, crashing servers, or for any other reason).
I wonder if you could let me know what your feelings are about establishing an educational scholarship using cryptos other than Bitcoin? Is it worth the effort, or are the risks still too high to support other cryptos?
As a non-profit education consortium we need to be as safe and secure as possible, but on the other hand we want to help as many at-need teachers and students as we can.
With thanks for your thoughts and help (and with apologies for such a long first post!),
Barbara
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Barbara J. Mikolajczak
Boston College, Woods College of Advancing Studies
Immersive Education Initiative
http://ImmersiveEducation.org
