SUCCESS! The First Grade School Bitcoin Project!

[Tuxavant]

So after tipping my kid's teachers with Bitcoin during Teacher Appreciation Week, I have been invited to come to school this Friday and indoctrinate the little skulls full of mush to the wonders of Bitcoin.

Here is the flier I'm handing out during the class.

https://i.imgur.com/3jlX0.png

Prior to the class, I'll be writing in some Coin4.me short URLs to some instawallets with a few bitcents for the kids to play with.

During the class, I'll give them the general idea of Bitcoin, show them how to move bitcoins around from wallet to wallet, and invite them to trade them for crafts (or whatever they can think of) and then I'll give the teacher some ideas for some kind of report in a week or two to discuss what they learned and how they used it.

[Garr255]

This is great!

Getting schools involved would be a giant leap for Bitcoin. I'm going to send my school administrators an email today. I could be paying for lunch in Bitcoins in a few days

[RodeoX]

You go bro! I feel like I have learned a lot about money via bitcoin. In school I don't remember being told anything about money. 

[Tittiez]

Bravo! This is great news. I'm sure these kids will spread information of bitcoins like wildfire!

[Tuxavant]

My kid told me today that the whole class was abuzz of getting "free money" lol... They are very excited.

[FreeMoney]

Lucky generation! They just might get their free money.

[CIYAM]

Well done!

Flyer looks good too - although I think the stuff about one sending millionth of a bitcoin might be stretching it just a tad (when the standard client will ask you to pay a 0.0005 fee).

[the joint]

...How old are these kids?

[Tuxavant]

4th grade. Depending on how I develop this "intro", I suspect that this particular school will be encouraging me to to this for other higher grades. It is like a charter technology/science themed school and are hungry to be "on the cutting edge". They are asking me to help out with their lego mindstorms club, and get them going with stuff like Scratch from MIT, etc.

[Tuxavant]

Given that this is a 4th grade class...

What questions do you think I should suggest to the teacher for an extra credit report after the demo? I'm thinking like a week later so they have some time to play with it and barter with their classmates for crafts and such...

Here's what I got so far:

Do you have more or less Bitcoins now after bartering with your friends, family, and classmates?

What goods or services did you produce to get more Bitcoins?

What goods or services did you buy with your Bitcoins?

Did you barter with anyone who wasn't your classmate? Who?

How do you think Bitcoin can make the world a better place?

What is the most interesting thing you learned about Bitcoin?

What is "the BlockChain" and why is it important to Bitcoin?

[realnowhereman]

It might be a bit too much for 4th graders, but I would love it if you were able to add up all the bitcoins in the closed group and (and this is the important bit) the value of all the goods and services that group bought.

We will fully expect that at the start of the week there will be just your seed money (let's say 10 BTC), and at the end there will be the seed money (in different hands) plus all the services the children purchased from each other. "You see kids, we have ended up with more than we started with".

e.g. Billy Smith drew a picture for Betty Jones and was paid 0.01 BTC.  She still has the picture worth 0.01 BTC and Billy still has the 0.01 BTC.  Total: 0.02 BTC.  Magic.

I wish someone had explained that fundamental magic of free trade to me when I was young.  For far too long I thought economies were zero-sum.

[minimalB]

This is brilliant! Do you have a tip jar for this? I'd like to give few BTCs to kids.

[Tuxavant]

Nothing specific for this, but if it's successful in the classroom and I do more, I'll set something else up.

If you want to contribute to my "general fund", there's links in my sig. I do lots of donation worth causes like TOR exit operations, and giveaways through BitcoinWeekly.info and Coin4.me.

Anything would be appreciated.

[RodeoX]

There is so much you could do with this. The kids could even start a business. Remember when Naferio used BTC with his students in China?

[Tuxavant]

Totally... I'm probably going to have to save that for the high school edition though

I hope this is inspiring others here to do this with their kids/school.

Network Effect, Gentlemen! 

[the joint]

..."so nobody can spent it without your permission."

^^ Just something I caught that you might want to fix.
"
My honest critique:  I think this flyer would be suitable for middle-school level, but it's going to be a lot for 4th graders.  Skimming through this, these are some words for which I think a nice explanation (perhaps using easy examples?) would be helpful for the kids:

1)  "pre-defined" mathematical rules (possible examples of a mathematical rule might be lining up from tallest to shortest)
2)  "'open source software"  (example:  you share your work in front of the class so you can get feedback on it)
3)  "true global democratic majority"  (Example:  voting in class for an activity by raising their hand)
4)  "encrypt"  (Example:  secret codes...maybe pig latin vs. English)
5)  "client"  (something or someone that works for someone else...the Bitcoin program works for them)

[Tuxavant]

Thank you! I'll make the corrections and suggestions. I threw this flier together very quickly for the teacher when she stated she needed to get parent attendance permission before Friday. I will call upon the Bitcoin hive mind when we do this again for the next class.

Oh, and the only reason I'm doing this for 4th graders is because my kid "gets it" and prefers them over fiat for their allowance. I totally expect this to go over much better with higher grades.

[minimalB]

If you want to contribute to my "general fund", there's links in my sig.

2.5BTC sent.

Cheers.

[Garr255]

Bitcoins for allowance = awesome parenting!

[Tuxavant]

Bitcoins for allowance = awesome parenting!

I merely suggested it, but I think I have created a monster.. you should hear them complain when they have to spend them low and receive them high. Often I (jokingly) threaten to take their Bitcoins away if they don't get As and Bs or something and they start screaming NOOOOoooo lol

Good stuff!