| Notes |
As it turned out, MIT’s experimentation with blockchain technology was already well underway. In 2015, Philipp Schmidt, the director of learning innovation at the MIT Media Lab, had begun issuing internal, non-academic digital certificates to his team. Schmidt had realized that, despite the rise of decentralized, informal online learning opportunities, there was no digital way to track and manage these accomplishments. He says he became interested in finding a “more modular credentialing environment, where you would get some kind of recognition for lots of things you did throughout your life.”
Soon, Learning Machine and Schmidt’s team at the Media Lab discovered they had a mutual interest in developing secure official records and began to collaborate. Throughout 2016, using Schmidt’s team’s prototypes, they developed an open-source toolkit called Blockcerts, which any developer or school can use to issue and verify blockchain-based educational credentials.
When Callahan and Jagers connected last fall, it became clear that a partnership on a small pilot would be an ideal way to put Blockcerts to the test. “Mary was very up-to-date and had been introduced to concepts of cryptography, so she and her office were really excited to try out this technology,” says Jagers. |