C-LAB & Advance Colorado – Panel Discussion

all right thank you John my name is Hannah Parsons and I'm thrilled to be here this is my third year here at U Denver and I've had the privilege of working with several of my colleagues who are in the room on the Colorado council for the advancement of blockchain which is how we met some of the folks here today so back there so so thank you for having us we are joined today by some great experts and I'll just I'm gonna do a brief introduction of who they are and then let them tell you a little about themselves and why they're here so first of all we are I'm gonna start here with Taylor Kendall who's the chief program office of learning and economy we have dr. Antipa Choni executive director of the colorado department of higher education we have sherry Jones who is a researcher philosophy and game studies instructor and then we have Russell casse De Niro right thank you with the director of digital transformation over Colorado so let's just start here and then we're work out just to a quick introduction about what you do and why this is important enough for you to be here today perfect thank you and the lovely privilege of following Jo Lubin this is uh and the crowd silences that was perfect Taylor Ken life I've worked in education the majority of my life so I really appreciate and understand that context recently started working with the group learning economy that is envisioning sort of a future of learning and work that leverages a lot of emerging technology of which blockchain is certainly a core component so yeah I have sort of navigated a number of the collision points that I think we're seeing him come together over the last couple days the governor's in Vitalik and the children like that to me was this moment this nexus point that I will remember fondly forever because I can some of that lives within me and the way I've sort of navigated my own my own to this point so yeah excited but we'll dig into some of that but that's that's me great thank you and thank you all for being here I spent many hours in this building when it was GART brothers I do have Nia grab remember that but because I was an athlete so I did athletic things I don't do that anymore now in the head of the Department of Higher Education we've got some of my team is here with me so thanks for being here and very excited about the possibilities of using blockchain in terms of being able to make sure that learning is portable and the verification of your learning is portable the kid can ask one quick question how many of you are how many of you are currently enrolled in college anyone Oh couple how many of you forever enrolled in college hey oh great how many of you have ever needed an official transcript yeah so I want to do away with those like completely you should each have your own official transcript that you could access whenever you want perhaps it's linked to LinkedIn and it's all verified and so that's the vision that I really have one of the easy things I think it's low-hanging fruit so I'm excited about innovation in education whether it's k12 all the way up through college and graduate school I've taken a circuitous route to this place and I've had to verify everything along the way it would have been a lot easier if it was all verified and public if you will and portable so that's my vision happy to be here sherry so I'm sharing and I'm I'm here from a faculty perspective and I did research on blotching for five years just because it was fun I really teach game design and philosophy but when I heard about blockchain I wanted to understand its potential Simon's doing his research and in three years ago I did a video series on YouTube talking about how to use blockchain to create games and how to use block chain to secure open educational resources which is something I'm very passionate about and I also believe that blockchain if used correctly can solve somewhat the problem in education so that's why I'm here for that discussion so my name is Russell and the director of digital transformation with the office of information technology llego team I already heard me talking about my Colorado earlier yesterday and the advanced Colorado initiative which I will be talking about here I really loved the idea of of being able to own your own your own transcript and your own credentials I don't I don't necessarily think you should post them on LinkedIn unless they pay you for it though but that's just the way that's the way I look at it but I'm very excited to be the least educated least well-educated person on this panel I'm sure that's not quite true but we'll go with it so I'm gonna start with a question for dr. pitoni so tell us how does I mean when you look around what's happening here they're hackers right they're hacking on projects that we we don't know what what it's going to be yet or how it's fully gonna work so Tommy how does higher education keep up with this kind of rapidly changing technology in both what you teach and how you operate as a state agency thank you for that question so in the department of higher education we actually kind of oversee more than just the public four-year institutions also the two-year Community College's also public private occupational schools and private colleges that give degrees so we have a lot of institutions but we also work hand in the end with some of those folks who are doing the hat that have more agility to do a one-year certificate or a six week course and so we're gonna need more of those and those need to be stackable so when you go and get a certificate maybe in happen in game theory before they get to you for the doctorate but when they are just getting started and we can get some certificates that will build toward an associate's degree or build towards something so we need that kind of agility out in the field that can then transfer and dr. Kim Post who's here with me right now is my chief academic officer at the department and you know working on how do we get these early learning and add to all kinds of courses to transfer to a degree program so the agility really these small and these early programs we don't unfortunately see as much agility in our four-year institutions they would do well to be more agile thank you well in Taylor tell us how you with the learning economy with Sealab how you're working with the department higher education and what that means for the future of education in Colorado yeah it's an exciting time and it's I mean this to me represents this convergence that we've seen sort of throughout a lot of this event which I hope you know people appreciate the fact that this is this is sort of coming to to fruition at least in Colorado but I think beyond so yeah I mean the door was sort of opened as far as tdhe goes to partner up with a pretty innovative crew that really wants to you know change the world in a lot of ways but they understand starting small and like integrating within existing infrastructures is important you can't come in just like come in with a hammer and break the glass house and expect the the world to change so so yeah we've we've built built out a sort of innovation in incubation hub within the state that is sort of an open door for all stakeholders to pilot to pioneer research to you know sort of find ways of of learning about what this emerging tech represents this is such a microcosm right against like certainly when we look at students that are working through sort of a traditional path so offering them opportunities to sort of explore what this technology represents for them so yeah I mean this this laboratory at a state level is is sort of our opportunity to to sort of integrate some of what you know the whether it's credentialing some of the identity work that Russell's doing it's been amazing to have support from both seed ehe oh I T you know state agencies that are willing to like open the door to to creating incubation space at the state so yeah that's exciting sherry you mentioned your faculty and I know you're way more than that gonna all the amazing work you've been doing tell us how how this new emerging technologies like this how does that play out in a practical level with with faculty and tell us a little bit about your work in the open education resource so first of all open educational resources for those who are hearing this term the first time are basically free textbooks free materials a student can access without having to pay you know $100 $200 per textbook right so they are openly posted on the on the web but as a faculty member especially it's a philosophy prof and I also teach English I'm evaluating the material online it's inconsistent in terms of quality right because there's no much stewarding though that some of them are there and then sometimes the site owners are no longer evaluating the material so I thought well how do we actually secure Oh er okay and I bump into this technology blockchain I thought blockchain can actually secure all open educational resources right so they we can trace who created them copyrights okay and if someone wants to remix the material make new material of it we can still recognize the original person who created it and I will not name the company but I have been publishing a lot of stuff open access so I have a lot of textbook for years I were open on the web and I found out at a company took all of my stuff and sold it through their courseware for about 300 bucks so with my material I didn't go after them but that teaches me a lesson which is I want to help students but I also want to be recognized for my work and the way we do that is because of the traceability in the permanence of blockchain that allows the the open educational resources to be valuable but how does a help faculty as well right as students are developing a lifelong and life while earning right documenting their credibility faculty who's developing these materials and who are being used their matter being use can also be recognized and our credibility is also built on that so I think that's very valuable excellent thank you all right Russell can you tell us a little bit more about advanced righto and what's going on here today and how that might be incorporated now you know it's interesting hearing what you just said one question would copyleft have helped you if you had copyleft did your stuff I have creative comments on everything okay no one cared so um no I just I bring that up because in the advanced Colorado track we have a couple of really interesting interesting use cases that we're asking those developers who are working really hard up there to work on and one of them is proof of first use which you could use to prove that your copyright wasn't you know they have a poor man's copyright or a poor man's trademark you could do that sort of thing but but also like Dora thank you Dave submitted one where you can go I'm used the blockchain to independently prove credentials if someone for them you know they issue all the licenses so for professional licensing you could prove that but those are two of the use cases that we've got that that you know directly pertain to the things that you guys have already brought up here today so the the rest of the advanced Colorado is specific specific use cases that are made to be in digestible chunks that you can do in a hackathon and that talented people should be able to do it at that hackathon and that we could use in the number of our different solutions than the number of different government you know lots of different government agencies have need for things like registries right I have things for things need for things like messaging and so we have some from Department of Agriculture or excuse me CDP AG and then on the record what's that on the record careful on the record yeah no I know but we also have my Colorado so the my caller Oh app once again he mentions my Colorado download it get it install it live it love it but um so we have a couple of use cases for those two one is for secure messaging guaranteed message delivery and proof of read as well as as well as what's on our other it's not another use case it is it's actually so we got the registry we got proof abuse what is our other use case wow I get up here and I can't even chill or anything I mean cannabis fits in there no it is so I'm sorry we've got great use cases that are well articulated so you can do a better job than me explaining it after you've read thank you so with that in mind in resources and competitions and all the things dr. Petch Oni it the American Council on Education recently announced a new program about education blockchain initiative can you tell us more about that yes I can it just wasn't asked this past Thursday announced this past Thursday I want to first go back to oer for just a second because director spencer alison series our director of innovation and we have an OE our grant that the state is providing for professors and staff to to really move their coursework from those four hundred dollar textbooks some of them are now four hundred dollars to all online and so a quick story I was at the Andrews Medical Center and the I was talking to a researcher from Argentina she was so excited she had gotten some of the the grant dollars from our Oh a our grant and she had changed her coursework and her colleagues but this year they're using the grant money to create we are four others around the world and so to see that quick replication is phenomenal so someone can go from using it to then creating materials just like that so we are excited and if there's any any faculty or staff out there the grants we have a million dollars to give out in grants this year so come and get your money other and the federal government the US Department of Education has issued a two million dollars to the American Council on Education to explore how can blockchain be utilized in higher education and so there's lots of opportunity for people with great ideas to offer those to the American Council on Education transcripts is just one of them we have been trying to to instruct our presidents of our institutions not just on their use of blockchain that they could do on some back office kinds of things but also how important it is for them to have curriculum for students to learn about blockchain so it's both end and so this grant will allow that to begin to incubate and hopefully we will have lots of great ideas that even come out of this weekend excellent my next question I'm going to open up to anyone who wants to take a swing at it we were talking earlier some of our colleagues here about the Learning Path from small children than what children that were here on stage yesterday with the puffy corn and the governor's all the way to higher education how do you prepare youth to come through and learn about the technologies and and all of the things that need to happen to go into the future whether it's a blockchain or something related so I'll just tee you off there and let whoever wants to take that on I mean I can be quick and say if there's a ton to learn some of its not quite going right I'm I'm very intrigued by the idea of sort of infrastructure inversion this is something Antonopoulos and a bunch of other sort of you know folks in this space have spoken a lot about which is we're in a really weird time I think where we think there's a lot of work to get everybody on board but this is gonna happen regardless and there's a lot of brilliant people building infrastructure I think yes awareness there's a ton of education that needs to take place but if it's a huge hurdle to sort of it should sort of it should sort of lay a new infrastructure underneath both the internet itself under the sort of systems of whether it's education financial systems so not to say education doesn't matter but in some ways I think it's it's sort of happening in tandem and we're at an impasse ort of an infrastructure inversion inflection point and in some ways it's gonna I think be there and and students will sort of and and children will sort of live it and experience it and won't necessarily know that there's been a lot of amazing work that went into getting us to that point which is I mean it's what's happening right here we have a platform from the Department of Higher Education website it's a new platform it's called my Colorado journey so not just my Colorado my Colorado journey and my Colorado journey is it's the whole thing but it's a way for for students and for adults to track their journey and learning so we can start as early as middle school high school and students can track what is coming next and what are the options for them included in that soon will be some of the information from our ROI report our return on investment report it's the first time we've done that for the state and in that ROI report a student could actually see if if they went to one college versus another how much earning potential they would have after one year five years and ten years for the same degree so that kind of interactivity I know it's not blockchain but it certainly is moving on that direction and that's where I'm hoping that we can do have blockchain on my Colorado journey to verify the skills and capabilities that students acquire that they would be validated on my Colorado journey so when those young people or older people when they apply for a job that the my Colorado journey would be a place for people to be able to verify yes they have that skill yes they have that capability so we're looking to integrate that as much as we can go ahead I don't want to jump back in since we're being we're being fair to the family here go ahead well you know I think that with with what like appleís is trying to do with the gig economy and how things are changing we can't really know how different employment is gonna be in the even in the near future 5-10 years so I think that the technologies that are out there are also accessible to people they can you know what motivated me to get into computers was because I wanted to figure out how to make cool you know fire fireworks on my computer and then I wanted to make a game that wasn't lame you know after that and that I got into solve problems for myself we probably more than any other time have information out there that interested kids can go educate themselves my daughter wants to figure something out you go tube or wherever in figures it out and and now she's an expert and then making her own video to tell people how to do it you know so so I think that that all we can really do is try to make sure everything is out there as open as we possibly can show them that when they prove that they they have certain skills that they can prove that they have them in a way that's shareable and and make our technology you know continually interesting and with things like buffa corns and pegye buffa corn stew I wanted to add and basically adding on through what you just said there is that the concept at the US Department of Education summit on educational blockchain which I've been there twice now the the major idea that's promoted there's the life wide learning right so we know lifelong learning which is from you should be learning constantly like I'm constantly teaching myself right but life wide learning is this idea that maybe I want to learn something else side of my discipline and I want to go cross-disciplinary I want to have a wide lens and for example if I learn something on YouTube I should be was a document that right if I learn something on udemy I should be able to document that so it shouldn't be just you know an eccentric institutional level but it could be cross-platform which when we say journey right my learning journey could be that which is this holistic view of someone becoming who they are right and right now it in class include all my master class sessions that I'm doing right now right and real quick I mean this is this is where I get super excited and while I like some of this conversation I think feels disconnected from some of what's getting built but as you start like opening doors forth whether it's things like my Colorado journey my Colorado and some of the identity work like we can actually start to envision a future and I think it's worth envisioning I think we have a long way to like really play it out but you can envision and this is why learning economy means so much to me because I think there is a future where learning itself whether that's acquisition of skills knowledge is is is valued and and like we can actually build economies on top of skills and knowledge that ultimately get generated whether that's coming videos or any other learning experiences leveraging there's no longer a singular track that defines one means of getting educated and we know that this whole this whole developer community knows that right but we're entering interesting times and and the fact that these are sort of some of the early seeds projects like like the ones being pioneered by the state of Colorado represent like early indications of we're willing to start to look towards what that future looks like an economy that's built on skills as assets knowledge as an asset just like fiat currency currently is something that we ultimately use to transmit value I get excited about that I I value knowledge and and skills much more than I value currency currently as our own doctor posts always says all learning counts we want to count all learning so we are introducing a bill this year to see if we can count some of the work based learning that you all might may have done so that how can we translate the skills and the competencies that you have acquired through your work based learning and actually make those count for college credit toward a degree so we are trying to do that right excellent so I have a follow-on question to that one of the things I love about you Denver is the great diversity that we have always at this event it's remarkable what does what do these advances in technology and education do for equity in education so dr.

bajjali I'll start with you and then we'll go from there yes thank you I started out pre-med at Stanford who then I took organic chemistry and that kicked my butt but what else kicked my butt was that the three hundred dollar textbooks and so for some people when you see that career path it becomes cost prohibitive if you have to pay that much money for five different textbooks on every single course and so we don't want anyone to thwart their own potential because of the cost of a textbook or course materials and so when we have something like oh we are that allows it to be open for it for anyone to pursue that courses of study so I think that's one of the ways is that really reduce reduces costs and right now we know that the cost for completing a degree is it's pretty high and so anything that we can do to reduce costs and contain costs is going to be a way to open up access for for more people so that's one of the ways sure I'd like to ask you that same kind of question and maybe what through the lens of learning through gaming so I'll just talk a little bit about my game design students so I do teach game design and at our college we actually ship the students off so some of them apply a Disney PlayStation Bethesda you know major companies but every time when they apply we already warned the students you can have your degree and you have all your ace right but when you get to the work they're going to say what's your portfolio like what is inside your portfolio so one of the things I think about regarding for example documenting certification badges skills which are super important competencies I think that's also very very important to turn student projects whether it's virtual or physical into either NFT tokens or token I so that student can show here is the motto what I've done here's a science project of what I've done right and also in the in corporations right now they are actually using games to assess people's skills so they're no longer doing testing they're going play a game see if you pass if you don't pass we will hire you okay so that's actually one direction that's going but I teach my students actually great games that demonstrate their skill sets and that becomes an artifact that they could put on their digital wallet so I'm thinking bigger than just here's a textbook as a surrogate I'm thinking bigger that's exciting it's like saying so we've heard from a from dr. pitoni and from sherry about some of they're thinking bigger so rest I have a question for you if you had a B hag associated with the digital Colorado what would it be what would be the big thing that you'd like to tackle in this role for the state of Colorado well I think if we can do what we're trying to do with digital identity and bring a real purely digital on-ramp to proving you are who you say you are we could very well change the entire makeup of business and interaction in not just the state of Colorado but all over the United States if you think about all the things that you have to do you have to be their presence with a polycarbonate IDE or a passport or something we talked about these little convenience things we go upstairs you see Oh getting a beer or whatever but you know being able to get a bank account you may not be able to go somebody who doesn't have enough money anyway I'd be able to just to make up the time to go during business hours things like licensure that you have to be there approved taking tests virtually doing you there's everything that we do that you have to be there in person including eventually voting right if you can prove you know with mathematical proof that you are who you say you are suddenly everything opens up and the information superhighway that we have now right which is amazing and it lets people operate at a super fast pace and is responsible for why all of us are here with the careers we have the on-ramp is still electronic you have to sign up with the cable company and show your utility bill or you have to do you know all these crazy things when those things go away and it's all completely digital it will change the world hopefully for the better nice excellent so my next question for each of you with respect to what you're working on with those big goals is what's your biggest challenge to a single biggest challenge that you face Taylor I'll start with you I mean this is the beauty of working in this space is that there's no shortage so picking one is tough but yeah there's I mean it is full of challenges which is also I think it's like the opportunity in some ways the the biggest challenge is I think comes back to just like you know not sounding like you're you're crazy in a lot of ways like getting you know we're in we're in the eye and learning economy and a lot of the partnerships like we're in the business of building bridges and I love Milwaukee this morning was talking about sort of public good infrastructure how can we like not only take into account me but the future me a lot of that resonated with educational work but it's like we're working in the infrastructure business the the building of bridges with a huge array of stakeholders folks that you know not only don't really understand it but don't care to understand it and like shouldn't care like it they don't need to necessarily like I don't think so I think it's the the biggest challenge at least over the last year or so has been like understanding when to really like plant a flag and say you know this is important to really have this conversation and like make sure we have a shared understanding of where where we're going but then also knowing where to step back and say this timing isn't right like let's let's let this play out over the next few months and then maybe re-approach in a different way so I've you know personally I've just appreciated the opportunity this space has afforded me to to evolve in my own means of communicating with different stakeholder groups understanding that it's a it's a wide range of what can and should be ultimately communicated dr. Bert Joni thank you we're we're in a changing world and in the changing world there's a fundamental process called the s-curve of change right and so in that s-curve at the beginning of that change it's really really messy and in fact what is it eighty-five percent of businesses that are in that startup phase fail and so knowing where we are in the s-curve of change is going to be very critical because it's the s-curve used to take a certain period of time and now that time is compressed and so it's it's startup and then it's explodes and then it starts back up and it explodes and knowing where you are in that is gonna be very difficult to navigate this process of change especially with institutions that are not very comfortable with this kind of overhaul of change that's going to be important across the street there's the Arctic Institute remember the Art Institute of Colorado it's it's not there anymore I disclose all of their records are in a cage up in our top of our building we don't want that we don't want those records so somebody has to call us and say can I get my transcript so there are 26 percent of schools or look aren't going to close and so if all those schools are closing or merging what happening with those records so I want to put a challenge out there I think it's low-hanging fruit but I'm not doing the hard work of it so please help us with just this one thing with the transcripts if you can do that that will change a lot of lives so change is hard but we've got to keep moving forward good good will bounty out to be who still needs a project okay sherry biggest challenge I got two challenges but one is I'm a big advocate for for protecting student privacy so all these conversations so far there's little discussion regarding protecting student privacy while promoting their work so I think that is something that I'm trying to work on to develop product cause I'm a designer for most so I'm designing things my only person my only personal agenda is that I teach philosophy too and I don't buy into the conversation that humanities is not important to the development a holistic individual so my thing is I'm developing technology that teaches philosophical thinking art and Technology need to be together they are not separate that lifelong life why thing that's our biggest challenge well I think that you know the interesting solutions that we come up with are defined by the nature of the obstacles that we have and certainly blockchain but even just are where we are in the world we have a lot of big challenges we're trying to do a lot of things it's pretty audacious for me to get up here and say Colorado change the world with digital idea I recognize that but I would be you know naive not to mention we have a governor who came up and said blockchain for the wind damage you know we have like everyone at every level of state government and all the county governs there everyone knows that this is the right thing to do at the right time there are obstacles are probably the bureaucratic constructs that we have as part of running government the way we've had to in the past years and we'll get over those things but I have a hard time finding how to be less excited about where we are today well you know two years ago they never would have thought two governors were up here with with with a buff of corn and vitalik what the hell's gonna happen two more years I'd like to be back here with both with all of you guys and and and really look back and say we really did some things and and hopefully you know we won't have blown the world up or anything but excellent thank you so we've one minute left and I've had the opportunity to hear dr. Patroni speak a few times so with the with the failure rate you just mentioned and knowing that all of these people are working on really great challenges what would you say to encourage all of these people are building projects to solve these big challenges to keep them inspired well Wow so I would say you know they talk about the the sky's the limit and I think the limit is beyond the sky now and so I think it's um it's making a mark that's really hard to erase right and so make your mark on what's happening right now and and we will toot your horn from the Department of I read and we will want we want to use what you're doing here to help inform our students and the faculty and staff and our institutions so that Colorado can be one of the best states and leading the way not just in box chain but in all of the kinds of technological innovations and we even have a director of innovation so let's let's really move this forward fantastic I think with that we are out of time but please find some of our panelists here if you have additional questions and thank you for having us [Applause] [Music] you