Skoowls: usecase on the Cardano blockchain. Looking for partners!

[JW1003]

Hi folks!

Let me shortly introduce myself: my name is Jan Willem Pennekamp, 32 yrs old and born & raised in The Netherlands. I’m currently living happily with my small family (wife and son). I still got a fulltime job, but since early 2017 more and more interested in the crypto- & blockchain space! I see so many great possibilities, especially since my wife is from Venezuela and i really face the worldwide problems every now and then.
This had me thinking and brought me to writing a businessplan named Skoowls. I already had it checked by Zach Soileau, the product marketing manager at Emurgo. They were satisfied and see opportunities, but since i’m still on my own with this and i’m in the early stages of development, they paused further continuation on my plan. Emurgo now primarily concentrates on big enterprises joining the Cardano blockchain and after Shelley goes live, they are going to focus on start-ups and businessplans like mines.

Down below i put the intro of my businessplan to get you warmed up. If you are really interested in joining me and developing this idea onto the real world, then ofcourse i can sent you the businessplan. I would love to see your reactions and discuss things further.
Thanks for your time!

With kind regards,
Jan Willem Pennekamp

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In the past decade, the global amount of student debts rose significantly. Coming to a point now, asking for solutions. Also, less and less teachers are available, which causes cancelled lessons at the regular schools and universities.
Skoowls thinks it can provide a platform and a solution for this worldwide problem.

The idea Skoowls has, is to create a decentralized platform, where people meet from all over the world, 24/7 the whole year long. The platform holds interaction between the educators (professors, teachers, trainers) and participants (students as well other people in general who are interested for more education).

Skoowls provides cross border knowledge and education, based on the blockchaintechnology so there won’t be interference by any third entity (censorship resistant). Working with blockchaintechnology also means, that all the data and information will be securely stored. This, ofcourse, is something very usefull and convenient for especially educators and the participants.

At third, making use of blockchain, also means people from all over the world can pay each other fast and easily with, for example, ADA.

Skoowls will deliver on demand education, (private) courses and training. Skoowls will be like the Uber and AirBNB in the education and learning space. When ever, where ever, personal delivering without the need of middlemen.

Skoowls willl provide lots of opportunities for both professors, teachers and trainers(educators) as for companies, staff and students(participants) across the globe.

Anyone can participate, whether you are from Ethiopia, Malaysia, Japan, The Netherlands, Venezuela or the United States.

This gives big chances for jobless and non-educated people in emerging markets. In addition, people who just have big problems with connecting to the job markets can learn quick and efficiently on our platform.

In the (near) future, Skoowls aims for strategic partnerships with schools and universities around the globe, so people can eventually get an official and valid degree or certificate, after they followed education at Skoowls.

*The name ‘Skoowls’ stands for a combination of the words ‘skool’ (cooler word for the formal school) and ‘owls’. The owl being symbol for wisdom adds nicely up to what Skoowls stands for; worldwide knowlegde and education, for everyone. *

Slightly different, yet clearly, skoowls should be pronounced as the formal word ‘schools’.

With Skoowls comes the slogan "Education at every doorstep”.

[phil.lewis]

Hey @JW1003

Glad to see people like yourself looking for new ways to increase the use of Cardano as a platform.

Do you have any thoughts about how your system would be different to existing services like Udemy or edX? Would it just be a case of providing payment options using Ada, or will Skoowls differentiate itself some other way?

[JW1003]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your reply!
What Skoowls is willing to offer, is a borderless and censorship resistant infrastructure. With the help of blockchaintechnology, customers are getting:
-direct (and free) access to content
-secure and trusted decentralized storage of content & rewards (money/tokens, certificaten etc)
-direct payments receiving/sending
-besides the strategic partnerships with real schools, universities and training programs all around the world, we will also explore partnerships with ‘flex offices spaces’. Say people meet on our platform, but really want/need to see each other on the short term, we offer direct flex office spaces in the areas near those spaces. Ofcourse people need to pay for this.
-people will be incentivized to activily participate on the platform, as they can reward each other, not only the educators.
-At last, but not least, Skoowls focusses also on the interaction side between people. We strive for a school-a-like, yet warm feeling when joining the platform.

It is a true 24/7 platform, like on-demand education. Worldwide.

Greetings,
Jan

[HarryJacques]

Hey Jan Willem, nice to see there are more dutchies here! compliments for your ideas! wish you good luck with the plans! Greeting from Zwolle

[Eystein_Hansen]

Good idea. Focus on how to get content provider is key as there is clearly a market for this (edx et al) but you must make it worthwhile for the university staff. So automation of diplomas and fees to university staff and shouldering video storage costs for example distributed video provider (ledger youtube paying pools for hosting and providing content)

[JW1003]

Thanks for your time and advice!

I made an earningsmodel in my businessplan. Basically, the platform has 2 layers; a consumer and business layer. It goes from low to high profile content.

[JW1003]

Hi Bas, that’s definitely great to see!
And i see we live near each other…i live in Kampen

[Sinisterwolf89]

I love the idea here and have had similar thoughts about putting education on the blockchain. However I think the biggest hurdle to this would be ensuring that the educators are accredited and have legitimate credentials for instructing students. Then past that the concerns are getting other organizations or institutions to recognize education taken via this method. For example in the current system universities have to be accredited and are often audited by accrediting bodies. Those universities are responsible for ensuring any instructors they hire meet all the criteria for the accrediting agency.

In this kind of model I would suspect that individual instructors would need to develop a course work that meets these standards, submit it for approval to an accrediting body, then they can offer it as a free-lance college course. Once complete the course completion certification can be appended to the digital identity of the person who completed the course.

So this model will also need to rely on some kind of KYC digital identity to ensure that those who complete certified courses are indeed the person doing the work and not just having a friend do it, but that assumes the existance of such an identity system.

Also, the need for certifying bodies means it is not 100% censorship resistant. For example I can’t go do all the courses needed for a Bachelors this way and then have employers or peers accept that as true if I have no proof (hard to get when classes are scattered and not certified) and also, who will recognize the training. As the university system works now, I complete studies, put that info on my resume or CV, and that is able to be verified via a phone call or information request. As long as the university is accredited those credentials are accepted. How can this be achieved with your system here? Unless those hurdles can be overcome this is no different than learning via google or Udemy or skill share websites that exist now.

The best bet would be to get a semi working dApp running with a frame work that allows courses to be uploaded and start it off as a skillshare type of site. Move into getting official organizations to sign up. For example, the IOHK team will have classes that teach all about Cardano. As an organization if they hosted classes on your platform and issued certificates of completion to digital identities at completion, that would be a start.

I do not believe these hurdles can not be overcome I just believe that the current system allows some powerful people to get rich and creating a decentralized education system that would be recognized and have 3rd party auditors to certify and accredit the instructors will be an uphill battle. Hence why I can’t get a bachelors from skillshare.

[whitevo]

I agree with @Sinisterwolf89. You will not be able to give credible certificates so easily.
I think this platform requires its own decentralized way of ranking educators.
The more likes course gets, content checking by some selected figures, content category, etc.

After educators and/or courses are proven to be useful, it will be easier for the student to select courses.
All your platform could do is give out some certificates, like Udacity does “nano decrees”
Now you would need to market your learning platform for other business owners to even consider your made up decrees.

So basically I think this entire system should be build from the business side.
Businesses who are looking for some specific talents.
Then find selected educators who could gather material and teach students to fill that need.

This way the student has the potential to get a job offers after courses.

[JW1003]

I thank you both for replying and thinking ahead here. In my businessplan i already wrote about credentials and voting/ranking.
I really like the Idea about the business side of things!!

[XZact]

The success or failure of any education system will be through it’s teachers/professors and academic content, and how the courses are structured. Cardano is a great technology platform for this to work on, but focus on the educational content more then the technology. Also if you haven’t already, have a look at https://www.bitdegree.org/

Many “Businesses” have tried and failed to offer educational services, and they usually fail because they think of it as a business, and business objectives (profit) are usually counter productive to quality education.

[whitevo]

Perhaps Business Objective should be directly linked to open revenue?
The whole new set of KPI’s should be looked at.
Courses should be linked with projects where somebody wants/wanted something to be manufactured, programmed, etc

For example:
I like creating game function using Lua language and Excel macros with VBS, but I am also interested in smart contracts.

If I would find a project, I am interested in:

1. There is meta info about the required courses next to it, which teaches you the basics and languages on how to develop that project.
2. project value.
3. Course statistics
4. list of tasks in the project

The Course materials should be checked by registered teachers.
You get your decree by creating a Course on the same subject by your own words which includes step by step guide and thought process. Once again registered teachers should approve your work or system selected If human check then their opinion would be nice and maybe they want to improve original material.

From the company perspective, this is just like investing a small amount of money to get what they want from the open source community.
From my perspective, it’s learning a subject to the point where I could create a portfolio and earn money.

If I take courses on subjects I am good at, then I create material for other people and bring value to the client.
If I take courses I want to learn, then I train on materials which brought/bringing value to open source community.

[kobov]

Did you consider translation of the whole Cardano papers and content ? I mean we need Cardano translated in every language in order to get more people on board, if you make that paid translation then you get students to translate and learn about Cardano. Then you get those people certified to check the translation. Can this be made to draw from the Cardano budget for development ?

[MiamiFred]

I like it Jan Willem. There are numerous use cases as you know from democratizing quality education to credential stacking, lifelong learning among others. Just leaving aside the valid points about how to measure quality and achievement, as mentioned by others I believe your idea is a logical and evolutionary step. For example what is the function of an university if not an organizing unit to connect learner with teachers? We have already ‘freed’ the vast majority of information with the internet. So to me, it is inevitable that a nexus of blockchain, Ai and other technologies will enable a future of on demand learning. Universities in this model become the place where all types of learning is aggregated, validated and synthesized regardless of the source of this learning. A blockchain based global educational marketplace is inevitable in my estimation and this is exciting!

[JW1003]

Thanks, really appreciated! I think we are on the same page, thinking in possibilities, rather than what isn’t possible.
If one thing COVID has learned us, is that many infrastructures & distribution system are outdated.

Decentralization is key.

You all can find my businessplan on Ideascale as well (Fund 1 & 2). It presents more details as where do universities and educational plataforms should go…Skoowls

[JW1003]

Thanks for your time and feedback.

Regarding it, i think you should contact Emurgo/CF when it comes to translating Cardano content.
This is not intended with the Skoowls usecase.

[JW1003]

Great valid points. Ill take notice of it, thanks!

[MiamiFred]

I will definitely check it out. This touches upon some projects and discussions I am having with higher education thought leaders ( both academic and tech). I’ll search for the info on the site you mentioned. I’m an ‘OG’ Dutchie here who was dissatisfied with Dutch weather and living in Miami now. Bedankt!

[JW1003]

Hallo Fred!

Nice to hear you found your home in Miami now☀️

Here is the link to the Skoowls project on Ideascale;

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Project-Skoowls/327489-48088

[urban_freshco]

Flex offices spaces is a wise idea when it comes to education. I am talking different web dev. classes online and it would be help to meet in-person to explain why its not the best to use certain syntax. I like the idea of this dapp on the network.