Welcome


This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

The site uses Google's cookies to provide services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, along with performance and security statistics to ensure service quality, generate usage statistics, detect abuse and take action.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Blockchain Makes Keeping Records Easier

Technology developed alongside the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin may provide colleges and universities with an inexpensive and secure way to handle student records. Blockchain makes it possible to deposit information to a global network that is both publicly available and secure.

“Because of the design of the blockchain-distributed database, it cannot go down and cannot be altered, making the data always available and secure … the blockchain does this free of charge,” Sylvain Kalache, co-founder at Holberton School in San Francisco, said in a report for CNBC. The software engineering institution was established as a project-based alternative to college and plans to share academic certificates on blockchain starting next year.

Universities can use blockchain to provide microcourse and microcredential verification, as well as to track and record student coursework. The technology also makes it possible to easily control who views student transcripts and to securely transmit the data.

“The technology has the potential to realize an entirely new infrastructure for sharing records securely over the network in any number of ways, opening new doors of possibility for academic records and how they are assessed,” Sony Global Education said in a press release last February announcing plans for its own blockchain service.