My First Bitcoin Promotes Two Rising Stars
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, September 16 — My First Bitcoin recently celebrated its third birthday, and the movement continues to mature. It is now old enough to start to see…
Independent educators are changing the world. They unite once a month in a General Assembly of the Node Network, an initiative from My First Bitcoin, to create a thriving ecosystem of educators around the banner of “independent, impartial, bitcoin-only and community-led bitcoin education”. The GA from June 27 was attended by 24 individuals!
Welcome to this third write-up of all progress that has been made in the past month. Welcome to the stories from 12 countries!
Firstly, it’s important to note that the Node Network is working towards becoming a decentralized collective. Mi Primer Bitcoin is not the centralizing force behind this educational movement. We’re doing this together, as a collaboration among all of us, and we’re empowering each other!
“We’re more than the sum of our parts.”
~ John Dennehy
Starting with an update from El Salvador: the Bitcoin Introductory Course. The Salvador team is working on a set of slides that can be used to orangepill someone in 60 minutes, with both theoretical and practical elements.
In the Education Department, there are ongoing classes in Ataco, Atiquizaya, Usulután, and San Salvador, and the second phase of the Teacher Training has started too. The collaboration with the Ministry of Education of El Salvador is continuing with support for the 129 public school teachers that have been trained earlier this year. Our own MPB Teachers are visiting 43 schools to help them and the students to download wallets, and start sending and receiving sats.
MPB El Salvador is also working on the development of the youth curriculum with the Little Hodler team, and the first draft of this project will be presented to the team involved at the Ministry of Education in El Salvador next month.
The team also created a video to show the easiest way to translate the Lesson Plan Guide file into other languages using Canva.
Regarding the Bitcoin for Business program, the team completed the First Module. It will be submitted to MPB leadership for review before sending it to the designer. In the meantime, MPB El Salvador continues to work on a Teacher Certification Program and a Learning Management System (LMS).
Huxley from the United Kingdom has put a lot of proof-of-work in the month of June. And he will start a new project on schools called “Tribute to Turing”, with which 150 students will learn about (the history of) cryptography.
Additionally, Bitcoin Policy U.K (BPUK) is working together with the Turing Trust on a project with e-waste and unused computers, that potentially can be used by future teachers and students as bitcoin nodes.
BPUK starts a new Teacher Training as well in August, which will create a stronger foundation with bitcoin educators in the U.K. Besides that, a collaboration with Base58 (about coding) is researched, as an additional educational resource for alumni from this Node.
Furthermore, PBUK is featured in the podcast from fellow node Bitcoin School Argentina – featuring several bitcoin educational projects from all over the world.
The focus of this project is on military veterans and active duty service members, and they received three S19 mining rigs from a generous donor. These ASIC’s will be used during the trainings with students.
“The hands-on experiences are very impactful for our people.”
Gabe Lord
A group of Bitcoin Veterans connected Operation Bitcoin with the Tennessee Valley Authority. A partnership is currently being researched to train veterans and create employment opportunities in the neighboring state of Georgia, where Operation Bitcoin is active
All efforts in Canada went to graduating the fourth cohort of Bitcoin Students. Jaime shared how he’s already getting a lot of interest for a fifth cohort
“They have the eureka moment!’
Besides that, the Canadian Bitcoin Education Network will attend the education-focused Learning Bitcoin-conference in September and run workshops. Finally, the Bitcoin Diploma Workbooks are sold during the Canada Weekend at the Bitcoin Rodeo event in Calgary, which will also attract more interest in MPB’s Open Source Bitcoin Educational Resources.
The Core celebrated the graduation of the 3rd cohort with students from all over the world. A total of 46 students received their certificates, coming from 12 different countries, amongst which Kenya, Tanzania, Haiti, Malawi, Philippines, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
The new intakes for the fourth cohort just got started, so invite all your friends and family that you want to bring into the orange rabbit hole!
The Core is not leaving the alumni behind, as it highlights the success stories from graduates that are finding their way into the bitcoin space in a thread called BitcoinPathfinders.
“They all create their own mission in the bitcoin space. Some of them wanted to make money when they joined, but now they see what they can do after going through the Diploma.“
The final update coming from Kenya is a well-deserved announcement about the funding that The Core received from Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Congrats, Felix & Team!
Slulami from Bitcoin Ekasi explains in the General Assembly what’s going on in their township:
“We’re still offering Bitcoin Classes five days a week, with an average of 14 students per class. We remain committed to building upon this foundation by handing out flyers at stores and shops. Our center is open to everyone who needs information.”
The team has been using the Lesson Plan Guide that is available Open Source on GitHub for everyone that is teaching the Bitcoin Diploma:
“I have started using it as a guide in my lessons and I believe it will indeed help us.”
The Bitcoin Meetups in Livingstone are growing, this time with 48 attendees! The project has ordered some Point of Sales terminals, with the goal to boost the adoption of bitcoin payments in the area.
After a week without classes, the team had a representation in a community event. Teacher Humphrey met up with graduates from the previous cohort and worked on growing the project. Fun fact: one of the alumni will start Bitwheels, a taxi service that accepts bitcoin. Is this the Zambian equivalent of the Salvadorean Bitdriver?
Bitcoin Victoria Falls also received a substantial donation from the Milwaukee Bitcoin Meetup! Congratulations, guys! Good to see that transparency with their bitcoin-only accounting spreadsheet is appreciated, and that this will be further shared amongst the network participants.
In the meantime, the second cohort with 20 students is continuing with classes about Chapter 3.
This node from the Caribbean has launched their first Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of a chatbot that is trained with the open source Bitcoin Diploma 2024.
“If people need immediate information about bitcoin, they can use this. It speaks many languages, as we focus on digital (educational) assets now. We’re also onboarding a lot of businesses, and are participating with the circular economy in the Dominican Republic.”
It’s exciting to see how AI and Bitcoin Education can be implemented in new solutions. “It’s not to replace education and humans, but it’s great if people need quick responses or a virtual assistance”, according to Pedro.
The Bismarck Bitcoin Meetup is located in the Midwest; a new project that’s putting a lot of efforts in their first important steps as a Light Nnode, like creating its logo, printing the Bitcoin Diploma workbooks for students, and scheduling classes for this month of July.
“The last meetup was really cool; we went through the materials with a student that has family in the Honduras region. I checked the Node Network, and I saw another My First Bitcoin Node down there, so I shared that information with him. It’s so cool to see that he has family that possibly can attend those classes in Honduras.”
Bart started a Bitcoin Research Club prior to this Bismarck Meetup, and this club will start using the My First Bitcoin materials as well now for improvinng financial literacy in the area!
The very talented Milfort “Papouche” Estève Mikerlange is stepping up as a local leader in Haiti. After graduating from the 3rd cohort from The Core, he’s going to duplicate the educational efforts in his local community.
“We want to start a course in Saint Michel de L’attalaye, Artibonite Department. We received interest from notable business owners in our city, and are making progress with the translation of the Bitcoin Diploma book into French.”
He adds:
”With this knowledge from finishing with the Bitcoin Diploma, I can contribute more deeply to the promotion of bitcoin in Haiti.”
Glenn has been co-hosting classes with The Core from Kenya, so he also celebrated the graduation of the same 46 students – intakes for the fourth cohort is on the way!
“Every cohort is getting better, and I’m excited to announce that I’ll start my own cohort here locally with Bitcoin Loxion, we will present this remotely. People here are still learning about how to use a smartphone, so we will do hands-on demonstrations of downloading wallets, with screensharing via Android Studio.”
Bitcoin Ubuntu will start a study group, go through all the open source materials, together with co-hosts from the other nodes. It’s great to see the synergy between all projects happening! The cohort will run concurrently with the new cohort at The Core.
Besides that, all alumni from previous cohorts are invited to a mini workshop with Ybitcoin about merchant onboarding, and installing their first wallets. Education now leads to Adoption!
Latest updates from South America involve first successful funding for Bitcoin School Argentina, besides the work with the online class at Siglo 21 University and classes about digital signatures.
An interesting use case of the funding that they received, will be to offer discount for attendees of the meetup that pay with bitcoin, as a way to practically encourage the use of bitcoin as a payment method.
“The only way we can promote it, is just to use it and see it as a tool that can be used on a daily basis.”
It’s been referenced in this Beyond Borders before: the first three Bitcoin School Argentina Podcast are out, with unique insights into the world of several bitcoin educators!
There are more episodes to come, with Huxley, Glenn and Gabe – all fellow nodes in the network! This is bullish!
If you are a community leader and bitcoin educator and want to be part of the Node Network, check out our GitHub page.
If you want to use our open source Bitcoin Diploma workbook, you can! It’s available on GitHub as well.
For any questions about the Node Network or any other international collaboration, feel free to reach out to Arnold Hubach (arnold@miprimerbitcoin.io).
