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 August 29 was attended by a record of 30 individuals, excluding some special guests!
Welcome to this fifth write-up of all progress that has been made in the past month. Welcome to the stories from 12 countries!
Felix from The Core starts his update with an explanation of how he has been using the Learning Management System (LMS), software that has been created by Mi Primer Bitcoin for all the nodes.
“It’s a perfect tool. After being the first node to use the Google Classroom, I am now using the LMS for communication. It makes everything much easier. We don’t have to do things manual. We do five quizzes after each session, the LMS has templates, and we can put timers in it.“
“We also do the assignments in the LMS. Additionally, we can embed the videos for our students, for example one episode of the Saylor Series after every class. It’s amazing, we can do everything with one tool!”
Additionally, The Core has open sources everything! By doing this, Felix enables every node to take the resources that he has used in his classes for their own classes. Think bout mockups for “bitcoin accepted here” and .pdf’s for quizzes.
Huxley takes the mic as a second speaker:
“We finally received feedback on our application to the UK Charities Commission. I have spent the past week doing hours of paperwork on policy including safeguarding, code-of-conduct, disciplinary, complaints and whistleblowing. I will make these available on GitHub.”
Besides education, PBUK as an organization also helps with legal frameworks for countries. Some of the nodes have already taken the opportunity to learn from the expertise and the work in the United Kingdom, so it can be replicated it in their own country.
Besides that, Huxley has been giving several Teach the Teacher sessions, to both nodes in the network but also Britain bitcoiners.
Gabe from Operation Bitcoin started conversations to launch bitcoin introductory courses on a military installation. Before, the team only focused on veterans, but now Operation Bitcoin starts to penetrate in the active duty service members on a military installation,
Primarily, Gabe only targeted veterans and people who already transitioned out of the army. Now it’s providing education to people that are still serving.
Additionally, talks with a major university with 1,000 of veterans in their system are ongoing.
“There is an option for us to build a program for their students.”
In the meantime, the classes with Veterans Education Career Transition (VECTR) are ongoing, with new classes planned in September and November. The Trojan horse approach is working off!
The My First Bitcoin team in El Salvador continued to build as well.
The development of the Bitcoin for Business course is going well, just like the Teacher onboarding and training on the LMS.
“We started a new cohort of the Bitcoin Diploma with a group of 30 people in Costa Rica. Beside that, MPB teachers will follow-up with visits to public schools, now the classes for the 200 individual teachers are finished.”
“We provide intro classes two days a week for three weeks to local Salvadorans in collaboration with Fulano’s coffee shop, and also finished the Bitcoin Diploma at two schools this month. 87 more students graduated from public schools, and additionally 19 employees from 2M Group, a Salvadoran company, graduated as well”.
Besides the teaching efforts, the team also works on the newest version of the Bitcoin Diploma that will be launched in 2025.
There is a new Bitcoin Educators Unconference organized for November 14 in El Salvador, and ticket sale has started. On the 13th, there will be a graduation with 150 students that you can visit as a verifier.
Bitcoin Victoria Falls was in between its second and third cohort, so that’s why Humphrey organized a big and successful meetup with Student of Bitcoin.
The new and third cohort started September 6th, with a total of 22 registrants!
Another recommendation from Adam is to take a look at the updated version of the accounting spreadsheet, as shown in the pinned tweet.
South Africa celebrated the second graduation of five students during the 3rd year anniversary of the project. Congratulations, everyone!
Bitcoin Ekasi is approaching ten schools to ask for permission to give bitcoin classes in the highest grades of the school.
The San Antonio Bitcoin Club is one of the node that joined the network last month. Welcome, Will and Gabe!
“We’re preparing our first class, starting at the end of September or Oktober, and we’re also in the process of registering as a non-profit.”
Finally, the SABC will present their work at Pleb Lab’s Start Up Day in Mexico City.
Papouche shares the great news that YesBitcoin Haiti received a generous grant from Bitcoin Beach.
“We were able to purchase materials for a solar panel and have already installed them at the school. Together with a Starlink for a better internet connection for students, we are ready to start classes.”
Additionally, Milfort was invited to help Destiny with his classes for Bitcoin Africa Story.
The Haitian team is working on translating the Bitcoin Diploma into Creole, as they also try to fundraise money to purchase the books. With also chair and tables secured, the next stop on the wait to the first cohort for YesBitcoin, is the Teacher Training class from fellow node Huxley.
Cuba Bitcoin has completed their fourth cohort, this time in an online class. Out of over 76 people that applied, 30 students have joined the classes. And 19 of them hit benchmarks and received their (online) certificates during a graduation!
This most recent cohort wass attended by students from Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the USA, besides Cuba itself.
The team did the entire Diploma in five sessions, of each two chapters from the free and open source Bitcoin Diploma, followed by open workshops about hardware wallets and about nostr.
Together with the student in Venezuela and Nicaragua, involved parties explore how bitcoin education can be given in countries that are under dictatorships. Teaching bitcoin in these countries is hard, as penalties and measures are not avoided. Sharing best practices with bitcoiners from similar regimes helps a lot. Forte ends his update with the following:
“Thanks everyone in the network for the important work. It’s very important to free the people on our planet.”
Hearing these words coming from Cuba hit different…
After a trip to the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Bart from Bismarck Bitcoin shifted focus to a first class in August.
“We got multiple people showing up, are working on transparent finances, and are working on scheduling, promoting the classes with flyers in the local community. We have a College Bitcoin Club that started a year ago and will do the screening of STRANDED, after we watched this as a Node Network together recently.”
Another new node in the network is Bitcoin Reach. Alexandria explains:
“I’m excited to be part of this network. We’re preparing our first class starting at the end of September, and have ten people interested so far. We also want to host two meetups, in two different countries: Botswana and Zimbabwe.”
As this project is just getting started, it’s great to hear that Bitcoin Reach aims to onboard 50 applicants to its first cohort. Great thing are about to happen in Zimbabwe!
Bitcoin Sranan built a dedicated Bitcoin Education Center so they can start their first cohort soon. They already onboarded 25 new merchants to accept bitcoin! The goal is to reach 100 merchants by the end of September.
In the meantime, Sranan completed the first Trezor Academy beginner’s course, and they plan to start Mi Primer Bitcoin course in a few weeks. With a bitcoin meet-up every 21st of the month, things are accelerating in Suriname!
From the 7th to the 9th of November, Bitcoin Sranan is organizing Suriname Decentralized, an unconference about bitcoin and nostr.
The last update comes from Goa, a project where the 2nd cohorts of students graduated from the Bitcoin Diploma in August. A total of 15 laser-eyes students received their certificate, bringing the total to 25 students since the project started four months ago! The goal is to increase this to 100 before the end of the year.
Plebs Together Strong is also exploring a partnership with Bitshala Bitspace (in Bangalore) and plans to meet a new meetup in a new city.
For those that are interested in Game Theory, Aaron shared an interesting tool to use in your classroom, so check that out.
Nodes Together Strong!
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).
