Cardano Over Coffee ☕

The Future of Education: Learner-Centric Approaches with Self Driven.io

August 16, 2023 Brian, Epoch, Jenny, Lido, Block Jock, Noodz

Join us on a  journey with our guest, Mark from Self Driven.io, a revolutionary Cardano-based platform aiming to decentralize learning. With his vast knowledge in IT, Mark unveils his transition from Bitcoin and Ethereum to aligning himself with Cardano, largely due to its technological purity and commitment to decentralization.

We take a deep dive into Self Driven's mission to reshape education, moving away from traditional structures towards a more learner-centric, project-based approach that ensures fairness and relevance. We probe the critical role of trust in the digital era, especially within the realm of AI, and how it is key in promoting human connection and freedom. Amid discussions on how education can empower the younger generation to lead ethical lives, we also touch upon the negative impact of industrialization on our education system. With exciting updates on Self Drivenio's progress in developing an engaging, collective learning experience, we call on you, our listeners, to be part of this transformational journey and support this ground-breaking project.

Website - https://slfdrvn.io/

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Cardano Over Coffee. Please remember to join us live on Xpaces Monday through Friday at 1.30 pm UTC, 9 30 am Eastern Standard Time. Sharing some coffee today, as Mark from self drivenio, they're trying to build an education platform on Cardano, powering decentralized learning and communities and onboarding young people to Cardano. Listen in to learn all about it. We want to thank our monthly podcast supporters the wizard Tim, discover Cardano book dot IO project camo linda from steak bowl ticker ma lu twisted gears, me hon a nigma. Steak pole ticker one monster steak pole ticker. Mn STR, epoch sec psychos. The Cardano card game. We appreciate all your support. Grab your coffee and let's jump into it. My jacket is here. We can tell how we do it today mr oh, madam, driven octo.

Speaker 2:

I'm good Thanks. Oh well, it's back here Self driven.

Speaker 3:

We cannot hear you. Okay, you've been abducted, are you doing? Oh?

Speaker 2:

come on yeah okay.

Speaker 4:

Yep, yep got him.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'll do the journey.

Speaker 2:

I'm down in Australia, all the way down in Australia, all the way.

Speaker 3:

What is? What is your neighborhood in Australia?

Speaker 2:

Sydney, just north of Sydney, led dope just in the bush. Oh cool, is it? I mean, I'm don't know, go on. Now. Just I'm in Thursday, I've moved on to Thursday. Yeah, it's Thursday morning. I they're in the future, like in the future I am. So if I sound a little bit slow, it's that 12, 30 in the morning.

Speaker 3:

You kind of freak me out for a minute, because I came up and you said that it was Thursday and I was like oh no, it's Thursday, I gotta finish my catalyst up.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Yeah, no, it's all good. It's that, thanks to heaven, me absolutely.

Speaker 4:

Are you a caffeine person? Sorry, you were caffeine.

Speaker 2:

Degen. Oh yeah, well, I'm just actually on the on the long black at the moment. I'm just sitting. I've had to get off the milk for a while. I've worked out it wasn't wasn't doing me any good. Say, I'm on long blacks, which is something new for me, so just been yes, it on. This has got my own express oh machine on them out way too many on. That's good, it's a good one. Yeah, super cool. Going in for Holding up the self given octo flag here.

Speaker 1:

This is about well, let's get a little bit about you or the team you know behind this Effort, the project.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, who are you folks? What did you guys do? How did you get into Kodana? What's the short?

Speaker 2:

version. Okay, yeah, I'm Mark and one of the co-founders, so self-driven has actually been around for about five years as a project Working it up. It's about eight of us on the team now, little different types of backgrounds, from education to marketing, to anthropologists and all sorts of stuff that all commonly driven by the value of education in terms of creating what we call least harmful societies. But personally, I've been involved in. I'm old, I've been involved in IT since the 80s, so since I was like 12. So I've been through computers being introduced to society and then the internet, and then all With this passion for how I can help our society. And then obviously got involved.

Speaker 2:

When Bitcoin came along, I did there usual story, I should have bought more, but all that sort of stuff but and then got involved in Ethereum for a little while. But when Kodana came along, it just it just ticked a lot of boxes and I just I just love technology, the purity of the technology, the whole decentralization, but, more importantly, the community that surrounds it. I just love everyone's involved in in the whole community. And you know how. It's all about humanity first. But yeah, that's my background of actually an engineer by trade but started a cloud services business back in 2000 in Australia and actually run some of the sort of core trust networks in Australia, holds a lot of information which is that into your OS platform that actually powers a little bit of this application or talk a bit about In combination with Kodana. So, yeah, that's a short background. Yeah, fantastic team as well.

Speaker 5:

Super cool.

Speaker 4:

No, I'm actually very intrigued by what you're doing here, especially in your website. You expressed there's a couple things you've got links to with identity, trust, governance, energy, things like that. The word trust sticks out to me because it's not a commonly used word in crypto and, in some cases, is looked at as something that you should not be doing a lot of. I'm curious as to, with identity, trust, governance, energy, what are you guys all about? What are you trying to as far as your narrative, what are you trying to push forward here?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So essentially we are helping traditional education's basis become more decentralized, and what we mean by that is actually become more learner focused. A lot of education like schools etc are quite centralized in terms of what they teach, etc. Comes from this very controlled curriculum and comes from the state, and then, ironically out of that, the learner can sometimes actually get left out of that equation. So this is all about allowing a learner self-driven focus, learning around project-based learning and then actually helping capture the growth of their learning and what's going on there and then allowing that to be captured in a way that other organizations can then trust that those achievements and stuff like that. So it's this allowing, through trust and having well-established trust and trust networks, that then people can actually have the freedom to do and follow the things that they want to do. Okay, so we're about creating the frameworks, the languages that go with that, and then the apps and then the immutable storage of those achievements using self-suffer and identity and stuff like that.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, it's establishing trust in a trustless way, if that makes sense, but fundamentally what it looks like in the real world is we're working with students to basically give them the tools to build and run their own learning within a learning community.

Speaker 2:

So all the pilots we've been doing over the last year have been working with them and understanding.

Speaker 2:

So we're talking mainly around in Australia what's called high school but could be middle school, but basically from 12-year-olds to 18-year-olds, and then setting up project templates that then they can clone and then run the project themselves, and then their learning partners, so their teachers, et cetera, sort of flips, and the learning partner becomes firstly the supporter of their learning, but much more hands-off way that allows them to be more efficient in the way that they work with a student.

Speaker 2:

The learner can then self-grade themselves as to how well they're thinking, they're going, and we've created this whole universal skill set with different levels, from being aware of a skill to capable, to knowledgeable and natural, and they can self-grade themselves and at the end of the process, the learning partner, the trusted learning partner, the teacher, verifies what they have observed, which creates then the trust in those achievements. So I'm at university and I want to accept that student into my to, say, an engineering course. Then I can look back through their achievements and see that they did a lot of projects that related to engineering and that it was verified by this set of teachers that were in Australia say were registered to the Department of Education that I trust, and then I trust their verification. And that's essentially what we mean by that sort of trust.

Speaker 4:

And so I would ask a question then, because it's your background what qualifies you as somebody that can actually put forth this particular project and coordinated in a way that it'll be successful moving on into the future.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so my background is in essentially that the engineering of the frameworks that allow that to occur. So I'm not a domain expert in education. We have other people within the team that are domain experts in education, but, more importantly, we're actually working with the domain experts out there in the field that the teachers, et cetera. And just I just came off the call from a group in the US that are looking to pilot it. So my why succeed is actually that previous history of you know for 23 years been delivering cloud infrastructure that runs sort of key trust networks around agriculture and financial services and things like that in Australia. So we basically create the framework and then the people inside the actual traditional learning environments are the ones that drive it forward. Is that answering your question or not?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, no, absolutely Just looking for a little bit of background and what makes you capable of being able to do that. And then, well, as far as roadmap goes, you guys got a very long. I'm looking at the website and it just I can keep scrolling forever and it's not super concise. So, as far as your roadmap goes, there was a lot of words in there but it didn't really show up like the graph. We're gonna do this in Q1, q2, q3, q4. What are your goals here, say, for the next six months to two year?

Speaker 2:

Right, so there's. If you go to selfdrivenio slash roadmap, there's a little bit more concise roadmap there. But just generally, on that comment, we're building up two websites now that are much more concise, one for the Qadana community, one for the education community. So in terms of that.

Speaker 2:

But our next six months goals line up actually with our five proposals.

Speaker 2:

If you like, we have any catalysts, but it is the tech is built. So we're in the phase now of continued piloting. So, second and third stage piloting with high schools here we're actually live with learners and learning partners that are using the actual apps to run projects within their school and getting the feedback around. That, which then includes currently we issue our tokens in terms of Qadana, using our own metadata this is, our DIDS, ddox, verifiable Potentials, et cetera within our own policies and our own tokens, and we are currently so two things we're doing the pilots for the current apps, which is more the traditional web two apps, and then, in terms of web three and Qadana, we're working just to align our tokens with SSI standards so they become, yeah, true DIDS and DDoX and Verifiable Potentials. So, basically, for 2020, leading up to 2024, we're in a position where, essentially, all the tech is there and it's in general availability and it can start to be used, yeah, within the communities we're working with and other ones that can take it and drive it from there.

Speaker 4:

Okay, and I got a couple of the co-hosts here and I'm sure they have a few questions here, and then we have relocated Qualas having their hand up, which is probably Galavest. I'm imagining what's up man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's get to the hands what's up?

Speaker 5:

Yeah, what's up. Good morning Blockchalk, good to see you.

Speaker 4:

What's up, man? You too, man good to hear your voice.

Speaker 5:

I think it's a very interesting conversation and I truly believe and we truly believe at the studio that when we talk about education, when we talk about trust, when we talk about.

Speaker 4:

Can you hear me? Uh-oh, sorry, hey, galavest, drop down and we'll bring you back up, and then we'll reintroduce your question because you can't hear you.

Speaker 3:

He can't hear you.

Speaker 2:

He must, baby, get the singer.

Speaker 3:

Hi singer.

Speaker 4:

So wine's coming back up here.

Speaker 1:

Is this thing like? You said it's been out for five years.

Speaker 2:

People can go do this thing and go yeah well, we're working with Closed Groups, closed Groups so how do people? Get in. What's the protocol? They come to us and ask I'd like to get involved. They can go to our collaboration page and we'll connect page and so mainly working with traditional education spaces, traditional educational spaces. I was also from an education space, schools and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, rather than because you know, it's essentially a bridge from that world into the decentralized world, so we had to build the infrastructure that they can use within their Schools, are regulated and got child protection and all sorts of things we need to do in terms of the data that they're entering and all that type of things.

Speaker 2:

So we need to have something that they can actually use, because there's a second transformation going on here, which is that you know them transforming from content-driven learning to project-based learning and self-driven, learner-focused things. So we're offering a number of things simultaneously, which is why our website gets a bit long, but essentially, the idea to them is that and a lot of this is also the Generative AI is now having an impact on this as well. So, as education spaces are globally looking at why they exist and what their value will be into the future, we have that conversation as well around moving towards this more project-based, authentic, because these projects can be anything. They don't have to be the additional curriculum. They can be the fact that they want to go and help at their local sports club or they want to build something somewhere else. It's just gathering all the learning that occurs in a young person's life and then using the trust that is in their schools to help verify what's going on there, so it can then be used out in the decentralized world. But the coilovers back.

Speaker 3:

Can you see? If Cool, can you try?

Speaker 5:

again See if the guys can hear you. All right, let's try again. Can you hear me now?

Speaker 2:

I can beautiful.

Speaker 5:

All right, perfect. So I truly believe that, when we're talking about education, when we're talking about AI, when we're talking about trust, like the biggest case that we have is our provenance. You know, because, as AI keeps advancing and moving rapidly forward, like our provenance, our digital identity, it's what's going to keep us like real, it's what's going to keep us, you know, like transparent. It's what's going to keep us, you know, like alive. Because AI is being used already to you know it's being weaponized. People are scared of it. So, by educating people that the most important thing to have in this new digital era that are coming in is our digital provenance, I believe that's the easiest way to onboard people. So I think that's a fact that's been missed a lot of times, like educating people how important it is to have our digital identities in the blockchain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100% agree. Yeah, it's exciting. Exactly, and it's not just the technical skills, it's the human skills to show who you are as a human, as opposed to potentially AI generated.

Speaker 3:

What drives you into this? I hear, like this, all this trust talk, and I personally like it because I feel like everybody takes the whole done, trusting to a level that is not precisely where I should be taken right, because as humans, we haven't made it to where we are today If our ancestors didn't trust each other. Those who didn't trust each other were like, died and didn't evolve right. So it's an essential part of creating relationships and moving forward, and we should be using this technology to be able to trust each other, like to be able to place our trust in a Jenny, it's, we have become.

Speaker 3:

Can I finish my thought?

Speaker 5:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

Okay, thanks. So you know, we, as humans, we seek for where we can trust. We want things to be real, we want to feel like things are authentic, that they make sense, and also the empathetic side of things, right, Like, yeah, do you care? And so, with all that being said, I see that you have a lot of those different things thrown around your project, like what you're doing. So I'm just curious to see where that came from.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 2:

It's that, I guess it's.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just through my I'm lucky to have had a lot of different experiences in my life, from my engineering and all sorts of different worlds and working inside schools as a volunteer and stuff like that, and then I ran some ethics classes here in Australia and stuff like that and it's, it's, and the way my mind works a bit, but just deluding all those experiences down to that human connection and the fact that, in terms of creating a least harmful society, it is about that sense of curiosity and caring.

Speaker 2:

And if you have those two sort of core filters within your social contracts, then you can build anything on top of that that will create a least harmful society, because this is relating to basic human needs and all the bits that go with that to do it. But for freedom to be yourself, then there's this paradox irony that you sort of need these trust networks, which is sort of what you're saying there. So there's yeah, I'm not very embarrassed to think here because it's such a good question, because you're making me Like it's that question that you've got to really what drives you, but I guess it's just from my and, yeah, my brain. I probably have you know, under.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the ethics thing too, I guess.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and when my brain is one of those brains, I probably I'm back from the 80s, where we didn't have ADHD diagnosis and stuff like that. So my brain is one of those ones that has to be constantly trying to work out how the world works to be able to fit into it. So then, when you spend a lot of time doing that, you look at it and go, ok, this is where it fits. And fundamentally, yeah, this is just one representation from my point of view, but yeah, it's just that it can be really simple.

Speaker 3:

So just to bring it back and really back to what Blackjack was asking you earlier, when he's asking about qualifications, I will say you should put that there, you should put that at the forefront, because that's what qualifies you. It's actually a skill, it's something that's in you that drives you into taking this to where you want to take it. There's something instilling you that qualifies you to take this forward. You know, just wanted to put that out there. It's not just what's in your resume, you know.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no, it's what drives the whole team. Sorry, I jumped over you. You find that same quality in all the team. It's just that one fundamental what it takes to be human and how we can just create these, yeah, what we keep calling at least harmful society.

Speaker 3:

Sweet, yeah, go for it. Relocate. Yeah, sorry about that.

Speaker 5:

I get passionate with these conversations, but to your point, you know, it's sad that we as a civilization, as a species, we have lost so much trust on each other that we have decided to create a complex set of math and algorithms to enforce ethics back into humanity. And that's what we're all here for is because we want to enforce ethics and transparency back into humanity, because we have lost it within ourselves, can't?

Speaker 3:

be evil.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly Right. Yeah, the other one, yeah, but fundamentally we, when we go back to the schools and ask them why do you exist? And the value, the other part of this is the value of education to our society. So basically, yeah, to do that, either use control, like military control, or you use education. And generally, as a society, we progressed to the point where we thought educating young people about how to live their lives is a good thing.

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, in the 50s they got industrialized, so essentially, our education systems got corrupted. You know, to work within the industrial world, and a lot of them still work like that, as they're getting everybody set to work in a factory, whether it be a blue color factory or white color factory, and essentially a lot of this. And then that created the artificial aggregation of power. So a lot of this is about actually stripping back to why an education facility or environment exists, which was not to do that is, to create these centers of ethics and thinking and get people thinking about how they live their lives. And then, so that's what we're about and that's where, obviously, not only are we working towards project-based learning in schools, then we have this ability, through this framework, to bring Cardano into the equation and Cardano as a primitive, to then creating these structures. That then allows them to understand the value of decentralized communities, because they can do that within their own school, but then they take that out into the wider world and we start creating decentralized societies and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 4:

So anyway, so I did scroll down a little bit further and I did find the roadmap and it looks like you've been through.

Speaker 4:

you're almost through a couple quarters here, or a couple years actually, and you've got Q3 where, so have you achieved any part of Q3 having to do with the release of the core app, the state pool project or the OctoDAL and what have you? And also, the second part of that question would be if you don't get funded in any of the cat props, are you still going to be building it? It seems to me like you are, but I just wanted to ask that question as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so yes, we have achieved what's in the roadmap. So the apps all exist and are being used. We have, so I'm going to put the roadmap myself, so I'm actually going to answer that. So the core app is released and it's controlled use now. And I don't know about the MAG 100 project on Cardano out of Washington state.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely love them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I just came off a call with them and we've just set up them to start using the app today. So that's sort of level of use where they're starting to test it and see how it can work within their environment. And then we've got the pilot of the other apps the reduced apps to level up the projects and next apps and we're initiating the state pool project. We've actually had Dave working on that for a little while and we're starting design of the DAO, which is basically taking some of the centralized mechanisms that we have in here now to it. So that's all starting to happen and we're collaborating with lots of other Cardano projects and we're starting with geographical, diverse community buildings happening as well.

Speaker 2:

The US and some stuff into Africa. Obviously we're very excited about any of those sort of countries as well, because we have huge differentials that we can make in a country like that and they can skip over some of the industrialization that we went through. And the last part of that is we ain't stopping. So the funding we need would really help from Catalyst, but that's just part of it.

Speaker 3:

That's what I wanted to reel it in about your project Catalyst, because we're like ending the end of the segment and I want to make sure that we talk about it.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 2:

So that's about five proposals. And so if you go to self-driven IO, slash energy. So energy to us is like it's two types of energy, passive and active and this is just funding. It's a type of energy to us, so that's why we call it energy. It's input into our environment. But we have five there.

Speaker 2:

The first one is actually a research and a practical guide. So, just to be clear, everything we're doing here is open source, public domain. Everything that app, the source code, the ideas, the framework, is 100% creative, common, zero public domain. So everything we do there. So we've got the research paper around Atala Prism. So as we move to SSI, full SSI, then we'll do it obviously using the Atala Prism protocol. Talk into Tony Rose and all that sort of stuff around what he's doing as well as a student reader, but also in regards directly to SSI. So Benjamin's working on that. And then the second one is to then bring those SSI into the app itself. So when we're issuing the certificate, the DIDS and stuff, the SSI.

Speaker 2:

That's the second one. The third one is actually to help fund what I just touched on with is with MATLAB 100. So just some funds to help actually apply it and get some videos and things like that around young people and students using it, because they're quite amazing what they come up with and what they talk about in terms of the value of it and linking to World Mobile and things like that. And then the fourth one is how this can all work for self-governance frameworks. So basically make that real inside a school that wants to basically make their school more student or learner-driven, and then how they can use a DAO to control some of the decisions that they're making inside a school as a mini little community to test this out. So again, that's a research paper and a framework guide that can be used by anyone, not just the self-driven project.

Speaker 2:

And then we have a fifth one that is a path to decentralized self-driven communities. So how a learning community can be a way to actually help bring this out into larger communities. The only problem with the fifth one is we made a typo mistake and we set we left the duration as nine months and that's in the open category and you're only allowed six months and we had a typo and it got cut off. So basically that's not in Fun10. So it's on the sheet but actually have to go to Fun11 because we just couldn't get it fixed. We didn't realize until after the data close, so anyway.

Speaker 3:

Legasp.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

That's really gasp.

Speaker 2:

That's right, yeah, but anyway, we've got four there anyway and we actually there's another fifth one there's we support building on Cardanodev, which is just a site that has a lot of resources around building on Cardano. We have a little proposal in to make that a little bit more advanced as well. There's a link down the bottom of the energy page, but we've got four main proposals in there to essentially help bring to the surface some of this stuff that can really help within the Cardano community and obviously, the education community, or leading to this conversation around decentralizing our societies, which, yeah, everything that we do within the Cardano world adds up to.

Speaker 3:

I try to pin that up at the top, but for some reason I can't see anything that's been up at the top. So I pinned up one of your posts that has the direct link. Okay, good, good, so just follow that and check it out. Share it Check it out, it's got all the links.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Resonate with the conversation. Yes, and make sure this is like, if you can just recap, because we've been all over the place talking about this in so many different angles let's just kind of bring it back in and put a message out there that you wanted to stick to people. Remember what are you doing or you're trying to accomplish and how can people support you.

Speaker 2:

Cool. Okay, we're creating a protocol and a framework for connecting young people to learn, create and grow together. So essentially, that's what we're doing is creating a framework for that. And, yeah, if you want to get involved, you can support directly through voting for us on our Catalyst Ones or connecting with us, because essentially, we're just anyone. This is such a large thing that we're talking to anyone that wants to do this and working out how ways to do that, and there's all sorts of ways. You can join our foundation and our team and all that sort of stuff as well. So head to our connect page and join our Discord channel. Just keep talking. We'll be at Rare Evo, so I'll be at Rare Evo. So, if you're going to be at Rare Evo, love to have a chat and then yeah, that means we're going to be there.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, cool, and we'll be at the Cardano, the one in Dubai as well, coming up at Rare Evo. It's the one coming up, obviously, next week, so we'll be there.

Speaker 4:

You guys going to have a booth there, or?

Speaker 2:

No, just coming out and have a chat with a few people, so Cameron Smith, them, now 100 and stuff like that. So yeah, and a few others obviously Just talk about this.

Speaker 4:

You'll know me by seeing a guy with probably the grayest and longest hair there Cool, and at that point most likely his block shot. So come and say hi, sweet.

Speaker 2:

I will. I'm the guy with no hair. A little bit of gray. A little bit of gray. Okay, cool, sweet, looking fine, looking forward to it. Thanks for the opportunity to talk. I love you. I love your podcasts in there and doing these spaces, so thank you.

Speaker 1:

Self-driven. I just want to let you know. I'm sending you an email and is there a name that I can address? Yeah, Mark, Okay.

Speaker 2:

Mark, appreciate it. Yeah, sweet.

Speaker 3:

Lead Dobe, as our friend Lytle will say. Thank you, mark, for sharing this with us today and I wish you all the best. Thanks for listening to Card on Over Coffee.

Speaker 1:

And thanks, Mark, for joining us today. If you'd like to have your name or business mentioned in future podcasts or have your logo and links displayed in the description of our podcast, click the Support button now.

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