New Federal Initiative Will Fund Blockchain Experiments in Education

The U.S. Department of Education hopes that the blockchain technology transforming the finance and logistics industries could play a role in making education records more portable and transparent. The federal agency has provided $2 million to the American Council on Education to organize a new Education Blockchain Initiative, the council announced Thursday. The endeavor will support research about blockchain systems and fund a competition to select experiments testing ways to apply the technology in education. The council has set up a steering committee to oversee the work with representatives from K-12 schools, colleges, education research teams and employers (see full list below).