--- tags: overview --- # NEAR Education Executive Overview --- 1000 teachers :arrow_right: 1 million makers :arrow_right: 1 billion users --- last updated: **`Mar 24, 2022`** The Education Team is currently 14 FTEs. Most of the work of the core team is to conceive, design, develop and launch scalable entry-to-engagement points for makers moving to web3. Broadly, these entry points fall into 3 categories, ordered here as a funnel 1. outreach - Educational Value - Insights and Inspiration - Edutainment Marketing 2. education - NEAR Certified programs - Partner programs - Self-paced programs 3. employment - Jobs - Fellowships - Ambassadors This [NEARCON presentation](https://youtu.be/64WmKyawUCM) is a 15 minute recap of the last 2 years in NEAR Education, ending with an eye towards 2022. **Welcome to the future** > *the most interesting news to come out of crypto in the last decade is the fact that we now have a global public digital clock that pays people who keep it ticking. this is one clock. one history. one record of truth.* > > *actually 3 of 8 references in the Bitcoin whitepaper are about decentralized time keeping* > > *incentives around consensus (agreement about history, tick by tick by tick) can get a little confusing but ... basically each tick can hold some data, any data, and if you want to sound smart just call it a "Merkle tree of transactions" and go read something about [Ralph Merkle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree)* > > *Proof of Work leaks some money per tick while Proof of Stake pays people interest on their "at risk" investment to keep ticking. You lie, you lose ... about our shared, public history.* > > *Ethereum adds a Turing complete virtual machine onto the clock, tracking function arguments, return values and code deployed to the virtual machine (as data in each tick of the clock)* > > *there are a bunch of modern implementations of the Ethereum model in NEAR, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche and others who have found a viable way to parallelize the single threaded virtual machine of Ethereum -- driving to make everything faster and cheaper so this idea can operate at scale and www shopping cart speeds* > > *if you can get past the emotionally charged hype and news cycles vying for our attention, you will notice, with few exceptions, that the coins of 2017 and NFTs of 2021 are very early and relatable applications about things we care about and understand: money and shiny things. DeFi (decentralized finance) is about porting the financial system to this new, new forever-clock* > > *but the brand new primitives are what matters* > > *(a) **time**: enabled by a chain of discrete "data moments"* > *(b) **identity**: enabled by public/private key cryptography* > *(c\) **money**: time + value* > *(d) **ownership**: identity + money* > *(e) **provenance**: identity + money + time* > > *... are all just starting to build up* > > *we're only just now learning to use this digital clock so we're thinking of it, naturally, as a permutation of what we already know, not something completely new. see tech adoption cycle, etc* > > *your best bet in this environment, imho, is to focus on the actual tech -- it's no more complicated than a slow, expensive database that can't tell a lie (as long as it's economically viable to keep the clock ticking, and who knows how long that will be). at least that's good enough for the first year or so until you get used to it.* --- ## What is not covered here 1. Highlights of stories of NCD graduates and how they are contributing to the ecosystem 2. Update on the systems and processes that we have setup in last 2 quarters 3. Updates on marketing efforts like referral programs, MailChimp list and mailers 4. Redesigns of near.academy, near.university 5. A section on edu community building efforts experiments with NEAR Hispano and Discord community ## 1. Outreach ### Educational Value - visit [near.university](https://near.university) -- a one stop shop for all things education @ NEAR - visit [jobs.near.university](https://jobs.near.university) -- hire the best talent in the NEAR ecosystem - visit [near.academy](https://near.academy) -- 30 minute introduction to web3 and NEAR - visit [near-in-minutes.com](https://near-in-minutes.com) -- bite-sized lessons for those new to NEAR - visit [near-snippets.com](https://near-snippets.com) -- searchable production code snippets for devs - view [Streetsmart Blockchain on YT](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwnSaD6BDfXLClL8O3MnY-3lIQ7yKwoOm) -- deep web3 lessons in a friendly format --- ### Insights and Inspiration **stats.gallery** stats.gallery aims to be your friendly guide around the NEAR ecosystem. With badges, points, and easy-to-ready individual account statistics, stats.gallery is the one-stop shop for individual NEAR account statistics, while keeping everything friendly and colorful. - visit [stats.gallery](https://stats.gallery) -- big and beautiful view of NEAR accounts - [Dec 2021 update](https://gov.near.org/t/smart-contract-explorer-on-stats-gallery/11232) - [Sep 2021 update](https://gov.near.org/t/stats-gallery-september-update/6782) - [Aug 2021 launch](https://gov.near.org/t/introducing-stats-gallery/4909) *ongoing maintenance via DAO and DiR program tbd* ![stats.gallery screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/UCpzLzP.png) **nearsighted.news** NEAR Sighted is a spotlight on the confusion emerging from the NEAR ecosystem. The platform employs 5-10 curators who review channel content then deduplicate, filter, tag and summarize the key questions being raised by current and new members of the community. - visit [nearsighted.news](https://nearsighted.news) -- capturing confusion in the NEAR ecosystem - ongoing maintenance via DiR program ![nearsighted screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/cyrvqKQ.jpg) ### Edutainment & Marketing **Twitter** In last 28 days we reached 1.5 million views with the first 1000 followers added in 60 days and next 1000 followers added in 23 days. - visit [NEAREdu on Twitter](https://twitter.com/nearedu) ![](https://i.imgur.com/INu0gMw.png) --- ## 2. Educational Programs The objective of these programs is to attract thousands of makers into a funnel of prograssive engagement, starting with lightweight learning activities and ending with a working demo on NEAR TestNet and a meaningful certification for NCD. ### NEAR Certified Programs > _**Learn with Our Team**_ > > _Sometimes you want an experienced guide to help you navigate this new landscape. Explore certification programs designed to launch your learning._ > > _These courses are designed to dive deep into the NEAR platform to prepare you for real world projects_ > > _Get certified!_ **Highlights** - NPS at 70 with 260 people submitting feedback (1 in 4 event attendees) - Over 6000 unique registrations in 160 days - Between 15-50% of registrants actually attend the course orientation sessions dependiong on session and region - 2% of registrants actually earn a certification by submitting an original piece of software that works with NEAR (eg. smart contracts + scripts + documentation, etc) **Key Entrypoints** - [Landing page on near.university](https://www.near.university/learn/with-our-team) - ["Welcome to Web3" course prep work](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/ncd-day-0) **Status** - **Deployed** - NEAR Certified Developer -- writing contracts - contracts [course overview](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/ncd-1-1d) and [self-paced content](http://bit.ly/ncd-1-1d-slides) - frontend [course overview](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/ncd-2-1d) and [self-paced content](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/ncd-2-1d--exploring) - [NEAR for Senior Developers](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/near-201) -- "the fast track" - NEAR Certified Instructor -- teaching NCD (see above) - [course overview](https://hackmd.io/@nearly-learning/nci) - [course materials](http://bit.ly/nci-resources) - **Planned** - NEAR Certified Analyst - NEAR Certified Entrepreneur - NEAR Certified UX Designer - NEAR Certified Architect - NEAR Certified Security Specialist **Calendar of Events** ![NCD calendar](https://i.imgur.com/upVJa96.png) **Status** ![certifications](https://i.imgur.com/3MlLq2L.png) **NCD Funnel Experiments** ``` (A) 1 week (5 day) course tested Mar - Sep 2021. 100% register 50% attend 25% complete 10% demo (B) 1 day (7 hrs) course tested Oct - Nov 2021 100% register 50% attend 25% complete 10% demo (C) 1 day (2 hrs) course tested Nov 2021 - Feb 2022 100% register 50% attend 40% complete <-- this changed, no surprise 10% demo ``` --- ### Partner Programs **Highlights** Partner programs has been an area of experimentation and innovation over the last year starting with Figment Learn and slowly growing with almost $500k in grants spending directed towards partner programs. The effort in training and coordinating partner activities has historically been inefficient when compared with the ROI on internally managed programs. Also partners have changed their schedule, delivery and incentives models without proper coordination which has led to some confusion for incoming makers at times. The plan in 2021.Q4 was to increase the number of high quality partnerships The plan for 2022.Q1 is to hire for tactical partner relationship management **Key Entrypoints** - **[near.university / learn / with-our-partners](https://www.near.university/learn/with-our-partners)** **Status** ![](https://i.imgur.com/CQtbAS1.png) --- ### Self-paced Programs **Highlights** The NEAR Collective has created many courses over the last two years which finally have a home in this collection. At this point we are only linking to these resources and measuring engagement through Google Analytics. The plan is to improve the analytics and start measuring engagement and promoting the best performing courses **Key Entrypoints** - **[near.university / learn / by-yourself](https://www.near.university/learn/by-yourself)** **Status** ![](https://i.imgur.com/vKM3gYc.png) --- ## 3. Employment Programs ### Jobs **Highlights** Launched in cooperation with NF People Team as one of two possible paths to explore jobs with a plan to promote this or another option currently under development by the People Team. - Mailing list is over 250 employers (200 grant recipients + 50 organic signups) - Almost 10 companies have messaged candidates in last 30 days **Key Entrypoints** - **[jobs.near.university](https://jobs.near.university)** ![](https://i.imgur.com/W0CaYWY.jpg) **Status** ![jobs](https://i.imgur.com/qXr9vxw.png) --- ### Fellowships **Highlights** NEAR Education Fellowship Programs are designed to engage entrepreneurs, engineers, writers and researchers as well as teachers, designers and more in growing their contribution to the NEAR ecosystem as quickly as possible **Key Entrypoints** - **[near.university / fellowships](http://near.university/fellowships)** **Status** ![fellowship options](https://i.imgur.com/3K9NEjD.png) ![fellowships](https://i.imgur.com/dPaKUPV.png) ![fellowship maps](https://i.imgur.com/gVOvNkd.png) --- ### Ambassadors **Highlights** **Key Entrypoints** - **[near.university / ambassadors](http://near.university/ambassadors)** **Status** ![ambassadors](https://i.imgur.com/Hl1N1sX.png) --- ## Appendix: Enabling Factors This section has been added to give credit where it's due ### OKRs are clear ![](https://i.imgur.com/PlnBjNG.png) ### Funding is accessible 2021.H2 grants spending for EDU 47 grants disbursed among 15 countries with an average award around $35,000 USD - software: products including edtech, examples / demos, platform integrations, etc - services: marketing / outreach, content creation, etc - other: art (sculpture, illustration, animation), exploratory projects, etc ![grants allocation](https://i.imgur.com/SQA2kZA.png) ![grants distribution](https://i.imgur.com/4cjTKEN.png) ### Talent is interested 60 day progress report on personalized outreach campaign to qualified Instructors, Technical Writers and Rust developers, ![outreach campaign](https://i.imgur.com/8mwHHsK.png)