August Highlights at a Glance
- Small, Steady Steps in Sarasota
- “The Road to Bitcoin & Beyond” Seminar Complete
- Representative Onder Outreach
Small, Steady Steps in Sarasota
After my initial outreach efforts in Sarasota County back in late May and exchanging emails back and forth with key personnel over the summer, I finally had the chance to meet with a number of Superintendent Connor’s leadership staff early in the month.
Sarasota MeetingThe meeting was set up with Dr. Megan Green, the Chief of Secondary Schools, and also included Michelle Anderson, Kira Bryant, and an old colleague of mine from Hillsborough, Nate Francis, who is now the Executive Director of Secondary Schools in Sarasota.
We had a great conversation overall, and I could immediately tell that Sarasota was interested in what we’re doing for both blockchain education and financial literacy. Our immediate next steps are for me to host our first-ever seminar on a Saturday at one of the local high schools, as well as potentially “train the trainers” for high school teachers who may want to offer a two-day lesson that covers the essentials from the in-person seminar.
Beyond the initial blockchain offerings, we discussed how we might be able to add our financial literacy lessons directly into their LMS, “Schoology,” which could then easily be used to supplement the materials they are using to cover the content required by law due to the passage of SB1054.
“The Road to Bitcoin & Beyond” Seminar Complete
After several months of slowly iterating on the seminar followed by a few major changes during the final review, we have completed the first course Ardent would like to deliver to interested counties throughout Florida.
Now totaling 82 slides across 5 different modules that align to current Florida Academic Standards, our “in-person” seminar should run for approximately 3 hours, including activities, breaks, and pre- and post-assessment data gathering. Our graphic designer will be putting on the finishing touches, and hopefully, we will have our first rollout of the initial seminar on a Saturday in September at one of the Sarasota area high schools.
However, if you are a school board member or state legislator who would like to see this happen in your district, please do not hesitate to email me at [email protected] so that we can coordinate one for your county.
Representative Onder Outreach
Thanks to our membership in the Blockchain Association and our shared mission with the staff in Washington, D.C., last month, we remain top of mind when it comes to advocating for blockchain education and financial literacy in Florida’s schools. Naturally, when Michael Postupak of the BA was speaking with a legislative aide about who is doing this work in any state, he brought us up and sent me an introduction to Justin Camp from Representative Bob Onder’s office.
Justin and I finally had the chance to meet last week, and it was an incredible meeting. Whereas most of the meetings Ray and I had last month during our visit to D.C. required a lot of education on our parts to help the legislative aides understand blockchain technology, Justin was exceedingly knowledgeable about it. In fact, Representative Onder has been a proponent of sensible blockchain regulation for some time, as indicated by this op-ed he wrote last year .
Justin was especially curious about what sort of traction we had been getting here in the Sunshine State, as well as what helped most in having conversations with state legislators or school board members. He told me that Rep. Onder is on the Education and Workforce committee, and he wants to see this sort of curriculum brought into his own state of Missouri. But he believes we urgently need to have this dialogue at the national level too.
Our conversation concluded on a positive note, and I sent him some additional materials, such as our “Blockchain in Florida” one-pager, to share with Rep. Onder. We will continue to stay in touch and likely chat again next month as the session resumes after the August recess.
Stay tuned for our next update, where we will have more great news to share and hopefully include pics of our first seminar delivery in September!
