Background
I am a former software engineer and a 20-year public school principal and physics/robotics teacher. I have always said that my greatest wealth is my extended family, and thanks to bitcoin, I was lucky enough to retire early in 2022 to invest my time in my family. Last month, I attended a family retreat in Vermont, and now I am in my childhood home in Chicago, which is full of magic. Soon, I will be visiting family in Japan.
The only other way I choose to invest my time in retirement is to volunteer with hs.credit and the Academic Capital Foundation, Inc. I feel obligated to do this work because of what my experience has shown me is possible for our youth. That sense of obligation is reinforced by a belief that if something like this doesn’t happen soon in American education, our democracy is doomed.
If we achieve mass adoption, we will transition education in America from a system designed to train consumers to one designed to empower creators. If it’s hard for you to imagine such a system of education, consider that it happens every day at top private schools.
They used to tell us that we needed factory workers and consumers of factory goods to justify factory schooling. In an information economy, we now need content creators, creatives, critical thinkers, and original thinkers. These are the skills that AI will never match. Without such abilities, we will remain simple-minded consumers, expecting an answer key to provide answers, and vulnerable to the influence of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Today’s world demands that our citizens be able to handle ambiguous issues that require critical thinking habits.
The hs.credit model is a return to ancient ways of learning. It aligns with how we know the human brain works best, rather than learning designed to train humans to serve as cubicle robots. It is project-based learning, starting with teachers delivering information and then building from there to apply that learning and extend it into complex real-world contexts.
Motivated young people are tremendous creators. I saw this firsthand for twenty years as a public school principal and physics teacher. Teenagers want to look good in front of their peers. Performance-based assessment leverages this motivation to push academic achievement.
And so, despite my retirement, I rent an office and put in a few “working” days per week. In fact, working with the tremendous hs.credit team no longer feels like “work.” Our weekly meetings and app feedback sessions are valuable time spent with those I admire most. It’s feeling more and more like time with my extended family.
A Front-End Developer
Our current point of failure is that we are no not have a front-end application development guru on the team. We lack someone with deep front-end experience who can review code and give direction. NB: our senior team is unpaid, reviewing the work of contract developers.
We seek someone who is interested in making THE difference. Education being THE issue of our times. Help us build the interface that will upgrade our K-12 assessment practice, a platform offering independent evaluation of student work products, and a library of our youth’s voices.
If you are an experienced software engineer wanting to work on an app that is worth your pro bono time and effort, go to hs.credit and click the PARTICIPATE button.
We meet once per week on Zoom for 60 minutes after working hours (7 pm Eastern). The commitment starts at three hours per week to fill a role on our “anchor team” of our DAO. Admittedly, most of us have expanded our roles and involvement over time. This work is contagious when you taste what’s possible.
Nadav Zeimer (also known as “Principal Z”) is the author of “Education in the Digital Age: How We Get There” and a founding member of the hs.credit DAO. After an award-winning career as a physics/robotics teacher and a turnaround high school principal, Mr. Zeimer is now a keynote speaker on the future of education and serves as a foster parent in Central Harlem.
