“Blockchain will serve as a single source of truthful data for verification for students going for higher education or employment,” said CBSE Director of Information and Technology Antriksh Johri.

 

While the pandemic has affected several aspects of our lives, the impact on the educational sector was inevitable. Shocking announcements like the cancellation of board exams for class 10th and 12th happened this year. We are still running high on the pandemic, and its future is unpredictable.

 

Changing trends in the exam and result technology

 

The Central Board of secondary education, the prime board with which maximum students of the country are affiliated, is continuously implementing new technologies for the betterment of future job seekers of the country. One step towards the same is the introduction of blockchain technology, which will safeguard the documents, and in this blog, we will be discussing this technology in detail and related advantages.

 

Blockchain: The mathematical framework of the future

 

Let us first understand the meaning of this technology. In simple words, Blockchain is a method of storing data in such a manner that it is nearly impossible to alter, manipulate, or defraud it. Each block on the chain comprises several transactions, and each time a new movement takes place, a record of that transaction is recorded as an expense of each participant.

 

CBSE’s Director of Information and Technology, Antriksh Johri mentioned that the CBSE partnered with the Centre of Excellence in Blockchain Technology of the national informatics centre, which is part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, to develop the ‘Academic (BlockChain) Documents’ program. 

 

With the use of this technology in the resulting process, many documents will now be easily accessible anywhere and anytime. Moreover, they will be verifiable in a user-compatible manner.

 

The process that CBSE will be using is an extensive one and will comprise of various steps that are listed below: 

 

• CBSE has made cryptographically signed certificates for students in Classes 10 and 12 available for the academic session 2019 to 2021 using this technology. In the upcoming months, CBSE plans to include certificates from prior years.
• A digital copy of new documents gets uploaded to the blockchain system as soon as they are authorized. NIC employs “nodes” in Bengaluru, Pune, and Jaipur to operate the network at its data centres.
• This complete process is very secure as it is cryptographically secured and uses somewhat the same technology which is used in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and dogecoin.

 

With this, we have reached the end of the present induced technology. But when we are talking about Blockchain, the sky’s the limit. So why stop here? Let us discuss certain advantages of this technology which can be incorporated in the future by CBSE.

 

 

• Identity: With the increasing fake identities in education and related pieces of stuff, it becomes crucial to take immediate steps towards identity management. With blockchain, this becomes very easy and user-friendly. Students can upload their identities, and access them anywhere. Also, students can manage their numerous other facilities like canteen and library and on a single platform. Parents can also check the progress of their children with a single click.

 

• Attendance and assignment: Retrieval of information becomes very easy with blockchain technology. Attendance and Assignment can be directly tracked by the authorities without any mid interference. It will reduce excess work pressure on teachers, and they will be able to concentrate more on the academic excellence of their students.

 

• Storage in an efficient form: These days, educational institutions retain more data than ever before. Cloud storage based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), an integral part of blockchain, provides safer and possibly less expensive options for extracting data.

 

• Library management: Blockchain can be advantageous for both physical as well as digitized library alternatives. The choice of students may vary in choosing between the two. Information can be stored and processed easily with the use of this technology. How many books are issued, submitted becomes very difficult with manual data entry, and hence there is a need for urgent changes.

 

• Protection from cyber-attacks: With the increase in the use of computers, cyber-attacks have become very proficient. Such attacks can be dangerous for schools but they can be prevented with the use of Blockchain technology.

 

Key Takeaways

 

Although Blockchain is a new concept, it’s still the future of computation and mathematical structures. If effectively implemented, this technology can bring revolutionary changes in the existing exam and result patterns. Moreover, it is safe and comparatively cheaper to use in comparison to other crypto platforms of the same kind.

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Also published on Medium.