December Monthly Report - 12/16/22

We are continuing to make progress against our stated objectives since our last monthly report in November. As mentioned in our last report we have identified a group of five staff and teachers to serve as an implementer and training group. In the evidence section of this report, I will upload photos from the meeting as well a report from Cinderella about the meeting that was held on December 5th with questions from members of the group. Unfortunately, one of the teachers, Stephen, for some unknown reason was unable to attend. It is possible that since school vacation started on December 1, he may have returned to Ghana early for the Christmas holiday. This group during their meeting studied the grant proposal to gain a deeper understanding of what we are trying to achieve. You will be able to read about their reactions in the file which will be uploaded.

Additionally, after our initial grant period of 8 months, in which our developer spent much time studying Marlowe, Haskell, and Plutus and working out the business logic of the smart contracts we are seeking to implement, we are just a few weeks away from testing our first smart contract linking donors to MCA’s Treasury. This is the simplest smart contract that we are attempting. In contrast to many of the financial smart contracts being built in other projects in which the contract is activated by a financial action taken by a second party, a major difference in our smart contracts is seeking to have the contract activated/triggered by an action such as a report, a photo, a letter, or some other metadata from the second party. This is a challenging issue which needs to be resolved.

Last month we reported on signing of a contract with a web site design organization. We are currently waiting for an initial wire framework for our web site from this organization which we anticipate being able to report in our next report.

In anticipation of a training visit to MCA in November we have purchased 5 Samsung tablets to be used in small training sessions with board members, teachers, and students. We have identified a group of five staff and teachers who are being trained to assist others at MCA to use the tablets to explain Cardano and how merging its program with MCA will benefit the school. A delay in the voting and funding of Fund9 proposals, the school year ending on November 30 with a 6-week summer/Christmas vacation following, has prompted our decision to delay our training visit to MCA until early February 2023 and the beginning of the new term. Meanwhile, during this interim small discussion groups are scheduled to discuss our grant proposal and continue the long-term process and challenge of educating a cohort of individuals to whom Cardano is a totally new technology.

In addition, we have signed a contract with a web design and development company to build a new website, amodelschool.com, that will be used as an educational tool for both personnel and participants at MCA as well as a reporting facility for members of the Cardano ecosystem. In the new website we will cast the vision “Merging a new technology: Cardano, With an established school: MCA, To improve an educational experience and demonstrate the impact of Cardano”. We will introduce two separate institutions, MCA and Cardano, with separate histories each dating from 2009, Then under the title of Our Merge we will demonstrate the results of our efforts to use smart contracts to facilitate school funding, incentivize student performance, provide digital identity, and promote self-governance.

In anticipation of a training visit to MCA in November we have purchased 5 Samsung tablets to be used in small training sessions with board members, teachers, and students. We have identified a group of five staff and teachers who are being trained to assist others at MCA to use the tablets to explain Cardano and how merging its program with MCA will benefit the school. A delay in the voting and funding of Fund9 proposals, the school year ending on November 30 with a 6-week summer/Christmas vacation following, has prompted our decision to delay our training visit to MCA until early February 2023 and the beginning of the new term. Meanwhile, during this interim small discussion groups are scheduled to discuss our grant proposal and continue the long-term process and challenge of educating a cohort of individuals to whom Cardano is a totally new technology.

In addition, we have signed a contract with a web design and development company to build a new website, amodelschool.com, that will be used as an educational tool for both personnel and participants at MCA as well as a reporting facility for members of the Cardano ecosystem. In the new website we will cast the vision “Merging a new technology: Cardano, With an established school: MCA, To improve an educational experience and demonstrate the impact of Cardano”. We will introduce two separate institutions, MCA and Cardano, with separate histories each dating from 2009, Then under the title of Our Merge we will demonstrate the results of our efforts to use smart contracts to facilitate school funding, incentivize student performance, provide digital identity, and promote self-governance.

I tried to add some files to last month's report but I don't think they arrived in a readable format. Would like to know and a way to submit them.

Regarding the photos and presentation. The large group photo are the 18 people that we trained during our visit the first week of March. The presentation is the material we went over. Other short movies clips are from classrooms at the school. The one with the young girls in green are kindergarteners cheering for blockchain.