Program aims to prepare students for hot job market
George Brown College (GBC) has a new science and technology program that gives students both in-class and hands-on experience with one of today’s hottest technologies.
The Blockchain Development Program (T175), hosted at the Casa Loma campus, is a one year full-time program that focuses on designing and implementing decentralized applications by leveraging blockchain technology.
This program is the first of its kind to be offered in Toronto.
The chair of the school of computer technology, Albert Danison, was excited to explain blockchain and talk about the new program: “Blockchain is a technology or a way of developing applications. You can define it in many different ways, but the easiest would be a distributed database, meaning we’re not dealing with a centralized database.”
“For example, if there’s 5,000 people involved with the system, all of them have a copy of the same database across the world. All of them have the same replica of all the transactions in the past, and nobody can change anything. That’s the idea of blockchain,” he added.
Blockchain has many different uses according to Danison, some of them unexpected; he describes an example from Walmart, who uses the technology to track the location and shipping history of contaminated food to determine the source of the contamination.
When asked about any special computer systems or technology needed to use blockchain, Danison said, “the beauty of blockchain is you don’t need to have anything special, any computer can do the job.”
Part of the program also encompasses a co-op term or work integrated learning. Danison said some of the companies students can work for include ConsenSys, one of the largest blockchain companies in the world, with offices in Toronto.
He also referenced banking as a potential job source, as the increased security blockchain offers may prove particularly valuable to them.
Positions after graduation may include blockchain engineer, blockchain developer, and blockchain solutions architect, just to name a few. Danison enthusiastically describe the job market for these positions, as “Piping hot. There’s a lot of demand.”
