By - . Kyle Bowen, director of education technology at Pennsylvania State University, said he thinks credentials, be they traditional grades or digital badges, are little more than symbols. And symbols mean different things to different people, Bowen said Thursday at U.S. News and World Report’s STEM Solutions conference. To illustrate his point he brought up several well-known symbols, including the icon found on most hand dryers — the one that shoes three red, wavy lines floating above a hand. More...
LRMI, Open badges and alignment objects
This is interesting. After a talk on the Mozilla Open Badges community call Phil Barker notes that their (Mozilla's) "assertion specification, which includes a pointer from each badge to 'the educational standards this badge aligns to, if any' ... parallels the LRMI alignment object very closely." This naturally leads to the suggestion that the two systems can be, and ought to be, more explicitly aligned. "Not only do the LRMI and Open Badge alignment objects both do the same thing they seem to have have the following semantically equivalent properties relating to identifying the thing that is aligned to." Read more...
A foundational badge system design
By Carla Casilli. The last two years or so have found me investigating and contemplating many different types of badge systems. Along the way I’ve been wrestling with considerations of badge types, potential taxonomies, and conceptual approaches; feeling my way around a variety of assessment types including summative, formative and transformative. Working in badge system design rewards a person with a continuing sense of adventure and opportunity.
A badge system structure for many
After much thought and many contemplative examinations, I’ve developed an archetypal badge system structure that I’m happy to recommend to the open badges community. Here are the many reasons why I think you’ll want to implement it.
- It’s simple.
- It’s modular.
- It’s easy to implement.
- It encourages a range of creativity.
- It works for organizations of vastly different sizes.
- It accomplishes the difficult task of working from bottom up, top-down, and middle out.
- It not only allows for growth, it thrives on it. More...
QuickWire: Pearson Offers a Badge Platform
By Lawrence Biemiller. Pearson, the publishing heavyweight that now calls itself “the world’s leading learning company,” announced on Thursday that it would follow Mozilla’s creation last year of an open standard for badges that recognize educational or professional achievement by offering a proprietary badge platform based on Mozilla’s standards. For the new platform, which Pearson is calling Acclaim, the company will “work with academic institutions and high-stakes credentialing organizations to offer diplomas, certificates, and other professional credentials as Open Badges.” Read more...
New firm to offer free online course on “Digital Badges”
Badge of honour
By Graham Attwell. Some ideas flourish and then die. Others start slowly and then take off. Although all the talk is about MOOCs my feeling is that the Mozilla Open Badges project may have a more profound influence in changing education than online courses. The following text is an excerpt from the quarterly online magazine, Holyrood Connect.
Scottish education authorities have started to imagine a new way to record and recognise educational achievement. Instead of certificates and test results, learners would have an authenticated, permanent digital record of their accomplishments that could never be lost, because it would live in the cloud.When looking for a job or further learning opportunities, their achievements could bear detailed testimony of what they learned, by linking back to the skills provider online. Most of all, learners could display their badges on their own websites or on social media, alongside Facebook updates or tweets about their regular lives. More...
Badging From Within
By Paul Fain. The University of California at Davis is creating what may be higher education’s most promising digital badge system. But the badges are no threat to the university’s degrees. They’re add-ons – perhaps valuable ones for students.
“Badges can tell a different story,” says Joanna Normoyle, the experiential and digital media learning coordinator at the university’s Agricultural Sustainability Institute. She says they allow students to “differentiate themselves and tell a narrative.” Read more...
Badges for Lifelong Learning Grantees: Responses to the 5 Buckets for Badge System Design
By Sheryl Grant. This is a follow up post to an earlier one titled 5 Buckets for Badge System Design: You Are Here about different badge system design approaches. In that post, I suggested 5 main starting points or design approaches for badge systems, a way for organizations to locate themselves on the map. I’m interested in making badge system design a little less fuzzy so that organizations can focus on the decisions they need to make to move forward. We're a ways away from having decision maps for badge system design, but with the input from the Badges for Lifelong Learning grantees, we're getting closer. (If you’re just learning about the Badges for Lifelong Learning initiative, here’s a brief overview of the Competition and the 30 organizations that were funded to build badge systems). Read more...
Badges
By Michael Widdersheim. So far, I’ve picked up on the notion of badges. Digital badge systems assess and reward digital learning. This is a new concept for me (though they are used in online gaming and online communities), but it has amazing potential in schools and libraries. What if libraries had badge-earning workshops, or school library media specialists linked curricula to potential badges? The badge idea also seems to synch with the idea of an ePortfolio which is gaining ground. Digital badges inform others how to attain skills--the badges provide a pathway. I like this idea because I often wonder how people acquire certain skills, or how people were able to create certain artifacts. Learners’ badges are viewable online and are attached to individuals’ online profiles. New badges can be created as new technologies or skills emerge. More...
Digital Badges in the Classroom
By Alan Reid and Denise Paster. The open badge movement has stemmed from the independent learning and massive open online course (MOOC) frameworks of empowering and motivating learners to complete noncredit academic work, either from a distance or at a self designated pace.
Learners experience instructional content, usually delivered in a module-based format, and are rewarded with a digital image of a “badge” upon completion. These digital badges then can be collected and shared on social media outlets serving as recognizers of certifiable skills. For instance, proficiency in a specific technological tool could be validated with a digital badge, and this badge could then be displayed on a LinkedIn profile, electronic portfolio, and listed on a resume. Read more...