Building badge value with Endorsement
Don Presant, Open Badge Factory, 2018/09/03
This item introduces two major concepts to the badge ecosystem. The first is the idea of 'endorsement', which "promises to resolve recurring questions about the “credibility of badges” by providing third party validation that can be formal (like accreditation) or informal (“fits our purpose”). More...

21CIF Self-Guided MicroModules
This is a useful resource that has some good features. It is a page of short, self contained modules addressing specific concepts in information literacy. They are thus good examples of reusable resources. I found, however, the pretest to be annoying - there was no way to get around the form, even on my second visit. More...

With Employers in the Mix, Can Badges Become More Than a Fad?
Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/08/21
As Audrey Watters would inform us, the answer to this question is "no". But Goldie Blumenstyk makes the best case she can for "yes" in the light of work by the Education Design Lab. "I recognize the potential value of badges that students from all sorts of institutions could use to prove their abilities in communication, critical thinking, resilience, and other so-called soft skills that employers claim to want," she writes. More...

QuickWire: Pearson Offers a Badge Platform
Lawrence Biemiller, The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, February 14, 2014
Pearson is offering a commercial version of a badge platform that support's Mozilla's backpack standard. Dows anyone care to lay odds on how long it will be before Pearson adds proprietary commercial-only elements to its badge platform, in an effort to squeeze open source badges out of the picture? Ah, but maybe I'm being too cynical. More...

More Competition for Online Certificate Students
Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed, January 22, 2014
Original title (before being probizwashed(*)): "After failed talks academic partnerships and coursera both introduce online course [specializations]". Notwithstanding the messy way in which these were created (there's no honour among education providers) the concept of the 'specialization' is interesting and could pose a longer-term challenge to the traditional form of credential. More...

Hacking the ISTE18 Smart Badge
Doug Levin, K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, 2018/06/29
At ISTE this year participants were given 'smart badges' - these tracked your movements and after the conference will provide participants with a report "listing of all the sessions you attended and links to any digital resources the session offered." More importantly, ISTE itself was provided "with information on session attendance and traffic flow in the expo hall and other open spaces, including playgrounds and poster sessions." Well, "ISTE calls this 'personalized learning,'" writes Audrey Watters. More...