Hi Peter in response to your comments / questions:
Peter wrote: Would you think it would be a good idea to get Mozilla Open Badges working against Wikiversity, WikiEducator or other MediaWiki site?
In general, I don't think its a good idea for open projects to be working "against" each other. Its not the way we generally work in the open world.
Mozilla is developing an open architecture which shouldn't be too hard to implement across Mediawiki sites. I think the Wikipedia, Wikiversity and WikiEducator communities provide fertile ground for implementation of open badges as these communities have been working with badge-like awards prior to the concept of Open Badges, eg Barnstars in Wikipedia and the Wikimaster typology in WikiEducator.
The OERu collaboration will be considering the implementation of digital badges and I will be building this into the design of the Open Education Practice elective for the new Diploma in Tertiary Education which Otago Poly will be offering as OER through the OERu network. Still undecided as to the technical implementation detail and we're experimenting with alternatives.
Peter wrote: your comment about international issues adjusted my approach at the beginning of the seminar series.
Appreciated your adjustment to the teaching delivery for international time zones, but the corresponding badge criteria were not adjusted ;-). My point being that if a learner was sleeping at the time of a synchronous session -- it would be unreasonable to specify participation as a criterion for earning a badge.
Peter wrote: Unfortunately, the codecs were beyond my control, but I will keep this in mind when facilitating other similar international seminars.
Fair comment about technology being out of your control -- but again one of the badge criteria required participation in the synchronous session. It would be unreasonable to expect a learner to sacrifice their freedoms in software choice in order to qualify for the badge. Just saying that if technology choices are not in the control of facilitator or learner -- we should adjust the badge criteria accordingly. Just highlighting the issues we need to consider for reliable and equitable assessment :-).