Peter Rawsthorne

Hello All,

I've started issuing badges for this seminar series... I built four badges and have been going through the participant list and see who met the criteria I had outlined...

I know there was lots of discussion around my criteria, but that was kinda the point of me drawing a line in the sand about the criteria of awarding a badge. The nice thing about using badg.us is that people can nominate others for a badge, all good... please nominate your peers!

The badges are as follows;

• http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/learner-scope-open-badges-2012
• http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/participant-scope-open-badges-2012
• http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/contributor-scope-open-badges-2012
• http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/moderator-scope-open-badges-2012

I will do the best I can to work through the list of participants and award badges. If you want to help out with this process either add yourself to the linked google spreadsheet or nominate yourself or another for a badge;

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak8Mcp1f93B1dF84YjMxeVZfUzE1MjFMb25yOHZIYlE

Were almost done...

There has been a few comments about "lightweight" badges... That I felt created an interesting opportunity to clarify a couple of subjects and leads into the current task.

1. The "weight" of a badge or badge system is determined by the people or organization issuing the badge. I believe this weight depends on the abilities, skills, knowledge, etc of learners and context for learning.
2. The Mozilla Open Badges is an infrastructure to support the issuing, storage, and display of badges. The badges from Open Badges are for example purposes (not meant to have any "weight") and are there to get people using the infrastructure.
3. If you have the time I strongly suggest you explore some of the badges issued in Dr. Wiley,s course; http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/06/open-badges-evidence.html In particular the data visualization programmer ninja badge.

If you want a good look at the different badge systems explote TASK 6 where we beging to look into the different badge systems... all good.

TASK 6 (Dec 9th): Compare and contrast badge systems

Before we jump into the technology behind the badges I'd like people to consider the plethora of badge systems that already exists.

13. Compare and contrast traditional badge systems

Take a good look at the badge systems for both scouting and the martial arts. How are these badge systems similar? How do they differ? Where is the entry point for beginning? Is there a badge (belt) for beginning? What about the top end? Could one system end with having completed all the badges? Does one system have the ability to continue to grow?

14. Compare and contrast digital badge systems

How many different digital badge systems exist? Are they all in the learning realm? Or are badge being issued for non-learning tasks? Could these non-learnig badges be folded into a greater personal curriculum? Are some of the digital badge systems focused on peer-learning and communities of practice?

For more insight into this question feel free to visit a recent blog post; http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/12/an-introduction-to-badge-systems-design.html

Sheesh... what a bunch of academics! <big smile>

If you are going to make it through the next week you really need to put in the effort to implement an actual badge. I strongly suggest you complete TASKS 5.1 and 5.2... we are going to be entering into a discussion on how to implement digital badges and having worked through the process of issuing one or more badges will assist greatly...

Be Well....

TASK 5.2 (Dec 7th): Creating and Issuing the Badge

11. Using a graphic editing tool create a simple badge
Create as simple a badge (or group of badges) as you like. The badges should represent some learning. And it may be very simplistic, the point here is to create the badge(s). We can work on more complex graphics at another time. The graphic can be as simple as using Microsoft Paint to create a box, fill the box with color, and add a single word to the box. Be sure to save the badge as a png file.

12. Issue the badge
create an account on the open badging site http://badg.us. Follow the prompts on the site to upload and create a new badge. Issue the badge to me (peter AT rawsthorne DOT org) and other who have created badges on the badg.us site.

I have created a blog post describing my simple badge system. http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/12/implementing-really-simple-badge-system.html Once you have your badg.us and mozilla open badges accounts. Nominate me for one of the badges you have created.

Let me know if you require any assistance... more than happy to help out.