Badges!

First off, Let me say that when ever I hear Cathy Davidson speak - I get smarter.

This year's Digital media and learning competition is titled"badges for lifelong learning". the good folks at Mozilla are cosponsors of the competition. Here's some info:

Digital Media and Learning Competition: This Competition focuses on building digital badges for lifelong learning. The Competition is designed to encourage individuals and organizations to create digital tools that support, identify, recognize, measure, and account for new skills, competencies, knowledge, and achievements for 21st century learners wherever and whenever learning takes place.

Today I listened to the webinar - 'Badges 101' Hosted by Cathy Davidson (Duke U and HASTAC), Sheryl Grant (HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation),
Erin Knight, (Mozilla and P2PU); Carla Casilli, (Open Badges, Mozilla)

The webinar was worthwhile and it was great to get the condensed background and context for the badges project. They didn't talk too much about the competition and that will be handled in subsequent webinars.

Here are a few of my ideas and thoughts from the talk.

Many people know Davidson because of her work on crowd sourcing grading. It's nice to hear a respected professor come out and say, plainly, grades suck. She eloquently made the point using a history lesson. Grades haven't been around that long-since 1890. 'ABCD' grades were adopted and subsequently rejected by the Packers as being too restrictive. Educators adopted it with gusto, particularly after standardized, multiple-choice testing became accepted ( roughly after World War I)

I got this image in my mind during the webinar. The red card serves as a badge - given by the ref, accepted by the player, seen by everyone. The question was asked about negative badges - do people use them?  referees do.  In military school, I remember my demerits more than my merits.

Another thought I had for my past was that of the badges I collected while traveling around Europe as a first grader. My family and I lived in Bielefeld West Germany in 1979. I had a blue jean jacket that I wore proudly as an American. Each new town that we went to I would pick out a patch that my mom would so on to the jacket.I wish I had a picture of that jacket, but I still remember the badges that I collected. How it focused my attention during those travels.

Vivyan's Jacket with badegs... expression of his self identity.  self chosen for display.

When I think of lifelong learning I think of travel. And I wonder if the travel industry is a good place for a badge system. Go to a town-get a badge.  Do some activity - get a batch.  Collect enough badges - get a bonus, bad-ass badge.  I imagined an eager group of school kids (or Elderhostel types) test during an Alaskan whale watching Capt. to give them access to the QR code that would unlock a badge and display it for their friends back home.  Perhaps they could record the moment with a picture, video/audio or writing.

I wonder what it would take to organize something like that.  Is that what foursquare does? what are the overlaps between travel and lifelong learning?  are there specific travel learning organizations?

Thanks for listening and seeing next time.