Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012 - (Page 30)

endeavor and be thoughtful skeptics.” Two key factors in selecting the grant winners were the transportability and the granularity of the proposed badges, says David Theo Goldberg, the director of the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Irvine. Transportability refers to the ability of the badge to follow the badge earner through his or her lifetime and be recognized in a variety of environments. Granularity emphasizes the need for specific data and details about why and how the badge was earned, so that anyone viewing it will have a clear understanding of the competencies of the badge owner. Some of the winners will clearly target K-12 students. One such proposal, the “American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen” badges, is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in an effort to target potential dropouts by engaging them in digital educational resources. Another winner, BuzzMath, will focus on helping students set goals to master the Common Core State Standards in mathematics. Others, such as BadgesWork for Vets and the Design for America: A Badge Community for Innovation, are being developed for different population groups as well as the general public. Building a ‘Badge Economy’ On its surface, a digital badge is nothing more than an image file encoded with metadata, or information, that includes all the data needed to understand the badge, such as which organization awarded it, what skill or achievement it represents, if and when it expires, and links to evidence for why it was awarded. With support from the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla has developed an Open Badge Infrastructure, or OBI, designed to become the underlying technical scaffolding for badges. “The Open Badge Infrastructure creates some standardization around a common language of badges that we can all communicate with,” says Erin Knight, a senior director of learning for the Mountain View, Calif.-based Mozilla Foundation. “The idea is that each badge carries with it all the information you need to understand the badge.” The OBI details exactly what should be included in the metadata of the badge; supports the issuance, collection, and display of badges; allows badge earners to tie their badges to their own identities; and provides badge earners with a way to sort and manage their badges. Part of the infrastructure includes a “digital backpack” in which badges can be stored, managed, and displayed. Keeping the badge earner in control of which badges are seen by whom was a big consideration in the development of the OBI, Knight says. Sunny Lee is an open-badges product manager and partner manager for the Mozilla Foundation. “[The digital backpack] enables the learner to be able to curate and manage the image that they want to represent to the rest of the world,” she says. “The idea is that we’re kind of laying down the plumbing for this badge economy to flourish. Now, we need some badges circulating around the economy to jumpstart it.” Some observers wonder how meaningful badges can become if any organization is allowed to give them out for any reason; the fear is of an influx of superficial badges that have little to do with learning. But Knight says that is precisely why the badge earner must be responsible for managing his or her own badges. “Yes, there will be badges that mean nothing—that will happen—but the key is that the learner is in control, and they can decide what is important and how they share those badges,” she says. “One of the problems we’re trying to solve is that a lot of the way learning is defined right now is incredibly prescribed, and the learning that counts is top-down decided. … We want to open up and legitimize learning that’s happening everywhere.” While much remains to be seen about how digital badges could affect K-12 learners, many involved in the movement say they appreciate the conversation it has sparked about assessment, the tracking of achievement, and lifelong learning. “We’re definitely not saying that [digital badges] are a silver bullet, and we’re not even saying that badges are going to end up being one of the pieces of the solution, but there’s clearly a lot of potential here, and at the end of the day, if we decide that badges aren’t the right way to do it, it would be hard for us not to consider that it’s somewhat of a success,” says Knight, of the Mozilla Foundation. “Everybody has elevated these issues and come together to think about it and been willing to turn assumptions on their head.” Digital badges are a way of forcing educators to recognize that learning is no longer confined to a classroom and is taking place anytime, anywhere, adds Goldberg, of the Irvine, Calif. and Durham, N.C.-based HASTAC. “What this speaks to, and what the interest in badging as a creative form of motivation assessment and reward for learning is, is a sense that learning is transforming before our very eyes and has been certainly since the advent of the Internet,” he says. “It’s the case that learning is taking place around the clock,” he says. “It’s taking place interactively and collaboratively in all sorts of ways both inside and especially outside of institutional framing.” ■ 30 >> www.digitaldirections.org 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Game On
Applicable Knowledge
Digital Badges
Lessons From Higher Education
Competitive Edge
Recognizing Online PD
Ready or Not
Q&A
Opinion
Data Delivery

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

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