Multilitteratus Incognitus

In my quest to catch up on Pocket - before the news becomes stale, I came across this post by cogdog on seeking the evidence behind digital badges . The anatomy of the Open Badge include the possibility of including links to evidence for the skill that you are being badged for.    Of course, just because there is an associated metadata field available for people to use,  it doesn't mean that people actually use it! I know that the evidence part of badges is something that is often touted as an improvement over grades in courses, or diplomas, because grades don't indicate what specific skills you've picked up, and this problem is a bit worse with diplomas and graduation certificates because you can't evenly compared one candidate to another (let's say in my case it would be comparing me to some other computer science major from another university - or heck even my own university). Anatomy of badge, by ClassHack So, in theory, badges are superior to th...

Derby Wharf, Salem, MA - Jan 2015 (Storm: Juno) I am sure that last one is a word I just made up on the spot. It's been a slow week in 802.  I was reading Lisa's reflection on Lurking in 802 (she is in last year's cohort, so she is two courses ahead of us in Cohort 7), and how she viewed 802 at the time as a make or break experience for the Ed.D. program.  While 801 last semester was a whirlwind tour of Online and Distance Education , this semester is a whirlwind tour (or boot-camp perhaps) on the topic of Research and how to go about doing it.  The textbook, by Cohen and the gang , is something that I have read before (a few year ago), but this doesn't help a ton ;-)  There is a lot to unpack, and this book is dense.  Even if one could memorize everything (not a good way to learn, by the way), it's like going to philosophy course - you are there essentially to argue for and support your stance. You are also called upon to explain your underlying fra...

Well, Week 4 has begun in the graduate course I am teaching, and it was time to tally up some numbers to see if any secret badges needed to be released and awarded to students in the course.  Of the 8 secret badges I designed for this course, four of them have been discovered by students one-quarter of the way through the course! This is actually pretty nifty!  So what are the secret badges that were revealed this weekend? Helping Hand Description: A helping hand can be like a compass showing you the way to the solution. Criteria: To earn this badge a learner needs to respond to at least two fellow learner's troubleshooting question with an answer that gets the initial learner "unstuck" from where they currently are stuck in their project, or in the course. More info: The idea behind this badge was to reward students who help out others students with some of the technical issues in class. For example a student may not know how to "collect" discussion ...

With the Introduction to Open Education course now done (and only 6 months late!), I decided to consolidate all of my posts here for the badge requirement achievement requirements . I hope I am not too late to claim these badges ;-) OpenEd Overview  Requirements (Novice level, complete for all 12 topics to earn the badge) Watch the topic video. Skim the topic readings. Write a short blog post summarizing what you’ve learned about the topic and why you think the topic is important. Write a final post linking to the 12 previous posts related to this badge and announcing your intent to have completed the badge. OpenEd Overview   Badge artefacts: Open Licensing - Open Licensing at a Glance Open Source - Open Source in Education Open Content - Open Content OpenCourseWave - It's OCW Time Open Educational Resources - OER (or old dog, new tricks ;-)  ) Open Access - Hello Open Access! Open Science - Open Science? Open Research! Open Data - Open Data ...

Rhizomatic Week Achievement in Change11 An interesting brainstorm item on gaming, motivation and achievement came up while reading and commenting on Jaap's blog. This particular blog is about badges (or achievements) in MOOCs . Interestingly enough I also saw Dave Cormier's tweet about having a badge on his blog (seemed like a tongue in cheek post). Serious, or not, I've included the image in this post. In any case, if you scroll down Jaap commented: In my opinion badges are not fit for MOOCs. Mobimooc did give a certificate for students that finished the MOOC and published, etc. (Ignatia, if you read this, thanks) Maybe, a badge would destroy the fun of paricipating. which was followed by Jenny's comment: Sometimes formal recognition stifles growth. Sounds counter intuitive but how often does fame smother new talent? Can a badge become an end in itself and diminish the creativity within the person? For that matter, does an artist seek a badge when moved to...

I love MOOCs, because it gives me an opportunity to meet interesting people and read what they have to say.  It's both educational and a discovery tool!  In any case, I read a blog post by Alex Reid today on the aversion to badges (you know, those things that you get for "achieving" stuff in various places and services." (I'd link to the article but my laptop has crashed three times today while trying to link to it :-) - just Google it it's called "welcome to badge world"  ) In any case, I read his article and I actually do not disagree! I think that people have taken credentialing (and badges are a type of credential) to a level that is a bit too far.  They place too much emphasis on the credential rather than what the credential implies. An example of this are academic badges like the degrees one earns. When you look at a human resources job posting you see that emphasis on the degree, rather than the skills implied by attaining such a degree ...

This months started off with a "show me the money" theme, both for pre-college and college level kids. First we had a story on NRP, asking whether paying for grades cheapens education , and then we had a story from Indiana University's Pressroom on their "incentive grants" for students who do well in school. I fall somewhere in between the two positions of to pay and not to pay. When I was in school I did not get money from my parents for bringing home a good report card, however I did get certain allowances, like being able to play computer games (on my 68040 Performa - no FPU!) and being in a better bargaining position when it came to buying new video games. When I was in college it was expected that I was an adult and I was responsible enough to value the education that I was paying for. Of course what it comes down to is this: Whether in K-12 or in College, we end up paying for education. Nothing is free. If you want to reward kids for doing well in K-12...