Why We Need Badges Now: A Bibliography of Resources in Historical Perspective. It was something over a year ago when we first began talking about badges as a powerful new tool for identifying and validating the rich array of people’s skills, knowledge, accomplishments, and competencies that happens everywhere and at every age.
That’s when we decided that this year the Digital Media and Learning Competition would be dedicated to an array of competitions on badging. I remember when we started writing, blogging, talking, speaking, and in other ways trying to create a conversation around badges as an alternative mode of assessment, people would look at me like I was a little daft. Website recognizes military skills with digital badges. It can be difficult for veterans to explain the skills and training they received in the military to potential employers.
A new website attempts to bridge that gap by giving veterans digital “badges” that recognize their skills. When it goes live next month, BadgesforVets.org will be a résumé translation and job search service. Show Me Your Badge. The picture is a digital badge, a new type of credential being developed by some of the most prominent businesses and learning organizations in the world, including Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, the Smithsonian, Intel and Disney-Pixar. The badge movement is being spearheaded by the Mozilla Foundation, best known for inventing the free Firefox Web browser, the choice of nearly one-quarter of all Internet users worldwide.
While they may appear to be just images, digital badges are actually portals that lead to large amounts of information about what their bearers know and can do. They are also being used to improve education itself, by borrowing techniques from video games that keep users playing, until they advance to the next level. Badges are gaining currency at the same time that a growing number of elite universities have begun offering free or low-cost, noncredit courses to anyone with access to the Internet and a desire to learn.