Thoughts on Badges for LINCS: Lessons from History

This week I’m participating in a conversation about badges over on the Department of Education’s LINCS website. I believe badges are potentially a key piece of infrastructure necessary to support truly open, distributed learning, but I’m frequently disappointed by the level of thoughtfulness of the discourse around badges. There’s much to learn about badges by looking to the history of other technologies, as I’ve tried to point out in my answers to the first two question prompts.

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Redeeming Gift Cards and Badges

It seems like many people struggle to understand how the Open Badge Infrastructure works. Here’s an analogy that I’ve recently found helpful. Say your friend buys you an Amazon or iTunes gift card for your birthday. When your friend buys the gift card, they are required to provide your email address, both so that (1) … Read more