Project Title: Badge Bakers for Mormons and Middle Schoolers
Description: For our group project we will be exploring, creating, and ultimately distributing badges for two venues. The first objective is to create a badge system to certify that individuals have learned basic aspects of our LDS faith (e.g. Polygamy ended a long time ago, 2 year missions, 10% tithing etc.) while the second objective targets an 8th grade English classroom where we will explore the impact and use of badges in a formal educational environment as well as how badges can be best designed to motivate learners of all ages.
Project Members:
Social Proof:
a. Social Proof: Badges, general
Leah MacVie
Active P2PU user and course designer, PhD student and Instructional Designer. She has been active in researching Mozilla Open Badges and in wanting to forward their progress.
Chrissi Nerantzi (took Leah MacVie's P2PU course on Open Badges)
Academic Developer for teaching and learning at the University of Salford. She works with instructional design and has been involved in a project with badges for the university.
Carla Casilli
Project Lead for Mozilla’s Open Badges. She blogs here fairly regularly about the project and especially about badge system design in an effort to narrow in on best practices.
Sunny Lee
Project Manager and Partner Manager at Mozilla Open Badges. She is an active Twitter user and often discusses Mozilla’s efforts in promoting badges.
Peter Rawsthorne
Contractor for the Open Badges and Ignite Learning Labs at Mozilla. Spends some time on this blog discussing the open badges concept.
P2PU Blog
From VanessaG on the progress of the DML badges competition and other aspects of P2PU’s involvement with and promotion of badges.
James Sanders
b. Social Proof: Mormon-non-Mormon Relations
J. Spencer Fluhman
Mormon history professor at BYU. Specializes in Mormon-non-Mormon relations. He wrote the book A Peculiar People: Antimormonism and the Shaping of American Religion. Recently he’s appeared on NBC to talk about Mormonism and also authored an opinion piece on anti-Mormonism in the New York Times.
Simon Critchley, author of “Why I Love Mormonism” in the New York Times
Wrote the opinion piece “Why I Love Mormonism” in the New York Times on September 15. He’s surprisingly well informed for a non-member and reportedly corrects friends when they make misinformed comments about the church. Teaches philosophy at some university.
The More Good Foundation
A non-profit organization run by church members to help other members spread the gospel over the Internet. They probably have a lot of good ideas of how to publicize our project. They run several websites that host information about the Church, including http://www.understandingmormonism.org/. Their content will probably be useful to us as we write our badge curricula.
Dr. Matthew B. Bowman
Recently authored the book The Mormon People: the Making of an American Faith. He also made an appearance on NBC’s show “Rock Center” to correct some misconceptions about Mormon doctrine from the Broadway Musical The Book of Mormon. He is a church member and currently teaches religion at Hampden-Sydney College.
Literature Review
a. Blog Posts exploring related topics:
Katie Cannon Wilkie -- My Digital Blog
Greg Williams -- The Relevant Classroom
Ellis Dyck-- Digital Northwest Passage
Jessica Lees -- Finding Meaning in a Digital World
b. Books as potential resources:
1. Education in a Digital World : Global Perspectives on Technology and Education -- Neil Selwyn (2013) (ebrary). Within this book, Selwyn discusses the necessity of technology in education, whether it is related to formal education or more informal pursuits (aka general interests, pursuits and hobbies ). Through making this separation, this paves the way for resources like badges as a means of addressing multiple kinds of learning and situations online.
2. Looking Toward the Future of Technology-Enhanced Education : Ubiquitous Learning and the Digital Native -- Martin Ebner and Mandy Schiefner (2009) (ebrary). Looks at how technology and specifically web 2.0 can be adapted to meet the needs of a growingly digital world and increasingly “native” generation online. Discusses the need for open educational resources (aka badges) as a means of addressing the needs of students formally or informally.
3. World Is Open : How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education -- Curtis J. Bonk (2009) (ebrary). How learning through online open tools of education can become a key driver of world economy, and how the principle of being able to learn “anything from anyone” will lead to a more robust and connected economy and world.
Relevant Literary Works
1. The Importance of Being Earnest
Misinformation or lack of information about Mormonism causes problems for the Church and can be frustrating to members. In Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, misinformation and lack of information about the characters creates problems.
As a baby, Jack was found abandoned inside a handbag in a train station. Lady Bracknell is unwilling to let Jack marry her daughter Gwendolyn because she doesn’t know who his parents are. Even though she has known him for some time, she doesn’t feel she really knows him because she lacks basic information about his identity.
Similarly, the LDS church often faces mistrust, as Jack did, because many people are ignorant of basic facts about our religion. Some people may even casually know several Mormons, but be distrustful of the religion because they don’t know what it is about.
In the play, Jack has made up a fictitious wayward younger brother named Earnest as an excuse for going to town often to “help his brother.” His ward, Cecily, falls for this fake younger brother without ever having met him. Later, Algernon meets Cecily and pretends to be Ernest and they fall in love. However, because she is misinformed about his identity, Algernon must keep the name of Ernest or lose his relationship with her. Some of his problems might have been solved if Cecily had not been misinformed about his identity.
Likewise, misinformation about the Church also causes problems. False information, when believed, can scare, anger, or disgust non-members. And a lack of information, like Cecily’s lack of information about Algernon, allows misinformation to continue spread.
Of course, while more correct information can help correct misconceptions about the church, misconceptions will always exist. Some people just aren’t willing to check facts or to give up incorrect preconceptions. In the play, both Cecily and Gwendolyn who insist on marrying men named Ernest; the actual identity of their husbands is unimportant. There will always be people who insist the Church is a cult, no matter how much evidence is offered to the contrary.
Tolstoy within Anna Karenina provides a useful framework for understanding the change in our world, whether he was addressing yesterday’s problems or the problems of one hundred years ago. His vividly depicted characters, who are torn between right and wrong, and change and tradition, become the watermark for seeing our own culture and its unique problems. Through each difficult, conflicted decision that Tolstoy portrays, the author’s voice reaches across the years with a voice of warning, caution and hope.
Now while Tolstoy definitely wasn’t writing about the digital age, I see that he was providing clear guidelines as to how to deal with the social aspects, as well as the other symptoms of change, that occur within our rapidly evolving digital society. The most noticeable of these social aspects is different family and marital relationships around which the book is based. Most obviously is the failing relationship between Anna and her husband, which is contrasted with Levin and his new wife. Interestingly these relationships strengthen or fail in response to the degrees of cultural isolation or over-exposure from the rapidly evolving world of Russia in the late nineteenth century. I think it is very telling that Anna ends her own life through the means of one of the most important technological innovations of her time: the train.
Just as Anna’s tragic fall and ultimate death reflects a need for balance in our relationships with technology, the same could be applied to the need for balance in our methods of education and the use of new forms and mediums of technology.
Anna, and the other main characters throughout the novel, must learn to navigate an increasing technological and confusing world which is exemplified through their chaotic social lives. The same problems and challenges can be applied to the need for adapting to our world of education and digital literacy. Through examining how to harness the new digital mediums, whether it is the open education movement or the idea that we’re championing of badges, it is vital to be able to navigate how to learn and connect online. The idea of badges becomes a new way to gain information, without complete immersion in a full traditional educational course that allows for people to explore the digital world without being overexposed.
The need for balance is absolutely crucial as new educational means become part of the increasing digital literacy movement, such as badges, which are an attempt to find the balance between utilizing digital capacities while still harnessing the traditional patterns of education. Within the “society” online, badges are a means of exploring without the overexposure to technology and the changing social world that becomes so fatal to Anna herself in the novel. These new ideas are important as they attempt to bridge the gap of online education and offline traditional school experiences. As we explore these new education ideas and movements, they are a powerful way of avoiding the tragic side effects of overexposure to technology and social change, which ultimately become the downfall of Anna and her social world.
One of the big questions the digital age has brought with it is whether our time spent online and using digital media is distancing us from reality. If this were not a valid concern, fewer people would be thinking and talking about it. The truth is, it is a serious concern that should be periodically considered.
But while iPhones, laptops, and online networks are all recent developments in our world, the problem of humans distancing themselves from reality is not. Humans have long found ways to isolate themselves from those around them, and people have for years discovered methods of distancing themselves from their problems in "real life." James Barrie, in his well-loved book Peter Pan, discusses this concept of distancing. Neverland is his representation of the escape back into childhood, back into the imaginary life that seemed so tangible before adult responsibilities settled in. In many ways, Neverland can be viewed as a parallel to the internet--a venue for escape from reality.
In Peter Pan, after Wendy, John and Michael have flown with Peter to Neverland and have met the lost boys, Wendy becomes concerned that John and Michael are losing reality--losing all their memories from back home. John seemed to remember his parents only as people he had once known, and Michael had begun to believe that Wendy was his mother (68). In order to combat their forgetfulness, Wendy begins holding lessons and tests them on their knowledge of home. Her tests include questions, such as "What was the colour of Mother's eyes?" and essays, prompting the children to "Write...on How I spent my last Holidays" or to "Describe the Kennel and its Inmate."
Although Wendy's lessons (which usually fail) seem silly, there are things here we can use in thinking about losing reality in the digital age. How do we keep ourselves grounded?
The internet is not going away. Because of this, it may be wise to consider solutions within digital media, rather than outside it. Maybe the solution is to stop thinking of digital media as the problem and start thinking of it as the solution--as a way to enhance interactions in reality rather than damage them. A good example of this is education. Many school teachers and administrators in the past have thought of electronic devices and digital media as a distraction and hindrance to education. But what if these mediums and tools could enhance educational experience and actually serve to ground students more fully in reality?
If teachers can begin to use social media, blogging, and other online tools to involve students more fully in their schoolwork, and to invite them to think about learning outside of school, they will be providing more links from the online world to reality. The more students have their "real life" interactions and tasks paralleled in and connected with the online world, the more teachers can use the internet as a helpful tool rather than fighting it as a bothersome distraction.
Format(s) and Audience(s)
Success Criteria
Success Criteria: Mormon Badges Project
- Create at least 4 Mormon badges offer basic information about Church doctrines and clarification of common misconceptions. Each badge should take between 5 and 15 minutes to complete.
- Create a Youtube video to promote Mormon badges and make other efforts to publicize the project, using the enormous Mormon presence online as an asset.
- Reach a minimum of 200 people, the majority non-members, who have earned at least one badge.
Success Criteria: Education side
Perhaps the most poignant indicator of success for the educational aspect of this project is if the 8th graders seek out, do the work for, and accumulate a variety of badges. Beyond this objective, if there is a noticeable rise in knowledge aptitude from the teacher for a given student (e.g. they are scoring better in areas where they previously struggled) or an increase in student self-directed learning, we will feel successful too.
Another criterion for the success of this project (regardless of the success of the badges themselves) will be the quality of our reports of the experiment as we go along. The better we document the project, the more use our experiment will be for future badgers.
Our
success for this project can be determined judging by the percentage of
students (out of 150 students) seeking out and earning the badges, as
well as by discussions with the teacher to know if students earning the
badges are performing better or at least enjoying their online learning.
How will this be measured?
Prototypes