While doing some research on badges, I’ve found some more avenues to explore and examine to better understand the facets of the thinking about badges.

 A few interesting websites/articles:

CNBC -- TheInternet May Be the Key to Managing Runaway College Costs

Although the thinking on this article isn’t exactly new, I find the very succinct way that badges are linked with university education as a means for avoiding escalating tuition costs.

 

Digital Media + Learning Competition 4 -- Competition Winners

I’m really excited to take a better look at what these projects actually entailed, and what the results can inspire for the Mormon Badges project. Winners include Girl Scouts, 4-H and Disney-Pixar.

 Fast Company -- Disney-Pixar, NASA, MozillaPartner On Badges To Shape The Future Of Learning

This article dicusses the Digital Media + Learning Competition above and its winners. I like the idea that they emphasize with badges that, "In a digital platform you have an opportunity to connect learning in a way that's organic."

NY Times – Show Me Your Badge

This is one of the most comprehensive explanations of what badges are and why they’re currently relevant that I’ve yet to see. I am particularly interested in the groups they listed such as Carnegie Mellon University, the Smithsonian and Intel.

 

Forbes -- Why Get a Pricey Diploma When a Bleepin' Badge Will Do?

This article again covers the future of badges, but they talk a lot about the future of badges with the career market. A different angle to a familiar topic.

All in all, I'm discovering more and more about how other projects are starting to use badges. There's still a lot of work to be done, but there really are a lot interesting projects beginning right now.

Evaluating Intent in (Mormon) Badges

An interesting topic that came up, while I was at the Mormon Badges’ presentation at the Mormon Media Studies Symposium on Friday, is how do we ensure that badges are being created and used for the right reasons. An astute audience member asked about how we can keep badges within a church setting from becoming a competition, or just earning badges in order to show off and be the most “spiritual.” While this is an issue we’d considered in passing, bringing it up at the conference has prompted me to think more about the issue, and how we can avoid this problem.

Ultimately, I think the answer is that this issue can’t be completely prevented, but we can encourage using badges for the right reasons. As I’ve come to understand and use badges more and more,  I really see that the essential feature is how they are so easy to share, not only the badge itself but also the concepts and learning that is being done. A badge isn’t just proof of credibility. Instead it can be a facilitator for meaningful conversation and sharing, and I really feel it will be a powerful tool for encouraging online learning and eventually online missionary work.

That being said, I think the emphasis with badges needs to be on why we are creating them and what purpose will they serve. Obviously there are possible uses for badges that would just cause problems, like giving public badges for doing your Home Teaching or Visiting Teaching each month. I could really see that escalating into a who is more righteous contest with public “proof” displayed online. But instead of this, I think we need to be creating badges that help people learn more, whether it’s about secular or religious topics, and to talk about what they’re learning whether it’s with friends, collogues or family.

In the end, they may still be abuse of the system, but I really feel like badges have the capability to do so much good, especially within the context of Mormonism and the LDS Church. Badges are able to motivate, educate and facilitate online sharing and proselyting, and by emphasizing these aspects I think much of these problems will be avoided.

Copyright and the Open Movement

This weekend I’ve had some time to think more about a subject I discussed at the beginning of the semester: copyright and the open movement. The more I’ve written and learned about digital culture over the last few months, the more I’ve been able to see the value of the open movement and all that it has to teach us. Through the work I’ve been doing with badges, I’ve been exploring the power of the open education movement and how open learning allows more freedom and diversity in learning.

Yet a topic I’m still learning about is the application of copyright with the open movement, especially through the creative commons license. After talking about some of the specifics of digital copyright on Thursday, I wanted to learn more about how this specific lisence works. Although I found this website , I also appreciate this more thorough description from Open Content Licensing: From Theory to Practice:

“The open source movement has inspired a variety of similar distribution models in the realms of science, culture and art, which are commonly referred to as ‘open access’ or ‘open content’. In fact, the open content movement perceives the current copyright regime as the major obstacle to creative activity. This new licensing model purports to rectify the shortcomings of the copyright regime by allowing, through contracts, increased access to and use of artistic and scientific works. Among the numerous licensing models based on open content, the most successful application so far is the Creative Commons initiative (creativecommons .org), which was set up initially in the United States, but is now rapidly spreading across the globe. While the current copyright regime is serving the needs of intermediaries, the open content licensing model, especially the Creative Commons license, is directed mostly to individual authors. Creative Commons has developed a series of standard-form licenses that allow authors of literary, musical or audiovisual works to permit wide dissemination and transformative uses of their works, without forfeiting copyright. While copyright law creates the default rule of All Rights Reserved, making permission necessary for each and every use of a work, Creative Commons seeks to facilitate an environment in which Some Rights Reserved or even No Rights Reserved become the norm.”

I can only imagine if the Creative Commons License becomes even more popular and prevalent. Although there are still issues, it’s powerful to utilize a system where the most beneficially qualities of the internet are capitalized upon: the power of collaboration and cooperation.  There are still a number of situations where this system doesn’t and won’t apply, but the way it utilizes the best qualities of the open movement, with an emphasis on authority through transparency, is vitally important. I hope to continue to look more at how the internet and copyright can develop to meet each other’s needs, but I feel like the Creative Commons License is a powerful start.

Integrating Badges with Personal Progress

One of the ideas we’d like to see considered for integrating badges within the LDS Church is with the Personal Progress program. I had some time this weekend to look at how the system has already been expanded online, where girls can find the entire program, report their progress, and fill out journals for the different experiences and projects. The more I looked through the new website, the more impressed I was with how easy and accessible the system has become since it has been moved online.

Yet I can also see badges filling a gap in the system that’s already been established. Right now the website allows girls to sign in with their lds.org account, and then they establish their record and they can create a number of online journal entries. The system even allows for projects and experiences to be approved by the girl’s parent or leader. Yet I think if badges where mixed in, perhaps with a quick quiz checking that all the requirements have been met as well as the online journal assignments that are already integrated in the system, the girl could receive a badge which could then be shared across multiple platforms (such as their social media platforms). Badges would then provide authentication for the girl’s learning or experience as well as concrete proof that she could share with her friends and family. Not only would she be working towards her Young Women’s Medallion, but she could also share the different steps in her process and the gospel principles she is learning about.

We decided to make a prototype of what such a quiz for Faith Experience #1 could look like (linked to HERE), since we feel this would be such an important way to use technology to facilitate spiritual growth and facilitate participation. We’ve yet to make the formal badge (such as our previous badg.us badge) since this is such a specilized badge, but we still feel this is an option that must be considered. 

I'd love to hear your feedback on how we can better integrate badges with the Personal Progress Program. It already seems like such a useful tool for making the system even easier, as well as fascilitating sharing the gospel (or progress in the program) with friends and loved ones!

The Future of Badges and the LDS Church

With my time working on the Mormon Badges Project, I’ve already been able to see how powerful a tool badges, and open-educational resources, can be. Although we’re still in the process of working out a lot of the technicalities of badges, I really see them as a powerful and exciting tool for the future. With my work on this project, we’ve been primarily focusing on the power of badges to help correct misconceptions about the LDS Faith, but I think there really is a lot of potential for these types of systems to be applied on a larger scale throughout the LDS church.

One place I can see badges integrating well is with the Personal Progress program or Duty to God programs, which are geared toward youth ages 12-18. These two programs are already based off of a system of completing a number of assignments and receiving “credentials” based off of set requirements. Why not use badges as a way to formalize this system, especially since it has all moved online? Through linking the actual credentialing, with say their lds.org account, I could see it being really beneficial for the youth to be able to share what they’re learning about with their friends, family and peers online.

Another area that could have a lot of impact is with teaching members how to better use online tools for proselyting. I could really see the Church putting out a number of badges about how to share about the Gospel online, and these could be as simple as creating a Mormon.org profile or sharing a thought about General Conference on their Facebook account.

There are many other places within the Church that badges could be applied someday, and I really feel that this an important tool to consider. Although this system is still relatively new and developing, I really feel that open learning, and badges specifically, are a resource that is going to prove more and more important both for the Church and the future of learning.

Authenticity and Badges

While doing more research on badges this afternoon, I stumbled upon this article on The Chronicle of Higher Education called “A Future Full of Badges.” The author is discussing the new methods of credentialing that are becoming available, and he introduces badges as a potential way around traditional educational structures. I really like how he explains the link between credentials and traditional degrees, as well as the potential badges pose to get around these more restrictive structures.  The author states that:

“Instead, the value of the traditional degree comes mostly from the presumed general authority of the granting institution—and the fact that traditional colleges have a legally enforced near-monopoly over the production of credentials that are widely accepted for the purposes of getting a job or pursuing advanced education. ‘

‘Open systems tend to blow such lucrative arrangements apart. The doomed effort of for-profit academic publishers to maintain their grip on prestigious scholarly journals is one example. The imminent demise of the physical textbook market is another. Open badges won't be controlled by incumbent institutions with a vested financial interest in limiting the supply of valuable credentials.’

‘When that happens, it will create hardship for traditional institutions that now use the revenue generated from their undergraduate-credential franchise to subsidize the cost of graduate education, administration, scholarship, and other activities. But society as a whole will benefit enormously. The store of human capital will be more broadly and accurately represented by credentials that are useful in a mobile, interconnected world. Separating the credentialing and teaching functions of higher education allows organizations to specialize in one or the other.”

While this does touch upon many ideas I’ve already mentioned, I think this is a very good way to describe the future of badges, especially through a separation of teaching and credentialing. This does lead to one of the main questions I’ve heard about the authority represented by badges and how these can have the same weight as an academic degree. While we’re obviously not there yet, I think it’s vital to separate the skills and ideas that are learned within a degree from the actual piece of paper. Badges allow anyone to demonstrate their knowledge through clear criteria, and open access to the requirements and even work, so that it is not just those with a degree that can demonstrate that yes they’ve learned how to do skill x. Instead anyone, anywhere can learn these skills from real experts (whether they have a degree or not), and as long as there is clear documentation of how and where this work was done, badges provide the necessary proof to solidify these skills into something marketable.

While this does lead to potential problems regarding this openness, especially as anyone anywhere can create their own courses, I think this is also the key factor that makes everything work. Through this openness there must be equally open means of verifying authenticity and the depth of the course offered, and this then means that authority can exist anywhere as long as this openness is also there.

Mid-term Reflections

In the course of the last nearly two months of the Fall Semester, I have really enjoyed being able to explore digital culture through BYU’s English 326. Although I have struggled as I’ve attempted to adapt to the classes structure, which is built around the idea of self-directed learning, it has already been very impactful for me to learn more about the potentials (and risks) of new technologies within our digital culture and seeing how I can better adapt these ideas into my own life.

 

The idea of self-directed learning has been one of the most difficult parts of the course for me to grasp and really apply so far, but I have already come to see that this is an invaluable skill that allows me to focus on what’s most interesting to me and what is most meaningful for what I’m interested in. I have really appreciated the freedom this course has given me to research topics that I find interesting such as intellectual property, open content, the open education movement and even a little bit of programming. Rather than being forced into a strict structure, this has allowed me to expand my knowledge and come to learn about a lot of different topics that really are fascinating. I have also been able to build upon the general and often foundational principles that we’ve discussed in class. I’ve been really fascinated to learn about subjects such as crowdsourcing and seeing a glimpse of the potential for this method, as well as the concept of how niche markets are developing through the idea of the “Long Tail”, and also how the Church is applying these technological advancements in new and innovative ways. I hope to be able to learn more about intellectual property (specifically how to use common content licenses as well as copyright material online, specifically through blogging).

 

It has been fascinating to mix more traditional literature based assignments with the identity and exploration I have begun through Google+ and blogging. I began the semester reading the non-fiction book, The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns. This book not only has taught me a lot about intellectual property and the different problems and questions it raises, but perhaps more importantly this book helped me to better understand how our technological problems relate to the same issues people dealt with hundreds of years ago. While there are obviously numerous differences, intellectual property is an interesting example because it ties back to the problems with the printing press and copyright throughout print culture. Johns writing really helped me to see how connected we still are with print culture, and how the solutions to our intellectual property dilemmas today really can illuminated through an examination of past solutions.

 

Likewise, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina has helped me to better understand how technology and society relate and how deeply they influence one another. It really has surprised me as I’ve examined this book through with an eye for details relating to digital culture, how deeply Tolstoy’s writing really does relate back to the issues today that arise with our own technological advancements. I really see a connection with the idea of balance and a clear need for moderation and control with our digital lives now, just as Anna’s world required a balance through social interactions and relations with an often corrupt society. With both these works, I’ve appreciated the chance to apply them to my thoughts and writings here on my blog as well as throughout my other assignments (and especially my group projects). Rather than a traditional essay or writing assignment, I like how this allows me to truly incorporate and apply my thinking to everything else I’m doing, which allows me to bring a more interesting context to my other work.

 

As I’ve been able to bring the context provided by my reading to the concepts I’ve explored through my own research and learning in class, I have been incredibly benefited by being able to interact with other students through blogs and Google+. Although I am definitely much more familiar with the research model of doing everything myself without a lot of outside input, it has already been helpful to try out my ideas through online discussions as well as gaining new insights and ideas from interacting with others work. Although I hope to be able to continue to get social proof for my ideas, I’ve already seen how important this idea is. This has been especially true with my part in the group project, where I’ve been able to expand my own ideas through collaboration with my group and the rest of the class.