Blog Post 6

 The Chronicle of Higher Education's article 'A Future of Badges' by Kevin Carey was an interesting read.  In the article, Carey introduces the concept of 'digital badges.'  Mozilla, along with John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, are sponsoring a competition for the development of digital "open badges."  The MacArthur Foundation says that digital badges are, "a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality or interest."  Basically, the first thing I thought of  when I read about these badges for certain accomplishments was video games.  On many video game systems, you get a badge for completing certain tasks in certain games.  This would be a great motivator/reward system in an elementary classroom, but I'm not entirely sure about the idea of using an open badge system for higher education.  Although it seems like a great organizational tool to have all of your accomplishments, grades, documents, and other academic feats in one place, it doesn't seem as though there could ever be a legitimate program to carry out this system. There are quite a few people out there who are very experienced hackers that would have no problem forging a couple badges here and there.  I guess where I am getting at is, how is it going to be validated and how can we be sure that it won't be hacked?

As far as using digital badges in the classroom, I stated before that it could be a great motivator/reward system to have.  For example, a teacher could have a chart in his/her room with a list of accomplishments, good deeds, and good behavior along with the names of all of the students.  So, if a student does a good deed 5 times in one week, they get a digital badge, or if a student gets a B or higher on 3 tests in a row, they get a digital badge.  All the students' badges can be displayed on their classroom webpage where they (and their parents) can visit it frequently.