By Meris Stansbury, eSchool News
Government, industry launch nationwide call to innovators to create ‘digital badges’ that can verify digital skills. TopCoder, an adviser for the MacArthur Foundation’s competition, currently has a badge system for its community members that validates skills and competencies. How can schools accurately measure and categorize a student’s 21st-century skills? The MacArthur Foundation hopes to solve this problem with a new competition that calls on participants to create what is known as a “digital badge.” Digital badges and the digital badge system would, advocates say, help define the skills and knowledge students pick up in an informal way, such as through internships, online courses, open courseware, competitions, and much more. Mozilla, which is partnering with the MacArthur Foundation to announce the $2 million Digital Media and Learning Competition, said the badge system “will let you gather badges from any site on the internet, combining them into a story about what you know and what you’ve achieved. … This sort of badge collection may eventually become a central part of [one’s] online reputation, helping you get a job, find collaborators, and build prestige.”
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/10/11/digital-badges-could-help-measure-21st-century-skills/
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