Presentation scheduled for 3:00 PM EDT on Nov 19th.
Your Name and Title:
Szymon Machajewski, Affiliate Professor
School or Organization Name:
Grand Valley State University,
University of the People
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: West Michigan, US
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Faculty, Curriculum Builders, School Administrators
Short Session Description (one line):
Grades and degrees are localized and often difficult to compare across schools, countries, and cultures. Skill based badges have international appeal through graphically oriented symbolism and open framework of assessment. Educators can adopt learning objects and activities created anywhere in the world and have students gather electronic badges as the evidence of their completion.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Education is faced with a question about the value of formal degrees. In one country almost 10% of long-term unemployed are reported to remove university credentials from their resume. They do so in hope to avoid the risk of being overqualified for existing opportunities. While degrees do convey information about people’s skills, they often tend to be abstracted from the actual learning that has occurred. Two people with the same degree may have taken very different learning pathways or developed different skills. Many people without a formal degree possess a vast set of job-relevant skills. Badges help by providing a more complete picture, recognizing a more granular set of skills.
Mozilla Open Badges also help to connect educators who create learning activities, implement them in their curriculum, and collaborate on them. They allow educators to share their learning objects and reuse them. The value of badges as mini-credentials is in representing specific skills. Such credentials become a common evidence across classrooms and cultures. The design of a badge alone, which is based on a graphical representation, speaks an international language. It can be easily understood by student's parents in any country, and by employers who can verify criteria and requirements proving the acquired skills.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqVidWPVBKA
Replies
Please add more language that makes it clear how your topic ties to the mission of our conference. We are not a general education nor a technology conference. Review our mission:http://www.globaleducationconference.com/notes/The_GEC_Mission_Stat... and then edit your proposal by going to the OPTIONS button in the upper righthand side of this proposal.
Thanks,
Lucy Gray
Conference Co-Chair