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Thorough article summarising the main issues teachers need to be aware of

An Etherpad list of research papers and articles pertaining to Open Badges, maintained by Carla Cassilli

Article discussing Badges, their background, examples of use and how you might introduce them in your setting.

"Erin Knight, leader of an education-badge project run by the Mozilla Foundation that provides a platform for students to display such badges on their Web sites, argues that grades shift students' goals from learning to earning, because the stakes are so high when the result of an entire course is reduced to a single letter."

"Advocates of this vision for K-12 contend that such badges could help bridge educational experiences that happen in and out of school, as well as provide a way to recognize "soft skills" such as leadership and collaboration. Badges could paint a more granular and meaningful picture of what a student actually knows than a standardized-test score or a letter grade, they say."

"Will digital badges ever really be accepted as proof of mastering a subject?"

"I admit this title makes a pretty bold statement for a society that pretty much uses the first five letters of the alphabet to define every child from about age 5 until adulthood. But, I am hearing more and more about the use of badges in the classroom, especially in conversations about gamification and self motivation."

"... digital badges are actually portals that lead to large amounts of information about what their bearers know and can do. They are also being used to improve education itself, by borrowing techniques from video games that keep users playing, until they advance to the next level." - NYTimes.com

"Blogging is one of the eventual realization of web 2.0 technologies. It is the driving engine behind this online information revolution. Thousands of blogs are created everyday and for different purposes. Some people blog to make money, some to share their voice with the world, some to immortalize their life events and diaries, and others blog just to vex and scam people."

Commentary piece by Kevin Carey in The Chronicle of Higher Education. As is often the case, the comments are equally worth reading!

From the EDUCAUSE 7 Things ... series - "a different approach to credentials, one that places the focus on individual students and their learning accomplishments."