"After 18 months in the darkness of beta world, Mozilla's Open Badges project stepped out into the light recently with the unveiling of Open Badges 1.0.
But will the concept of organizations bestowing their own virtual endorsements for the mastery of skills hold up to critical examination from a world that, even in an information economy, demands most of its skilled workers hold a framed degree?"
" Reward-motivated learning: Mesolimbic activation precedes memory formation provides easy to read findings to support the claim that rewards promote learning. The reward structure seems to have many positive effects not only on learning, but on the learner's personal development. Learners are able to gain confidence and develop openness to others through virtual games and the reward system."
"Open Badges enable you to connect different types of learning to each other. The whole point of connected learning by definition -- by the name itself -- is to find a way to connect things. To do that, we need something that will carry that information across sectors. In the connected learning vision, I see badges as the connectors between different spheres. Badges play the role of a currency where learning can be captured, recognized, and then communicated across those lines."