Bob Harrison's blog

What’s in a badge?

Badges mean lots of things to lots of people but Tim Riches, the man behind DigitalMe,  sums up their meaning:

“They have the power to motivate learners to produce work they are proud of and provide meaningful recognition for their achievements”.

I met Tim at the recent Whole Education conference in Leeds and he filled me in on his journey so far.

Co-founder of the successful Radiowaves project, he is committed to supporting learners to make the transition “from content consumers to creators”. One of the first sets of Mozilla Open Badges is being developed out of the successful DigitalMe project “Supporter to Reporter” (S2R), a sports website created by young people.

Networks and workforce development the answer to ICT challenges not Westminster

The landscape for ICT in education has seen significant changes in the last year. Schools, Colleges and Universities are coming to terms with a very different economic, political and technological climate and environment.

Gone or reformed are the big state quangos, ring fenced funding, a harnessing technology strategy, research funding and the capacity and capability of local authority interventions has been significantly diminished.

The advances in technology, however, including bigger and faster broadband, cheaper and more sophisticated portable devices, more robust wireless networks and longer battery life has been welcomed by some teachers and lecturers as they believe it will help them engage and motivate learners in a variety of different learning environments.