Badges in the Classroom

Positives -
1. Motivational
2. Assessment without grades
3. Able to communicate achievements

Negatives -
1. Extrinsic motivation
2. A piece of the "gamification" of education movement (*not a negative in my mind, but is in some)
3. Can be difficult to achieve standardization and/or recognition by others

STEM scouts is working towards creating badges to demonstrate student achievements in technology.

Well-designed & well-planned

Mozilla Open Badges is attempting to create a system whereby badges can be created an authenticated. These badges are designed to follow a person through their entire life - a visual certification system, if you will. To a simple code tinkerer like myself, it doesn't look like a feasible option for me to use... yet.

In the individual classroom, how can badges be used? Most students maintain an ePortfolio (my students build theirs using Google Sites) where badges could be displayed. At this point, there is not a simple way to create and distribute meaningful badges. Although Edmodo does allow teachers to award badges to students, these badges appear to be more like stickers praising achievements than a way to showcase skills. I want a widget for my students' ePortfolios where they can display badges that I have unlocked.

I plan to spend some time researching and playing with badges this summer. I'd like to use them in my English classroom to demonstrate when students have mastered certain skills (i.e. writing a polished essay). This may mean playing with coding myself to attempt to create a user-friendly app.

Will these badges be motivational? What are your thoughts?