[newmaint-site] Has anyone thought of badges?

[Nicolas Guilbert]

Hi all,

I recently came across the notion of digital or open badges [1][2] and 
immediately thought they would fit in very well with an accreditation system 
for Debian contributions.

There are in my view a lot of pros, some of which are:

 * there seems to be a mature and solid technological support for the 
accreditation mechanism

 * the system conveys authentic credit, much more credible better than what 
you would find in a text-based CV

 * encourages and credits lifelong learning


Could be there are some cons as well, see e.g. [3] featuring the argument that 
only superficial skills can be accredited in this way, not deep learning. I 
personally disagree on that point, since badges issued "manually" could of 
course encompass deep skills as well.


[1] http://openbadges.org/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_badges
[3] http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/

Cheers,


 Nicolas

-- 
Nicolas Guilbert

"Intelligence: property of a life form capable of outliving its planet of 
origin"