Open Badges Community Call October 8, 2014 http://bit.ly/CCOct8

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2. Gamification Tech.
Specially in relation to learning, OpenBadgesis one of the best options as an standard for gamification processes.
It is an standard to represent acquired competencesand skills, but also knowledge, aptitudes,etc.
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3. Context.
If we ask to everyone attending today’s conference about these badges (image), probably we could draw our own
conclusionsthanks to our visual culture: they are golden, geometric, artistic value, rounded, etc. But, could you
situate them on any geographicalcontext? In any age? Is it medieval? Civil or Military? European or Asian? What
is the message? Bets are accepted!!!
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4. Context.
In 1786 Great Britain broke a Peace Treaty launching a surprise attack against Spanish navy from Peru, destroying
the famous frigate “NuestraSeñora de las Mercedes” (being blown up in the middle of the image). Previously
shown golden badges are replicas from Spanish Almirants uniform whom participated in the dogfight.Any crew
member could identify the said badges and associatethem to rank (status)and knowledge (skills) of who wore
them, and asses the contextualvalue (ranking) of the badge itself.
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5. Context.
Image: 1915 Key. Guidance for Universal Structure of Badges
Analogic badges have always represented awarded/acquiredknowledge in a context, in a universe. Digital Badges
should not be an exception to this. Every badge is born within a context and as such, they are parameterized
within the limits of the information management system they belong. In other words, the badges universes are
limited to be the metaphor for the universes they have impact into. The agents which belong to these badges’
space of influence should, in fact, know the value of every badge in the system they are impacted by (meta-
knowledge).That leads to the generation of a map (no matter if it’s mental or written)which represents the real
mapped value (ranking / knowledge) of the symbol (the badge)
I.e., when we look at a policeman badge it should be clear to us that it is, indeed, a law enforcementagent. But, as
we don’t belong to the police space of influence/universeit might be difficultfor us to identify his specific rank
and profile (sargeant,anti-narcotics,etc.).
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6. Context.
A badge is integrated into a system because it is always the representationof the acquisition of something within
a value system and, at the same time, this system or universe of values is a metaphorical reflection of a system or
universe of real or metaphysical agents (knowledge / thoughts)and their relationshipsbetween them (ie. Military
badges represent army structure).
Without any relationship between badges themselves, they can not belong to any universe, so they have no
value, they all behave as isolated representationsor even just graphic artistic representationsimpossible to
identify. Every badge (digital or not) must be integrated within a system with relational identifierswhich
represent the knowledge provided and the agents involved in a parameterized way (maybe a manual, maybe a
code or digital metadata).
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7. Context.
Until now Mozilla Foundation and their colleagues have defined a very useful and complex structureof the badge
as a unit, a unitary entity. They have digitally shaped the knowledge acquisition,hence badge structure is
progressing well.
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8. Context.
Nevertheless,the technology behind Open Badges is not setting up a clear digital relation between the rest of the
system’s agents, meaning:
1- Badges with other Badges
2- Badges with Issuers
3- Badges with Signers
4- Badges with Earners
5- Etc.
Any Open Badge appears to be like complex and walled medieval cities.
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9. Context.
Even when linked metadata is starting to be risen in Open Badges technology, most of them behave as isolated
elements within a non-existentecosystem.
Badges are playing alone… We know they ‘use white clothe, they wear a baseball cap but… They need a team and
play against other teams’.
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10. Context.
Every analogic badge belongs to a system of values but… Could we say the same about the digital ones?
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11. The Problem: Fragmentation
Then the main problem with Open Badges is the fragmentation/ atomization,we mentioned in our article
(http://gecon.es/2014/09/09/openbadges-conocimiento-humano/)
Open Badges have got the best from both worlds:
1. Heritage from the analogic world of Badges,that is, the subjective graphic representationof skills /
competences / human Knowledge within a visual culture ecosystem (with agents who are familiar
with meta-knowledgeto interpret the meanings and hierarchy of the badges) and…
2. From the world of digital data. But this digital data should serve the purpose of defining not only
the Open Badge structure in relation to its own structurebut the relation of itself within a weight
and values ecosystem. Why? Because the benefitsfor the agents within the system the open
badges could define.
i.e. Each university worldwide would issue an Open Badge for every subject they are teaching we would live in a
17 millions of badges system. How do we know if a specific Mobile Marketing Curse’s Open Badge is more
valuable to us than another one? By doing by ourselves the work a computational algorithmshould have be done:
checking agents’information, taking a look on the educational organization,comparing with our profile and
interests,etc. Indeed generating in our mind the relational universe of the badges we’re reviewing, a kind of a
personal BadgeRank.This is exactly what we would like the universe of Open Badges to do for us automatically.
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12. Badge Universe.
At this moment we have the possibility to acquire Open Badges that, at this moment, they have a few added
value in comparison to a physical badge or credential (i.e. associationto a digital profile and the mobility this
means) But this is something that might be also done in a similar way be scanning oneself physical credentials and
sharing. In our opinion thanks to a universe of Open Badges we would add am essential differential value to
digital badges, a value way beyond analogic ones are worth.
We think the problem we are facing right now isn’t very different than the one faced Google when they designed
its PageRank,fruit of a research which had as objective to know what was more relevant in processesof dynamic
relationshipsbetween agents: webpages,search engines, users, etc.
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13. Badge Universe.
The Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructureexplains the logics of issuing and receiving an OpenBadge, but it doesn't
really translateinto an interlinked ecosystemor universe of Open Badges.And we need to generate this universe.
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14. Badge Universe.
We’ve stumped into Leibniz in an article by Joaquín Siabra in which he analysed an hyper complex system (the
game Dwarf Fortress) with the Monadology model of universe. In this case we realized the inevitability of badges
as representativesof acquired skills that will establish relationshipsbetween them all and, in turn, those links will
generate new spaces that will be plotted as cartographiesby the badges themselves because those spaces contain
the meaning of it’s place and it’s movements.
We would like to establish parallels between Leibniz’s theory and the ‘tagable’ knowledge thanks to OpenBadges:
• Knowledge is a metaphysic concept
• It’s dynamic
• It’s relational
• It’s representable
• It’s mapable
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15. Badge Universe.
Leibniz’s model of universe and existence by the means of monads made us think about Open Badges and how
they need to be related to other Open Badges in order to give meaning to themselves.Ontology, the study of
what exists has gone from metaphysics to computationaland information sciences,as a method and technology
of representingknowledge and portions of the reality in a way a computer can understand by the means of a well
specified vocabulary. Finally we end up in Linked-Data,as the way of publish and share data in a schema-less
world, that we need to couple with such a defined vocabulary set that allows the OpenBadge universe to exist as
one.
1. Linked-data standards:
RDF: resource description framework
URI: uniform resource identificator
2. “Vocabularies”(ontologies)standards:
RDFS: resource descriptionframework schema
Owl: Web Ontology language
Skos: simple knowledge organizationsystem
3. Query language for the universe of linked-dataresources:
SparQL: Protocol and RDF Query Language
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16. Badge Universe.
Badges have meaning and relations between them: hierarchy, associative,equivalent and other semantic
relations one might think of. This picture is a map of relations between topics, professors and universities
extracted from dbpedia, a linked-data resource, with which researchers from the university of Sydney computed
synthetic rankings of universities by measuring resources’ Information Content,meaning the quality of related
semantincs in the linked-data universe.
Meymandpour, R. and Davis, J.G., 2013. University Ranking Using Linked Open Data. In: C. Bizer, T. Heath,T.
Berners-Lee,M. Hausenblasand S. Auer, eds., Proceedingsof the WWW2013Workshop on Linked Data on the
Web. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: CEUR-WS.org.
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17. Badge Universe. A new badge anatomy… Standardizing educative resources and it’s agents.
In the article we have proposed a first approximation to Open Badges spatialization,stablishingrelationships
between the elements of the anatomy (metadata + graphic). To pointing that it should evolve into something
more complex that what actually is. This is why we have divided the conceptualspace of Knowledge(in a very first
approach) in three vectors: fields, competencesand categories (followingCharla Long’s schema). Into this schema
an issued Open Badge would be the reflection of the acquisitionof such those (field, competence and category)
both in its metadata and graphical representation.
OpenBadges then would define:
• The Badge Space/Universe around itself
• Relationshipsbetween them
• Status of involved agents:
• Educationcenters
• Students
• Teachers
• Courses
• etc.
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18. Following Steps.
We are well aware about the necessity of a thoughtfulanalysis in many fronts:
• To get knowledge about Open Badge universe and Gamification
• Standardizationof educative resources and it’s agents (metaphysicalontology)
• Computationalmodelling (computationalontology, graphs and algorithms)
We are working in both the first steps to establish a relationshipbetween all involved agents to define the
weighting of Open Badges and the needed ontology (et al.). About the third step we are being aided by the
ComputationalAlgorithm Research Group of University of Almeria (Spain).
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19. The Utopia.
We would like the Open Badges Universe to be a space where we could move around (followingvery clear
learning pathways thanks to BadgeRank),eating (earning Open Badges)and growing (incorporatingOpen Badges
to our Status level)
Image: flOw game by Jenova Chen (Thatgamecompany,2006).
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