What are they?
Have you ever heard of Open Badges (Badges4Good)? Or Badge Wallet? If not, you might feel totally confused about what IS it. What does it even mean „Badge“?
Badge might look like online star, coin, face or combination of symbols generally in a round format. It is used to evaluate tasks you have accomplished or to encourage you to reach for better results.
Imagine the game where you have to collect the stars or arrive at 1st, 2nd, 3rd level to get a Prise – The Badge that looks like a Star, Coin or a Medal. You make some task or group of tasks and get a Prise  (a Badge) for it. As soon as you have certain amount of the Badges, you get a bigger – more importan one.
The only difference is that the Badges I‘m talking about are not used in game, but in trainings, seminars, even work-places.
Where can these Open Badges be used?
They can be used in different backrounds and for various purposes. As in a game, so in trainings, seminars or work-places they are evaluation of the tasks you‘ve accomplished.
Main goal of Open Badges is to motivate people to do better and get the positive feedback about the good job they‘ve been doing, the improvement of their skills, to encourage them to do even better, to be more creative and also to have a system of evaluation for personel, volunteers or youth. Also, it can be adapted to different frameworks, such as skills developed according to Youth Pass framework. It actually depends on the goals of the training and what you want to teach or what exact field you want to encourage people in.
If you are asking yourself how Open badges can motivate you, imagine playing a game and getting that satisfying rush in your veins, once you get 1000 golden coins or one more star because you have accomplished a goal that game has given you in a first place.
Examples clearly show that possibilities to use Open Badges are basically infinite and depending on field we use them in, we can find different shapes and uses of them. Main point of Open Badges is to give the feedback of how far you‘ve come in order to motivate you go even further.
E.g. if you are learning languages and you want to Speak well in that language, after every 5 lessons you have a test and you get a Badge, once you reached 20 Badges – it means you reached a higher level and you get a Big Badge to evidence it.
Another example, like in a first picture, there are certain tasks to reach universal, world-goals, like good health and well-being. Some organizations focus on that and they have specific tasks for tehir emploees to be healthier, e.g. they have mini-gym in their company or team goes on a hikes, cycling trips or exercising time together. For each improvement they do (eat healthier, exercise, drink water or other) they get a Badge. After 10, 20 or more Badges they get a Badge of „ Healthiest team-member“ or similar.
Similar open Badge system can be used in organizations in order to develop soft-skills or 21st century skills, like creativity, flexibility, team-work or others.
They best thing about Open Badges is that they can be used by mostly any organization that wants to have a Badge system and they are becoming as formal, as important, and they basically have the same value as Youth Pass in non-formal education.
In conclusion
Open badges are valuable mean to value and evaluate our skills, our development and to become the best motivator in our daily life. Either organization or employee – Open Badges are for you.
