Palm Reading My Future for 2016

I’m not a futurist, but I can see about 45 days into the future something new and exciting. And yes, from the image above, this as a “c” and a “c” into it. Do not ask about the symbolism of the cuts on my hand, that was done earlier with a sharp bread knife and a slippery bagel.

Maybe CC will heal that injury.

I’ve had to avoid blogging this for a while, but now I have a green light ok. Starting in mid March this year, I will be starting a long-term project (18 months) as a contractor with Creative Commons. In this time I will be working with a team led by Paul Stacey to develop a Certification in Creative Commons (will that be a “CCC”?).

This got started when I spotted Paul at the Open Education Conference this past November in Vancouver. I’ve known Paul a while back to his BCCampus days and maybe before. I gotta like someone who has a grand photo atop his blog.

So Paul has been to the Grand Canyon, looks like somewhere out near?? Yaki Pont?? It’s east of the Grand Canyon Village.

Paul writes long form posts with depth AND breadth; like his 2013 piece on Pedagogy of MOOCs (okay some bias as he compliments DS106).

We only chatted briefly between sessions; Paul was super sincere in saying positive things about our UDG Agora presentation. He also said he was interested in talking to me about a possible project.

Would I be interested? In working with Creative Commons? Hell Yeah.

He followed up with a Skype call while I was in Kamloops, and framed broadly the project. A lot of people are interested (some of them organizations offering funding) in having Creative Commons offer a certification in… Creative Commons. If I am getting the info right, this is something that will be done in the open as an OERish thing, with flexibility for whatever its activities are to be tailored to various sectors- libraries, governments, and also so it can be localized in other countries.

This is all very general now since I do not start until March 15. But I have a list of reasons I am excited:

• After 3+ years of making a humble living on juggling a load of shorter term web design projects, coding projects, speaking, doing workshops, scrubbing toilets, the idea of focusing on one major project for 18 months is very attractive.
• I can do my work from home. I was gone 75% of 2015. That’s a lot. I lile my home. A lot.
• Did I mentioned this is with freakin’ Creative Commons? Not only to I get to work with folks from the organization, the project will put me in contexts outside of higher education.

The arrangements I asked for was to work for Creative Commons 80% of my time, which leaves room for other projects, or just goofing off. Heck, I have crazy ideas that I might be able to get a dog!

flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

And the word was in there, and you do not have to spend much brainpower with the word certification to jump the route over to Badges.

flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

I cannot say I get overly excited about badges. But before y’all start gnashing your teeth, Badgers, I will say I fully get why they are of interest. And the work being done is worthwhile.

And people do get excited to get them (well at least here my 3 year old niece does).

flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

And I do not have much direct experience (yet) to be dissing or praising them.

Still, if I say “certification” to educators working in/with edtech, almost always the first word association response is “badges.” And not much else. Oh yeah, this is how it’s done, baking blobs of JSON?

A baked badge is a JSON blob of metadata embedded in a PNG file.

(actually I understand it; a badge is represented by an image, the API infrastructure allows issuers to embed data in the PNG image file)

To me the stuff that can be badged in some kind of networked environment is the stuff that’s easy to do automatically. Multiple choice. Watch a video to the end. Spend X amount of time doing Y (I fully expect someone to say how wrong I am).

And the backpack is a great metaphor… yet when I think of talking to someone with backpack covered with badges…

… I might glance at the colors and names on the badges. But what I want to see is what you pull out of the backpack and show me. Yes, it’s nice that, oh Betty Crocker gave you a badge for your Macaroni and Cheese making, what I really want is to taste your Mac ‘n Cheese and tell more more about your method.

The backpack is nice and worth having, but I really think people should be building their own store room of experiences that actually demonstrate their skills, work, thinking, in the thing they got badged for. Much more than a portfolio.

Getting badged by someone else is an act they do to you; what else are your doing to assert your skills and accomplishments? The question I played with before (intone some Shakespeare here) is To Badge [Yourself] or to Be Badged?.

Like I said, I’m a badge n00b, so this is something I will be looking more deeply into.

This is totally speculative and I did not even need to write all this, it could have been as simple as “News flash, I’m starting in mid March an 18 month contract with an important organization in the area of sharing of digital culture.”

The other thing that Paul told me was that he wanted me to bring a sense of “fun” into the project. I hope he knows what that might mean…

I could go business class

or mystery stranger to their town?

I like this future, palm.

Top / Featured Image: My own photo, a Creative Commons button picked up at some long ago conference (Northern Voice? SXSW?) in my own hand– flickr photo by cogdogblog http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/24558520871 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

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