Digital Badges: Are You Ready For What’s Next?

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Digital Badges are Resume Worthy Credentials

NOTE: If you just want to jump to the 40+ badges you can earn for FREE, click HERE.

BONUS: Join us for the Friday Afternoon Badge Challenge!

I have earned 21 digital badges. They have served me well in my current endeavors of building the Upskill Create Community.  They have helped establish my expertise in this area as well as give me a broad general knowledge of new technologies and skills.

I help others in our community earn badges, learn, share resources and connect with others.

My first two badges were IBM Cloud Essentials and Blockchain Essentials. Both courses are 3 hours long. All of the courses in this blog post are available for anyone to take and are 100% FREE.

The courses were enjoyable with good videos and learn-by-doing exercises. The exercises were easy to follow along with and helped fill in the gaps of my knowledge of Bluemix and Blockchain. Most of the videos are hosted on Youtube. Here’s an example from the Bluemix Essentials Course (if you can’t see the video below, click HERE):

Course Design

Each course was broken up into modules and activities in collapsible sections. I was able to take the course in chunks as my schedule allowed and I was informed of my progress at the bottom of each module (e.g. “completed 7 out of 33 modules”). At the end of each module, I was given a knowledge checkpoint question. At the end of the course, I had to correctly answer 80% of the 10 quiz questions to collect my badge. If I got less than 80%, I was able to re-take the quiz as many times as I wanted to get 80% or better.

Here’s an example of the expandable modules from the Bluemix Essentials course:

Course Requirements: As an example, here are the details for what is required to earn the Blockchain Essentials Badge:

1. Coursework: Successful completion of the Blockchain Essentials course.
2. Demonstration: Successful completion of the associated practical lab demonstrating the ability to create a working chaincode and deploy it to a blockchain network.
3. Assessment: Completion of the end-of-course test and received a score of 80% or higher.

Convenient: I wake up early on most weekend mornings and while the rest of my family is asleep, I thought I could use this time to make a small investment in my career by learning every weekend. Most courses average about 5 hours each so this is easy to complete.

Addictive: As a fan of the highly addictive collection game called Pokemon Go during the summer of 2016 (slogan – “Gotta Catch ’em All!”), I found myself feeling a similar addictive desire to get more IBM badges!

Want to earn a Digital Badge?

Here are several sources for taking courses and earning badges:

• Badges Mindmap (8 categories of courses including Blockchain, Data Science and Cloud): http://bit.ly/uc-mindmap
• Data Science Courses: https://cognitiveclass.ai/badges/
• Watson Academy: https://bit.ly/uc-watsonacademy
• IBM Skills Gateway: https://bit.ly/uc-ibmskills
• Learn Cloud and AI with IBM Badges by Mihai Criveti

My badges list: LINK

1. IBM Cloud (Bluemix) Essentials (3 hours) ✔
2. Blockchain Essentials (3 hours) ✔
3. Node-Red: Basics to Bots (4 hours) ✔
4. Watson Discovery Service Foundations Badge (1.5 hours) ✔
5. Data Science Foundations (3 hours) ✔
6. Big Data 101 (3 hours) ✔
7. Watson Conversation Service Foundations (3 hours) ✔
8. Hadoop Foundations Level 1 (5 hours) ✔
9. Python 101 for Data Science (5 hours) ✔
10. Data Science for Business – Level 1 (1.5 hours-5 hours) ✔
11. IBM Cloud Garage Explorer (1.5 hours) ✔
12. Docker Essentials: Extend your app with containers (3 hours) ✔
13. Getting Started with Kubernetes (2.5 hours) ✔

BONUS: Here’s a complete list of over 1500 badges you can earn from IBM: LINK. And here’s a list of IBMers that have earned badges: LINK.  Check out the Linkedin Post.

Grab my eBook to learn everything you need to know about earning digital badges.  Click the graphic to learn more about what’s included.

IBM Badges Wall of Fame (minimum badges required = 29)

• Oliver Bodemer – 276 badges (+19): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/oliver-bodemer
• Sudip Lamichhane – 124 badges (+30): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/sudip
• Gourav Banerjee – 123 badges (+6): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/gourav-banerjee.651b536a
• Bernd Schlosser – 113 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/bernd-schlosser/badges
• Giulio Montenero – 112 badges (+18): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/giulio-montenero
• Mauricio Cadavid – 111 badges (+18): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/mauricio-cadavid
• Georges Maamari – 107 badges (+26): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/georges-maamari
• Tanut Karnwai – 95 badges (+17): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/Tanut-Karnwai
• Tom Halvorson – 93 badges (+39): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/tom-halvorson
• Mihai Criveti – 92 badges (+4): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/mihai-criveti
• Omar Dasser – 83 badges (+11): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/omar-dasser/badges
• Martin Dvorsky – 80 badges (+9): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/martin-dvorsky
• Ranjith Radhamananohar – 80 badges (+7): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/ranjith-radhamanohar
• Alessandro Rodrigo Marialva – 78 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/alessandro-rodrigo-marialva/badges
• Kenneth Cheung – 79 badges (+18): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/kenneth-cheung.6c69552d
• Siddhartha Sood – 77 badges (+6): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/siddhartha-sood
• Cristiano Borges – 77 badges (+9): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/cristiano-borges-de-oliveira/badges
• Samer Fouad – 73 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/samerfouad/badges
• Alain Airom – 73 badges (+4): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/alain-airom/badges
• Neil Dick Beltran – 70 badges (+12): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/neil-dick-beltran
• Marshal V. Khosa – 62 badges (+28): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/marshal-v-khosa
• Somnath Das – 61 badges (+9): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/somnath-das.ebbce072
• Wes Morgan – 61 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/wes-morgan
• Ludmila Kantova – 60 badges (+16): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/ludmila-kantova
• Tom Bosmans – 55 badges (+8): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/tom-bosmans
• Santiago Lovera – 58 badges (+10): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/santiago-santiago-lovera-gmail-com/badges
• Chip Van Alstyne – 57 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/chipva
• Luis Alejandro Valle – 55 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/luisvalle
• Handoko Lie – 55 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/handoko-lie
• Hossam AlTurkey – 53 badges (+14): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/hossam-alturkey/badges
• Scott Kennedy – 53 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/scott-kennedy
• Francisco Gomeztagle – 52 badges (+8): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/francisco-gomeztagle
• Shreyas Mulay – 52 badges (+22): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/shreyasmulay23
• Francisco Naranjo – 51 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/francisco-naranjo
• Rafael Mello – 50 badges (+15): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/rafael-mello.72d25238
• Radek Volf – 50 badges (+10): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/radek-volf/badges
• Vincent Perrin – 49 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/vincent-perrin/badges
• John McNamara – 49 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/john-mcnamara.1ef76c24
• Kimmo Kaskikallio – 45 badges (+8): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/kimmo-kaskikallio
• Indradeep Kama – 45 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/indradeep-kama
• Raydo Matthee – 43 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/raydo-matthee/badges
• Leslie Rodriguez – 40 badge (+4): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/leslierodriguez
• Ganbadrakh Danzan-Ayush – 40 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/ganbadrakh-danzan-ayush/badges
• Marko Ekelo – 43 badges (+3): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/marco-ekelo
• Derek Hubbard – 41 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/derek-hubbard
• Juan Montalvo – 40 badges (+6): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/juan-montalvo
• Claudia Degli Esposti – 39 badges (+4): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/claudia-degli-esposti.0239309b
• Hycind Santhibhavan – 39 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/hycind
• Andreas Graef – 39 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/andreas-graef
• Jeffrey Curtiss – 38 badges (+5): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/jeffrey-curtiss
• Theo Thomas – 38 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/theo-thomas
• Andre Gusmao – 37 badges (+5): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/andre-gusmao
• Johnnie Ng – 37 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/johnnie-ng/badges
• Adam Nowotarski – 37 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/adam-nowotarski
• Jody Burks – 37 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/jody-burks
• Juha Ekstrom – 37 badges (+6): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/juha-ekstrom/badges
• Rafael Arturo Ramirez Sus – 37 badges (+5): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/rafael-arturo-ramirez-sus
• Michael Rocha – 35 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/mikejrocha/badges
• Ashraf Ali Tajudeen – 35 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/ashraf-ali-thajudeen/badges
• Vicky Rose – 35 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/vicky-rose/badges
• Pedro Soares – 33 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/pedrosoares/badges
• Emily Marucci – 33 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/emily-marucci/badges
• Pramod Singh – 33 badges (+4): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/pramod-singh.f475cea1
• Stanley Soman – 33 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/stanley-soman/badges
• Srinivas Cheemalapati – 33 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/srinivas-cheemalapati
• Brian Wilson – 33 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/brian-wilson.99f6a03d/badges
• Elena Fernandez – 32 badges (+2): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/elena-fernandez-garces
• Bartholomew Zhang – 32 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/bartholomew-zhang/badges
• John Martin – 32 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/john-martin.71ebc4be
• Kodiginti Rajesh – 32 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/kodigintirajesh
• Manikanda Prabhu – 30 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/manikanda-prabhu-r/badges
• Subrata Chakraborty – 30 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/subrata-chakraborty/badges
• Ayan Mukherjee – 30 badges (+1): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/ayan_mukherjee
• Laio Curi – 29 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/laio-curi/badges
• Narendran Subramanian – 29 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/narendran-subramanian.9346ea89/badges
• Leonardo Kenji Shikida – 29 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/users/leonardo-kenji-shikida
• Baltazar Rodriguez – 29 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/baltazar-rodriguez
• Abhiroop Ghosh – 29 badges (+0): https://www.youracclaim.com/user/abhiroop-ghosh

Non-IBMers Badges Wall of Fame (minimum badges required = 15)

• Juan Francisco Martin Garcia – 47 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/jfmartin/badges
• Mohamed Gamal – 41 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/user/mohamed.gamal
• Luciano S. Mori – 40 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/luciano-s-mori
• Jochen Meixner – 36 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/jochen-meixner
• Christian Brandlehner – 34 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/christian-brandlehner
• Marcus Pinto – 32 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/marcus-pinto/badges
• Brandon Kutsch – 31 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/brandon-kutsch
• Sayan Chakraborty – 22 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/sayan-chakraborty.0f07ec11/badges
• Robert Mapstead – 21 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/robert-mapstead/badges
• Ahmed El Sayed – 16 badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/ahmed-el-sayed/badges

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