Hacker Scouts, Kids Earn Merit Badges for Learning Modern Skills

Adafruit Industries has come up with some fun merit badges for their new Hacker Scouts project. With Hacker Scouts, kids are encouraged to make or publish cool projects in order to be awarded a badge (both digital and iron-on) by Adafruit co-founder Limor Fried. Adafruit has been making real iron-on patches for a few years and these are the digital extension of those badges. They have created a Leaderboard to keep track of who is earning what badges over time.

A few children have already been working on badges through the beta Scouts program. For example, Sylvia makes “videos, kits, electronics, soft circuits, chemistry…and anything else I can.” She has her own web show titled Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show! (it really is awesome) and has already earned the Drawdio skill badge.

the goal is to celebrate skill earning the same way kids play video games. unlocking achievements and earning badges…

we also think this may start people thinking about “hacker scouts” – a scouting program that’s more peer-to-peer, distributed, built in the
21st century utilizing the tools and technology we have.

via Geek Gestalt