How to be a Hipster

Sign Up or Log In or Log in via

How to Be a Hipster

Edited by Jellybones, Sondra C, Keyboard_Cat, Krystle and 152 others

 

Hipsters are people who enjoy clothing, music, food and activities outside of the social mainstream. If you want to embrace a lifestyle of independent music labels, vintage clothes, and artisanal coffee, read the guide below.

Steps

Hipster Fashion

1. 1
   Dress like a hipster. Fashion is just as important as your taste in music. While shopping at vintage stores remains a staple for many hipsters, this is not a given, nor does it need to be a part of the hipster wardrobe.
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
   
   • Know the labels. Several labels cater to the hipster scene; the more well-known include American Apparel, H&M, ASOS, CobraSnake, and Urban Outfitters.
   • Avoid buying labeled gear from stores run by the label itself (so very not nice consumerism). Instead, look for independent retailers because supporting obscure retailers is "totally deck". For example, buy from local mixed fashion stores near you.
2. 2
   Wear skinny jeans. The classic "skinny jeans" make the hipster look, both for males and females. Hipster men tend to be as skinny as the women.
   
   
   
   
   • Note that guy hipsters actually probably wear skinny jeans more than the girls (girls prefer leggings/jeggings/treggings).
   • Alternatively, for women, high-waisted pants (a.k.a. "mom jeans") may also be worn.
3. 3
   Wear glasses. Hipsters love ironic eyewear such as shuttershades, oversized plastic framed glasses, Buddy Holly glasses, nerd glasses, and — for those who can afford it — authentic Ray Ban Wayfarers in all the colors of the rainbow.
   
   
   
   
   • Some hipsters wear eyeglasses even though they have 20/20 vision! In this case, pop out the lenses or make sure they're just regular glass.
4. 4
   Wear ironic tops. For tops, the following are good picks: ironic tees, plaid shirts, cowboy shirts, and anything in gingham, plaid, checkers, paisley, vintage florals.
   
   
   
   
   • Many hipsters sport tops with appliques, images of animals or forests, other images, characters from children's TV, and ironic sayings or even book covers.
   • Fitted hoodies are perfect, too.
5. 5
   Dress vintage. Dresses are good for women, preferably vintage floral or lace. Granny's closet is definitely a good source; however, you should know how to sew and restyle vintage clothing to fit you.
   
   
   
   
6. 6
   Find suitable footwear. Hipster shoes include cowboy boots, Converse, and a range of flats.
   
   
   
   
   • Converses are no longer universal. They look great and you can wear them pretty much anywhere, but since everyone wears them, Doc Martens or any other vintage shoes are better.
   • If it's trainers you're after, see Classic Reeboks.
   • For girls, heels aren't the most popular but feel free to wear them. Cute sandals, Keds, boots, and granny boots are not only more practical but also show how little effort you've put forth (even if it took you ages to find the perfect pair).
7. 7
   Accessorize. There is a wide range of accessories, including large flower headbands, neon nail polish, pins, bright belts, bird necklaces, patterned and colorful leggings, etc.
   
   
   
   
   • Don't forget your plugs, piercings, and random scars supposedly acquired through woodwork and other carpenter-like endeavors.
   • Appropriately ironic accessories are mandatory, such as things kids would take to school, like an animal image on a lunchbox.
   • Essentials include a courier bag (not a backpack), preferably something from Freitag, that can fit your MacBook, iPhone, and vinyl LPs (never CDs) of your current favorite band.
8. 8
   Mismatch and layer. Layering or wearing things that don't match together is very hipster. It's that "I can't be bothered" look that actually takes some planning until you get into the habit.
   
   
   
   
   • Remember that a hipster's outfit never needs adjustment should you decide to go to the beach — keep all of your urban accompaniments for the sand and surf to ironically stick out of your element.

Hipster Health

1. 1
   Ignore the comments about improper hygiene. Some people associate hipsters with hippies and assume that they don’t shower regularly or otherwise don’t practice proper hygiene. This is a misconception. Though some hipsters participate in the no shampoo movement (which is still very clean), most practice normal hygiene (with bonus artisanal and environmentally-friendly soaps!).
   
   
   
   
   • While hipsters do shower regularly and clean their teeth, they're just less interested in forking out money for hairstyling, spa sessions, pedicures/manicures, and large make-up kits because these are signs of conforming to cultural ideals of beauty.
   • Arguably, hipsters aren't so interested in "making the most of their assets" because they see their entire self as an asset; from a self-esteem point of view, this is actually a rather healthy outlook.
2. 2
   Keep your hair casual. Messy hairdos are just fine. The "bed look", long unkempt hair, and hair that resists any attempts to stay flat without chemicals are acceptable looks.
   
   
   
   
   • Blurring gender lines with haircuts and styles is part of the hipster culture.
   • Greasy hair is considered okay by some in the hipster culture. That doesn't mean you need to concur and a squeaky clean but uncombed do might be more your thing.
   • Some hipsters like to dye their hair in an obvious way.
3. 3
   Take a green approach to food. Consider growing your own food or turning vegetarian. Use compost if possible. Eating meat isn't always popular with the hipster culture, and many hipsters tend to be vegetarian or vegan. If you do eat meat, you must assert that choice as a cynical transcendence of vegetarians' futile attempts to save the world.
   
   
   
   
   • Fruit, coffee, Asian food, etc., are all hip foods.
   • If you have absolutely no space to grow your own produce (not even a balcony or a window sill), go to a natural foods market instead.
   • Often, hipsters are alsofoodies and love making gourmet meals. If you can't cook, consider getting some good cookbooks today.

Hipster Lifestyle

1. 1
   Become a master of reuse. This takes a mixture of frugality, respect for some of the past, and a desire to demonstrate that new things don't define you. Naturally, you'll need to wrestle with the inconsistency of this step with the fact that loving shiny new Apple products and brand new clothes from certain labels is also a side of a true hipster, but since we're all contradictory deep down, the sooner we grasp these contradictions and accept them, the more whole a person we'll be.
   
   
   
   
   • Commonly known old things associated with hipsters include Parliament cigarettes (and a devil-may-care attitude about smoking laws), Pabst beer, grandparent's clothing (or thrift store finds), bicycles with fixed gears (often ridden to the night clubs), analog cameras, and recycling and reusing almost anything (ingenuity, common sense, and fun comes into this).
2. 2
   Reject blind consumerism. Hipsters are into "niche consumerism". If your purchase helps local retailers, the environment, the mom and pop retailer, and the craft sellers down the road, then it's hipster.
3. 3
   Be aware that most hipsters exist in a certain age group. Hipsters tend to be in their teens through to their 30s. This is part of today's "extended adolescent" era, consisting of existential angst, searching for purpose and inner worth, and asking the meaning of everything.
   • Of course, this doesn't mean you can't be a hipster at an older age, but the fact that as you age you get less bothered and upset about the way the world works, or doesn't work, probably means you're a) not so keen to be labeled anything, b) not in need of belonging to any sub-culture, and/or c) less angry than you used to be. It's quite possible you're also very discreetly steering the rudder of your own teens going through "issues" and you're less than keen to adopt more of the same for yourself.
4. 4
   Be where the hipsters roam. Hipsters tend to congregate in very urban settings and they're connected globally thanks to the Internet. In the USA, you'll tend to find hipsters in major metropolitan centers where "anything goes". Be where there are independent art galleries, movie houses, bands, and people.
   
   
   
   
   • Think New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and especially the Brooklyn, N.Y. suburb of Williamsburg (known as the unofficial hipster capital of the world).
   • Places like Glasslands and Pianos will be right up your alley.
   • Los Angeles is also acceptable but be careful not to get sucked into the California culture.
   • For less urban USA, try to find any moderately large college town; and in some states, a college town might be the only liberal part of the state such as Austin, TX, or Lawrence, KS.
   • In the UK, London is your spot, in Canada, try Montreal^[1], and in Australia, try Melbourne.^[2]
   • Do not force yourself to live or go to these places or countries for the sake of being a hipster. Besides from being too uneconomical (especially if you live on the other side of the world), you can actually begin being a hipster in your place. One of the advantages is if your place knows less about hipsters, the fewer the people who will be discriminating or criticizing you. Take note that the Internet will always be your best friend.
5. 5
   Be educated. Aim to go to college, as hipsters tend to be well educated in such areas as liberal arts, graphic art, or math and science.
   
   
   
   
   • Do a lot of reading, even if it means sitting in the local bookstore using their space and not actually purchasing the books you're siphoning up knowledge from. Seek to go to higher level education if you're in your element at college.
   • Hipsters are a subculture that uses more of their right brain than the rest of the society, thus, many hipsters base their career choices around music, art, or fashion. While these areas of work aren't essential choices, they are probably a natural outlet for a hipster's creativity.
   • Education is what helps a hipster to be dismissive about the hue and cry of others; they know it's just history repeating itself, or it's all much ado about nothing.
6. 6
   Be an early adopter. Hipsters tend to sense what's worthwhile before the trend or item becomes more popular. Many bands become famous only after hipsters first flock to their unknown performances. Many clothing trends were started by hipsters, only to be hijacked later by mainstream fashion houses. Many technical gadgets are taken up by hipsters first, only to become mainstream goodies later.
   • Of course, the irony of being an early adopter hipster is that once the trend or item becomes mainstream, it's time to move on to something else obscure and unrecognized. That's the trouble with being such an independent spirit; you trailblaze but you also have to keep moving on.
   • If you're really good at something like math, physics, medicine, psychology, political analysis, eco-awareness, etc., you might find yourself making amazing discoveries that are light years ahead of everyone else's thinking. You know deep down that you've cottoned onto something that really matters and that it makes sense but others are not convinced because it's the "great unknown". Rest easy and be determined in your knowledge that some day, others will come round to your discovery.
7. 7
   Don't define yourself to others. One of the key elements of being hipster has been to avoid the label. Don't go around proclaiming your allegiance; to do so would be to start allying with those who like neatly tied-up boxes denoting who is what, when, and where.
   • The moment you define yourself too clearly is the moment you begin to stagnate and risk being captured by the status quo. Many a hipster will therefore deny their "hipster-ness" whenever possible.
   • To preemptively ward off the mockers, some hipsters have taken to extending their sense of irony to include even themselves by acknowledging and mocking their own hipsterdom (for example, wearing a tee that says "I hate hipsters"); that way, by mocking themselves first, no one else can effectively do it.
8. 8
   Keep a pulse on the hipster community. There is a strong community aspect to hipster culture. If you want to find out about the best new bands or a great local coffee shop, make sure to stay active in the community to get good recommendations and stay ahead of the trends.
   
   
   
   
   • When some new, obscure band is on Pitchfork (preferably before), you should know about it.
   • Check out Brooklyn Vegan (even if you don't live there), Stereogum, Gorilla vs. Bear, and the Hype Machine as often as possible, but don't make it obvious that you check them every five seconds.

Indie Entertainment

1. 1
   Read hipster classics. Your reading sources are important because what you read connects you with other hipsters, informs you about cultural issues, and keeps you knowledgeable. There's a lot to be read out there, so sort the wheat from the chaff and get into the things that matter most. Things to read include:
   
   
   
   
   • Hipster magazines, such as Vice, Another Magazine, and Wallpaper.^[3] Foreign magazines are good too.
   • Great books and poetry by people like Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg, and Norman Mailer. Any other books you think are great. Any books, period; reading books sets hipsters apart from a lot of people. Visit the political science, anthropology, and sociology sections of the bookstores and local library frequently.
   • Blogs by other hipsters. You might also be inspired enough to write your own blog frequently.
2. 2
   Watch hipster cinema. Watch independent and foreign films, as well as attending independent theater productions, such as shows by Ann Liv Young. Watch Wes Anderson, Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch movies.
3. 3
   Listen to newly emerging, independent music. Indie music is a big part of what being a hipster is all about. Turn to the endless and ever-renewing list of independent artists in the music scene, especially in the areas of nu-rave, minimalist techno, independent rap, nerdcore, Elephant 6, garage rock, classic rock (Beatles usually), and punk rock.
   
   
   
   
   • Hipster artists of note include Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Belle & Sebastian, Electric President, Stray Kites, Jens Lekman, Neutral Milk Hotel, M83, Neon Indian, Neon Neon, Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos, and King Khan and the Shrines.
   • Music blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear, Indiehere, /mu/, and Stereogum may help you with choosing suitable bands to listen to. Meeting people who are already into these bands will help you as well.
   • Perhaps the most popular hipster music website is Pitchfork Media. If they give an album a good rating, it must be quite hip.
   • One good way to decipher whether or not an artist is hipster is if your non-hipster friends to have never heard of them.
   • Feel free to listen to the music of other countries as well, since most mainstream songs of this decade came out of America, Britain and South Korea.

Socializing

1. 1
   Use social media. Female hipsters love to use Blogspot, Tumblr or Wordpress, as well as taking photos with their Holga cameras and making cross-processed and "dream-like" pictures. Social media can also be a great way to find new things to enjoy, before they become mainstream.
   
   
   
   
2. 2
   Date other hipsters. The reason to "hook up" with other hipsters is that you're much more likely to connect and see eye-to-eye on a range of issues. The all-American muscle guy or sorority-style tanned blond are not likely to be your type, so a fellow hipster is the answer.
   
   
   
   
3. 3
   Start dancing. If you want to spot a hipster, just turn around the next time you're at a show and see them standing in the back discussing Stella or Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) in a can. Sometimes, if the music and setting is right, you will witness hipsters engaging in dance movements.
   
   
   • Hipster dancing, if done right, does not use so much of the hips as it does the upper body and arms. Lots of swinging your head back and forth but only do this if you're not humiliated easily (and as a hipster, you really shouldn't care).
   • Although you'll rarely see hipsters dancing at shows, they tend to enjoy separate dance parties where they can dance to an array of more upbeat hipster dance music.
4. 4
   Get the lingo and the attitude. While there will be many variations—part of the reality of hipster culture is that things change constantly—there are some things that are useful to know:
   • Remember to use perhaps the most important hipster line: "I liked them before they were cool." Another good line given the recent spate of disasters is to say something like: "I donated to Haiti... before the disaster."
   • Namedrop often. Talk about all the obscure bands you like that nobody you know has heard of. When your friends talk about a band you're unfamiliar with, just say you've heard of them but not actually heard them. Look them up the next time you have a chance to. It'll give you more cred.
   • Insult a lot of bands. If you love everything you'll seem like a fanatic. Make sure to give off a vibe that you're too cool and elite for a lot of bands.
   • If you would like to seem more educated and elite there is the key phrase " I liked their first EP, but pretty much after that I never got into them."
   • Use made-up words as often as possible. Or use real words that no one really knows the meaning of unless they look them up (eg. pulchritudinous, cordiform, and petrichor).
5. 5
   Hone your humor. A hipster is known for their strong sense of irony and sarcasm. When asked a question, refuse to answer directly; instead, obfuscate, ask a question in return, or just be plain sarcastic.
   
   
   
   
   • Be sure to layer on the smirk to indicate your lack of seriousness, because it's possible for the other person to mistake your sarcasm for sincerity.
   • For example: When in a theater watching a movie, and the person next to you turns to say, "Oh, my God, that was so cool! Did you see that?", in a dry tone, reply something along the lines of, "No, I paid $12.50 to stare at the ceiling."
   • Watch British comedies for examples of good uses of sarcasm you can borrow.
   • Have a sense of humorous perspective and don't take yourself too seriously. Hipsters are often parodied, so knowing how to laugh at derision will help a lot.
6. 6
   Be prepared for critics. Be aware that hipsterism is frequently parodied or derided because hipsters bother some people. You're going to need to get used to disdainful attitudes and to work out the ways in which you're most comfortable responding.
   
   
   
   
   • There will often be an insistence that your sub-culture is "less than" whatever it is the hater "believes" in.
   • Given the tendency for hipsters to follow progressive politics, it's likely you'll encounter occasional conservative disdain, so it's probably a good idea to brush up on your responses to any standard ridicule.
   • As for people who poke fun at your fashion sense, remind the so-called trendy mass that their worn and torn jeans fashion was created by children who are little more than slaves in some sweatshop and if they want to contribute to that, they’re welcome to.
   • Recognize the root of the problem. Realize that a lot of people who attack you may have deep insecurities about their own place in society and have very mixed ideas of what culture is, or how they reconcile the variant elements of culture with their own lifestyle and preferences. Practice a little compassion.
   • Know that geeks have an odd relationship with hipsters. While some are disdainful, other geeks recognize the overlap of the cultures.^[4]
      
   
   

   Tips

• Always find alternatives for everything when your favorite item or artist turns mainstream.
• Rather than going to Starbucks for coffee, go to a local shop or make your own at home to boost up your hipster cred. Carry around a durable thermos cup for your homemade coffee; if it has a sticker against genetic engineering on the side, so much the better.
• Don't listen to any songs that don't have a deep and depressing lyrical vibe.
• Buy a Mac, Apple TV, and an iPad. The iPod and iPhone are too mainstream now, so for your smartphone, pick up a Windows Phone, preferably from a hip brand like Huawei. Chinese manufacturers only!
• Go to shows — music, drama, opera, poetry, comedy, gladiators. The more, the better.
• Don't drive an expensive car. Don't even own a car at all. It is a waste of gas and money and parking will frazzle your brain. Ride a bike instead - make it a fixed or single gear bike. The fixed-gear bicycle should have skinny tires, genuine Brooks leather saddle and no front brake. Even if you do not own a bike (i.e., drive a car), make sure to roll up your right pant leg to give off the appearance that you just crossed town without increasing your carbon footprint. The rolled-up pant leg is not complete with your carabiner jangling with as many keys as possible. The more you look like you work days as a messenger and moonlight as a janitor, the more hip you will be.
• Many hipsters are interested in "geeky" subjects", like philosophy or film criticism. If you find things like that interesting, it increases one's hipster cred to bring them up in conversation.
• Don't wear crocs.
• There is a constant myth that hipsters live off their parents. Some might, just as some people might from many other sub-cultures, but equally a lot of hipsters happily make their own living.
• It is common for hipsters to play instruments, and starting a band of your own is a great way to showcase your love of independent music. You don't have to be good; just be enthusiastic.
• Do your own hair. The pudding basin is an excellent old-fashioned solution for a straight haircut if that's a problem for you. Simply up-end it over your head and use sharp scissors to cut your bangs or hair edge.
• Be patient with habits you've recently given up and with new ones you are taking up. Luckily, It only takes about a month or two to get into the lifestyle.
• Don't watch MTV all the time. You shouldn't use it as a way to find out about music. However, maybe watching some trashy reality show will be seen as ironic.
• A simple and cheap way to achieve the eyeglasses look is to pop out the lenses of the thick, 3D glasses that theaters give out for 3D movies. Put on the glasses and you've got your eyeglasses! Plus, there won't be any lenses to get in your way.

Warnings

• Don't take this article too seriously, instead see it as a set of guidelines to work with as befits you. Hipsters pride themselves on their independence from the mainstream.
• Try not to take yourself too seriously.
• The goal of being a hipster is to look like you're not trying, however, if you are one, you are probably trying really hard, or at least enough. Just accept it.
• Negativity can pervade the hipster culture, perhaps as a counteraction to the ridiculously-positive, can-do motivational speaker style attitudes pervading much of the business and consumer culture these days. However, negativity is not an answer, it's simply a reaction. Always try to find balance and peace in your life rather than seeing doom and gloom in everything. Yes, society is full of problems but being negative about them won't solve or change such problems whereas a realistic and pragmatic approach to doing things that make a difference will go part the way to bringing about a better world. Remember too, that every generation is cursed with thinking things used to be or could be better. We are time-bound and body-bound creatures who need to accept our limitations while making the most of what we do know and can do. Constant deconstructing and criticizing of society can all too easily turn into a paralysis-by-analysis lifestyle, in which complaining becomes your modus operandi but actually changing the status quo is not something you're tooled up to do.
• Sometimes, just sometimes, you may be really frustrated that other people don't get what's so great about your music, fashion, and other choices. Give it up; you won't ever see, hear, or feel the things they love the way they do, and that's because everyone is different.

Edit Things You'll Need

• Hipster clothes (see above)
• Plaid shirts
• Scarves (to wear year-round)
• Vintage boots
• Tattoo
• Turntable
• An old camera (polaroid is suggested.)
• Fixed-gear bike
• Your own garden
• Fountain Pen
• Any Apple product always updated
• Instagram (remember to add hashtags!)

Edit Related wikiHows

• How to Be Indie
• How to Be an Indie Rock Elitist
• How to Find New Indie Music
• How to Start an Indie Band
• How to Dress Like an Indie Hipster
• How to Have Urban Style
• How to Be a True Greaser

Edit Sources and Citations

1. ↑ http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/montreal-top-ten-hipster-hangouts/10152
2. ↑ YouTube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxZiae16Ry8
3. ↑ http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
4. ↑ http://gizmodo.com/#!5653143/geeks-versus-hipsters

• [Hipster Subculture]

Article Info

Featured Article

Categories: Featured Articles | Urban Styles
Recent edits by: sarah saieed, Little_birdy, Julia

Share this Article:

• Discuss
• Print
• Email
• Edit
• Send fan mail to authors

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 2,694,378 times.

Was this article accurate?

Yes

No

Write An ArticleRandom Article

Related Articles

	Be a Moe Girl
	Become Noticed in School As a Rock or Goth Kid
	Be a Girl Greaser
	Be a Christian Country Girl

Show Ads

Ads by Google

Ads by Google

• Womens Fashion Dress
• Hipster Hair
• How to Read Men
• Hipster Clothing
• Hipster Tshirt

Featured Articles

	Get over Your Fear of Slenderman
	Sew a Reversible Tote Bag
	Stop Sweating the Small Stuff
	Sew a Waistband

 

 

 

Post from my friend Jon Haber.

g.

Learning Badges

By Jon Haber  DegreeofFreedom on May 29, 2013in College Credit

Well I may not end up with a philosophy degree from an established institution by the time this Degree of Freedom project is completed. But I do expect that shiny Philosopher badge you see above to arrive by e-mail any day.

 

That badge was actually earned by contributing a certain amount of work in my Canvas class on Cheating in Online Courses which every week covers a different topic (such as “What is cheating?”, “Metaphors for cheating,” “Why do people cheat?” etc.).

Each week comes with a set of readings and assignments (called “Missions”) such as listening to an online lecture, contributing to a discussion forum, or submitting diagrams and other requested work. And if you finish enough assignments (at least the ones associated with what are called “Experience Points,”) you earn yourself the learning badge for the week (so far, I’ve gotten ones for Researcher and Investigator, as well as the Philosopher one shown above).

 

Learning badges have actually been a hot topic, even before MOOC started sucking up so much of the media Oxygen dedicated to stories on “The End of Education as we Know It.”

The notion of obtaining a mini-credential associated with mastering a specific skill is already engrained in those of us who either grew up or are raising kids in Boy Scouts where a large component of advancement is based on earning merit badges covering individual subjects such as swimming, wilderness survival or that perennial “gut” of basketry.

While Eagle rank only demands you earn 21 such badges (some required, some elective), some Scouts go beyond this to earn additional medals (called palms) for adding more badges to their hoard (a process a friend and fellow Eagle likens to putting sugar on Captain Crunch). And I even know a kid in town who built his whole home-schooling program around earning 100 such badges.

 

The online learning badge phenomenon also owes a great deal to video games that have programmed players to work tirelessly to earn an endless string of micro-rewards (be they expressed in lives, points, weapons or gold coins). And given that students seem happy to sacrifice homework hours to “earn” a new shield in some online version of Narnia, why not make that homework seem more like a game by associating it with a similar system of ongoing awards?

 

Badge programs have actually been proliferating across learning related web sites for several years, the most notable being the Khan Academy site where watching a certain number of videos or passing quizzes can earn you a string of badges with names like “Master of Algebra” or “Challenge Patch.” And the whole badge phenom got a big boost when Mozilla (makers of the Firefox browser) announced its Open Badges system which allows institutions to assign accreditations to whatever they like (be they individual lessons or projects, contributions to online discussions, or completion of entire courses).

 

While the purpose of my own project is more about learning than earning, I am intrigued by the potential of learning badges to allow activities performed in the “real world” to be associated with part of an online experience (such as a MOOC class). And as a Scouting alum and parent, I can attest to the value of at least one of the precedents upon which the badging concept is based.

 

But keep in mind that Scout merit badges are earned by completing a standardized set of tasks under the guidance of a human counselor who must himself (or herself) be accredited to sign off on an individual badge. And merit badges are just part of a wider set of rank requirements that include service projects and leadership hours, with ultimate advancement decisions based on a face-to-face interview (called a Board of Review) before adult leaders.

While similar mechanisms and frameworks might be in place for certain online training programs that provide learning badges as signals of accomplishment, from what I’ve experienced so far it seems like someone who throws themselves whole-heartedly into a week’s assignments and someone who just does the minimum can each end up with the same badge as their reward.

 

Learning badges are touted for their ability to link back to their original granting authority, which allows reviewers (such as employers) to look at the details regarding what someone did to earn a badge (unlike a college diploma that says nothing more than someone has finished their degree at a specific institution).

 

But given my experience working with employers, I’d be curious as to how much time they would give to a series of non-standardized mini-credentials (especially if they become so numerous that a badge holder has to store them in their Mozilla badge “backpack” – one of the most mixed of the many mixed metaphors I’ve encountered since plunging into the world of online education).

 

Like MOOCs, badging programs are going to need some time to cycle through the educational ether where they are likely to find a landing spot different than the ones their inventors and boosters originally anticipated. So I will be happy to continue to earn my weekly badge in Cheating (and am especially looking forward to next week where we will earn a special Cheaters badge for successfully gaming the system), while just as happily continue learning from other courses that will leave me with nothing but a few largely unrecognized certificates, but a whole lot of knowledge.

2 Responses to Learning Badges

NYT p1 Busiuness Section Today

Greg - This failure by inBloom so far to provide transparency and public ownership could doom the effort, however, the need for Trust Management of student data clearly does not go away.   Now, more than ever, we need to build effective tools for public agencies and parents to work together to control student data within and between schools to enable learners to navigate through the learning ecosystem.

   

Deciding Who Sees Students’ Data

By NATASHA SINGER

Published: October 5, 2013

WHEN Cynthia Stevenson, the superintendent of Jefferson County, Colo., public schools, heard about a data repository called inBloom, she thought it sounded like a technological fix for one of her bigger headaches. Over the years, the Jeffco school system, as it is known, which lies west of Denver, had invested in a couple of dozen student data systems, many of which were incompatible.

 

In fact, there were so many information systems — for things like contact information, grades and disciplinary data, test scores and curriculum planning for the district’s 86,000 students — that teachers had taken to scribbling the various passwords on sticky notes and posting them, insecurely, around classrooms and teachers’ rooms.

There must be a more effective way, Dr. Stevenson felt.

InBloom, a nonprofit corporation based in Atlanta, seemed to offer a solution: it could collect information from the district’s many databases and store it in the cloud, making access easier, and protect it with high-level encryption.

The company has name-brand backing: $100 million in seed money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Beyond storing data, it promised to help personalize learning — by funneling student data to software dashboards where teachers could track individual students and, with the right software, customize lessons in real time. Also, districts could effortlessly share student records with developers seeking to create educational tools for schools. In other words, for Dr. Stevenson, it represented not just a fix to a narrow technical problem, but also a potentially revolutionary way to help educate students.

“We are joining the new generation of data management,” Dr. Stevenson said enthusiastically in the March issue of “Chalk Talk,” the school district’s newsletter for parents.

She did not imagine that five months later, she would be sitting in a special school board meeting in the district’s headquarters, listening as a series of parents, school board members and privacy lawyers assailed the plan to outsource student data storage to inBloom. What troubled the naysayers at that August session was that the district seemed to be rushing to increase data-sharing before weighing the risks of granting companies access to intimate details about children. They noted that administrators had no policies in place to govern who could see the information, how long it would be kept or whether it would be shared with the colleges to which students applied.

“Students are currently subject to more forms of tracking and monitoring than ever before,” Khaliah Barnes, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington who appeared via video conferencing, told the room packed with parents. “While we understand the value of data for promoting and evaluating personalized learning, there are too few safeguards for the amount of data collected and transmitted from schools to private companies.”

Jefferson County is not the only place where parents have challenged the adoption of inBloom. Parents in Louisiana raised a ruckus after discovering that their children’s Social Security numbers had been uploaded to inBloom. In April, Louisiana officials said they would remove all student data from the database. Of the nine states that originally signed up this year to participate, just three — Colorado, New York and Illinois — are actively pursuing the service.

Still, that accounts for a lot of children. New York State has already uploaded data on 90 percent of 2.7 million public school and charter students — data stripped of identifiers like students’ names — into inBloom; state education officials plan to upload a complete set soon, including names.

But New York parents have no say in the matter, said Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit group that has been the leading challenger of inBloom.

“We are officially the worst state in the country when it comes to student privacy,” she said, speaking of New York. Educators are naturally excited about the potential for new tools to improve learning. But the Jeffco controversy is a reminder that it can be easy to leap at new and unproven technologies before considering potential risks.

EDUCATION technology software for prekindergarten to 12th grade is an $8 billion market, according to estimates from the Software and Information Industry Association. One major reason is the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a program to standardize English and math curriculums nationally. To prepare for assessment tests for those standards, many districts across the country are investing in software to analyze individual student performance in more detail.

Services like inBloom want to speed the introduction and lower the cost of these assessment tools by standardizing data storage and security. The idea is that inBloom’s open-source code could spur developers to create apps for all its clients, reducing the need for them to customize software to each school district. In theory, that would make the products cheaper for schools.

Recent changes in the regulation of a federal education privacy law have also helped the industry. That law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, required schools to obtain parental permission before sharing information in their children’s educational records. The updated rules permit schools to share student data, without notifying parents, with companies to which they have outsourced core functions like scheduling or data management.

InBloom made its debut in February by announcing that nine states, representing more than 11 million students, had agreed to help develop or test the technology. A month later, Bill Gates introduced it as a “new, exciting thing” in his keynote speech at SXSWedu education conference in Austin, Tex.

InBloom offers its clients a vision of continuously quantified students and seamlessly connected teachers. A video on its Web site presents a model of what this techno-utopia might look like.

In one scene, a teacher with a tablet computer crouches next to a second-grader evaluating how many words per minute he can read: 55 words read; 43 correctly. Later, she moves to a student named Tyler and selects an e-book “for at-risk students” for his further reading. The video follows Tyler home, where his mother logs into a parent portal for an update on his school status: attendance, 86 percent; performance, 72 percent. She taps a button and sends the e-book to play on the family TV.

InBloom doesn’t actually provide any of the user-end software — the student assessment dashboard, the reading analytics app, the parent portal — shown in the video. Executives at the company see their service as the connective tissue between teachers and these technologies, which would be developed by software vendors. In other words, one inBloom goal is to streamline access to students’ data to bolster the market for educational products.

“We are not creating commercial apps. Our role is to sit in the middle, to facilitate that innovation,” Iwan Streichenberger, the C.E.O. of inBloom, said in a phone interview. “There are tools that come in, mine and analyze the data and make recommendations.”

Yet, for all of inBloom’s neutral-sounding intentions, industry analysts say it has stirred some parents’ fears about the potential for mass-scale surveillance of students. Parents like Rachael Stickland, a mother of two Jeffco students, say that schools are amassing increasing amounts of information about K-12 students with little proof that it will foster their critical thinking or improve their graduation rates.

“It’s a new experiment in centralizing massive metadata on children to share with vendors,” she said, “and then the vendors will profit by marketing their learning products, their apps, their curriculum materials, their video games, back to our kids.”

InBloom seems designed to nudge schools toward maximal data collection. School administrators can choose to fill in more than 400 data fields. Many are facts that schools already collect and share with various software or service companies: grades, attendance records, academic subjects, course levels, disabilities. Administrators can also upload certain details that students or parents may be comfortable sharing with teachers, but not with unknown technology vendors. InBloom’s data elements, for instance, include family relationships (“foster parent” or “father’s significant other”) and reasons for enrollment changes (“withdrawn due to illness” or “leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident”).

Ms. Barnes, the privacy lawyer, said she was particularly troubled by the disciplinary details that could be uploaded to inBloom because its system included subjective designations like “perpetrator,” “victim” and “principal watch list.” Students, she said, may grow out of some behaviors or not want them shared with third parties. She also warned educators to be wary of using subjective data points to stratify or channel children.

One scene in the inBloom video, for instance, shows a geometry teacher virtually reassigning students’ seating assignments based on their “character strengths” — helpfully coded as green, yellow and red. On his tablet, the teacher moves a green-coded female student (“actively participates: 98 percent”) next to a red-and-yellow coded boy (“shows enthusiasm: 67 percent”).

Executives at inBloom say their service has been unfairly maligned. It is entirely up to school districts or states to decide which details about students to store in the system and with whom to share them, Sharren Bates, inBloom’s chief product officer, said. She said the company does not look at, use, analyze, mine or sell the student data it stores.

Ms. Bates, who had flown in from Los Angeles to address the special August session of the Jeffco school board, assured it: “All of the decisions about what data is stored and what applications are approved and what users can see that data in those applications are all a local customer decision.”

MS. STICKLAND, the Jeffco parent, learned about her school district’s partnership with inBloom earlier this year, while perusing an education blog.

She was already attuned to data privacy and security issues because she works at a nonprofit energy organization that pays for the electricity and gas of facilities like shelters for battered women. Ms. Stickland’s job requires her to comply with strict rules that limit access to data, like addresses and phone numbers, which could make her clients vulnerable to intruders.

Reading about inBloom, she wondered whether Jeffco officials had investigated the ramifications of storing and sharing student data with education technology vendors.

She also worried that district officials might be unable to evaluate inBloom objectively, given its backing by the Gates Foundation, a major donor to public schools whose grant money Jeffco was hoping to attract. She quickly sought a meeting with Dr. Stevenson, the superintendent.

“I think they were star-struck and didn’t do their due diligence,” Ms. Stickland said.

In July, the Gates Foundation awarded Jeffco a $5.2 million grant for teacher development. Lynn Setzer, a school district spokeswoman, said administrators had been completely objective in their evaluation of inBloom.

For believers in data-driven education, the idea of collating data from a student’s record has the same logic as electronic health records.

“Do you want to take your child to the doctor and have three data points — height, weight and age — or do you also want data from a hospital in another state?” asked Bob Wise, a former governor of West Virginia who is an inBloom director. “I want the most data points available so my child can have the best diagnosis.”

Consolidating and analyzing data that the district already collects just makes common sense to some educators. David Millard, a Jeffco fifth-grade teacher, goes so far as to extract data by hand from different databases and create his own spreadsheets so he can get a more comprehensive view of his students’ progress. He thinks that parents should have access to this data about their children’s progress, too. “We are in critical need of a system that ties together the data that we have,” Mr. Millard said during the school board meeting.

Dr. Stevenson envisions inBloom as a vital part of doing just that. The district plans to invest up to $2 million in a student assessment dashboard being built by LoudCloud Systems, a software developer in Dallas, and she wants inBloom to supply data to that dashboard. “Think of how useful your car dashboard is,” Dr. Stevenson said in a recent interview. “You know if you are going too fast, you know if you are going too slow, you know if your tires are low.”

But inBloom isn’t actually necessary for the dashboard to work, said Manoj Kutty, chief executive of LoudCloud. His company’s system could pull student information directly from the local data storage system that Jeffco already has.

“We might be perfectly fine working with these school districts directly,” he said.

“FIFTY percent of this project has good intentions,” Paula Noonan, a Jeffco school board member, said of the inBloom plan. “The other 50 percent is totally full of risk that hasn’t been examined and weighed.”

Concerns about privacy and liability have forced the district to slow down and really think about the use of inBloom. Jeffco’s current service agreement says the data repository doesn’t guarantee that its electronic files on students are not susceptible to intrusion or attack. Other districts in Colorado, and in other states, are closely watching Jeffco as they consider participating themselves. Dr. Stevenson, who was initially reluctant to allow parents to opt out of inBloom, fearing it would be too expensive and technologically cumbersome, recently notified them that they would have that option. On the advice of privacy advocates and parents, she has also revised her original plan to upload student disciplinary data to inBloom.

“We are really looking at the classroom data that is fundamental to academic progress,” she said. “We can do that without disciplinary data.”

The district expects to decide by January on whether to test the data repository next fall.

Dr. Stevenson acknowledges that the district must develop policies to specify which data elements to upload to inBloom and the conditions under which they could be shared with vendors. The district has set up a data management advisory council, which includes some parents who work in data security and compliance. To everyone’s frustration, there are no accepted national guidelines to follow because, until now, K-12 school districts have largely managed their own data storage.

“There aren’t a lot of organizations that have all of the policies in place,” Dr. Stevenson said.

That means each inBloom client must develop its own policies. In New York State, for example, Thomas L. Rogers, superintendent of Nassau County schools, suggested at a recent public hearing that the state form an oversight board to manage inBloom’s practices. “My concern is that the monopoly inBloom creates sits outside the oversight of a publicly elected body,” he said.

Ms. Bates of inBloom said it was important for school districts to define their own legitimate uses for their students’ data and to develop policies to manage them.

“We don’t have all the answers, ” she said.

Educators, in other words, are on their own.

<img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

A version of this article appears in print on October 6, 2013, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Deciding Who Sees Students’ Data.