A picture is worth a thousand words. But we often struggle with deciding what format to use to save that picture. "There are a ton of choices, and I'm not sure which format to use and when/why."
 
     Physics professor Rick Matthews of Wake Forest University has some great pages to help us see the distinctions. His web page Digital Image File Types Explained is very informative and has great examples embedded in the page that demonstrate the differences in image clarity/quality as well as file size, too.

     Designer and blogger Jennifer Farley published this article "GIF, PNG, JPG. Which One To Use?" that also does a great job of explaining the differences between the popular web formats, and with examples to demonstrate visually the quality (and transparency) as well as the file size.

Everyone likes to get an award. And achievements are just awards that you can work towards getting. I'm sure you are aware of achievements in your favorite video games. We are going to set up levels of achievement here that we can all strive to accomplish, and I want you to be deeply involved in developing what kinds of awards you can earn. 

Not just what achievements you can earn, but also what the awards will look like. We can't pass out a golden cup trophy to everyone who gets something done, but we can give you a badge. Think of Boy Scouts, or Girl Scouts; you earn merit badges for meeting some guidelines in camping, or cooking, or showing your skills in first aid for example.

Let's figure out what achievements we would like to be able to earn, and then work to design what those badges will look like.

Here are a few tools to organize our ideas about what achievements we should make available to earn:

• Text 2 Mind Map - Web based mind mapping
• Coggle - Web based mind mapping

Here's a MindMap that is already started. How can we make it better?

Here are some tools to create the image of your badge:

• iPiccy
• Badge Designer at OpenBadges.me
• Official Badge Generator at Says-It.com/badge
• Badge Creator at ImageFu.com for Text Only badges
• 3D-Badge Maker at OnlineBadgeMaker.com