Learning happens everywhere.

But it's often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements that happen online or out of school.

Open Badges are an attempt to solve that problem, allowing any organization to issue, manage and

display digital badges across the web.

Badges being developed to…

• Create an alternative accreditation / credentialing system

• Avoid silos; i.e. badges stuck in one learning system

• Accredit both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills• Support learners learning everywhere

What is a badge and how does it work?

• An image embedded with metadata (sharable across the web)

• Metadata links to webpages, detailing who issued the badge, and what the learner has done

• Can include examples of work, i.e., portfolio

Learner-led learning

Learners choose what badges they want to earn

Learners can share the badge on their website, social networking profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)

Learners have control over their badge backpack

Virtually anyone can issue a badge, about virtually anything

Currently no standardisation within the badging infrastructure

Mozilla hosting Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI), facilitating the collection and sharing of badges

http://openbadges.org

More info…

http://manchestercommunitylearning.wikispaces.com/Open+Badges

http://www.digitalme.co.uk/s2r-medals/

https://www.makewav.es/s2r

http://openbadges.org/en-US/about.html