I have a backpack for my open badge badges through mozilla and I have an account on Credly. I’m learning. One small fact that I learned that changes how I view the actual badge: If it’s standards compliant it will be an image in the PNG format, and by design, PNG allows considerable adaptation. One characteristic is its ability to hold extensive metadata. In the case of a Badge.png, the file will contain information about the owner, information about the grantor, the date it was granted and data to help a third party verify the assertion. There can be more, all right there “baked” into that little image. Can it be hacked with a simple meta data editor? I’m not sure. That’s certainly a question for the IT folks.
A question that certainly is NOT for the IT people is, what should get a badge? What does it take to earn a badge, how is that assessed? And how is value determined between two grantors offering opportunity to earn a badge for what appears to be similar successes: Who accredits the accreditors? What is the value to people seeking confirmation of a skill set’s presence? How do you break learning into badge-able chunks? These are questions that need to be addressed by experts who grant badges, instructional designers and educators. It should not default to IT people.
Here are a few resource links:
- MozillaWiki/Badges
- The badge section in the Mozilla Wiki.
- OpenBadges.Org
- The primary site. Good information.
- mozillaBackPack
- Create an account and save your badges here.
- Credly
- Some of the folks listed as badge grantors do their granting through Credly.