Give recognition for your student's achievements - Award them Open Badges

What are Open Badges?

Open Badges is a new digital reward system which allows students to verify their skills, interests and achievements and store them all in one place. 

The badges are awarded by completing a series of tasks or meeting a set of criteria for which students must supply evidence.

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What makes these different to other online reward systems is that all the evidence such as, criteria, name of issuer, date of issue, student’s evidence and standards for each achievement are stored or ’baked‘ inside each badge in the form of metadata.

Anatomy of an Open Badge (Image by Kyle Bowen)

Open Badges make it easy to…

• Get recognition for the things you learn. Open Badges include a shared standard for recognizing your skills and achievements and helps make them count towards job opportunities and lifelong learning.
• Give recognition for the things you teach. Anyone who meets the standard can award badges for skills or learning.
• Display your verified badges across the web. Earn badges from anywhere, then share them wherever you want—on social networking profiles, job sites and on your website.
• Verify skills. Employers, organizations and schools can explore the data behind every badge issued using Mozilla Open Badges to verify individuals’ skills and competencies.

Source: OpenBadges.org


Sharing what you've learned

When students reach the age of 13, they can store all their badges in a “Digital Backpack”. Once in their backpack, students can share their skills and achievements anywhere on the web including social networking profiles, job sites, wikis and personal blogs.

Digital Badges: Unlocking 10 Million Better Futures

Making waves with Open Badges

One model which demonstrates how Open Badges can successfully be used to recognise and reward student achievement is Makewaves. Makewaves - https://www.makewav.es/ - is a safe social learning platform for 5-19 year olds (ideal for students and teachers). Makewaves fully integrates with Mozilla Open Badges allowing teachers to make and award badges to their students. Students under the age of 13 can earn badges through Makewaves and convert them to open badges when they are old enough. Badges are currently available from a number of organisations including Computing At School, Rising Stars, Comic Relief and the National Literacy Trust.

Just some of the badges available through Makewaves.

Where to start

• Open Badges – http://openbadges.org/ – Official Mozilla Open Badges website.
  
• Mozilla Backpack – https://backpack.openbadges.org/  – Collect badges from multiple sources, online and off, into one single backpack.
  
• Badge the UK – http://www.digitalme.co.uk/badgetheuk – Official site for the ‘Badge the UK’ project.
  

Useful links

• What are open badges – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohTsq1fWckQ – Video from Doug Belshaw (Badges & Skills Lead, Mozilla Foundation), explaining open badges.
  
• Badge Alliance – http://www.badgealliance.org/ – Network of organisations and individuals working together to build and support an open badging ecosystem.
  
• Makewav.es – https://www.makewav.es/openbadges – Website which makes it simple and safe for schools to create and manage Open Badges across a school campus, enabling teachers to create and share badges with groups, track progress, award badges, and celebrate achievement. 
  
• OpenBadges.me – https://www.openbadges.me/ – Create exciting graphics for your Mozilla Open Badges with this badge designer tool from MyKnowledgeMap.
  
• Twitter – @OpenBadges – Use the #OpenBadges to join in the conversation.
  
• Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/MozillaOpenBadges – Updates and latest news.
  

Case Studies

• JISC RSC Showcase – http://www.rsc-scotland.org/?tag=open-badges – Case studies on the use of Open Badges in Scotland.
  
• Reconnecting Learning – http://www.reconnectlearning.org/case-studies/ – Set of case looking at how badges are being used in higher education, professional training, and after-school programs.
  

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