Mozilla is simplifying the online process of issuing and sharing digital learning badges through the Open Badge Infrastructure project. According to the Mozilla blog, these badges will help users to showcase their skills and achievements in various fields on the web.
Badges for Javascript courses are currently being developed at the School of Webcraft by Mozilla. It also plans to rope in diverse groups such as P2PU, 4H, NASA, PBS, US Department of education and Intel to develop badges.
This new process claims to be of advantage to learners as they will be given an opportunity to collect badges from any internet website. These collected badges will reveal the learner’s proficiency in various subjects. And that’s not all, it is believed that open badges may prove beneficial for users to build online reputation, look for collaborators and find jobs.
“Open Badges is a response to this trend: an open specification and APIs that provide any organization the basic building blocks they need to offer badges in a standard, interoperable manner. If we’re successful, the benefits to learners will be tremendous. Open Badges will let you gather badges from any site on the internet, combining them into a story about what you know and what you’ve achieved,” states the Mozilla blog.
Further, Mozilla has released the first Open Badges beta comprising badge format spec, APIs and reference implementation of badge backpack software. Brian Brennan and Erin Knight developed these badges at Mozilla Labs in collaboration with Ben Adida and Dan Mills. By developing badges under this project, Mozilla aims at creating learning which works like the web itself.
MacArthur Foundation offered $1 million grant to Mozilla to carry out the Open badge Infrastructure project.