Webmaker/Press/Other projects

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Mozilla OpenBadges

  • Project name: Mozilla OpenBadges
  • Project description and goal (one paragraph): Mozilla OpenBadges makes it easy to add skills and achievements to your online identity. This gives learners everywhere new ways to display 21st century skills, open up career and educational opportunities, and unlock the full educational potential of the web.
    Learning today happens everywhere -- online, in after-school programs, or through real-world experience. But it's often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements that happen out of school. Mozilla OpenBadges helps solve that problem by making it easy for any organization to issue, manage and display digital badges for learning across the web.
  • This helps learners get recognition for new skills, unlock educational and job opportunities, and get recognition for learning regardless of where it happens.


    Organizations like NASA, Purdue University, Disney-Pixar, Intel and many others are now building badge systems using Mozilla's OpenBadges infrastructure. The goal is to create a free and open badge framework available to all.

  • Your name and role: Sunny Lee, Open Badges Project Lead, Chris McAvoy, Open Badges Product Lead
  • Your contact details: sunny@mozillafoundation.org / @soletelee / 310-433-7485, chris@mozillafoundation.org / @chmcavoy
  • Links to more info / homepage: http://www.openbadges.org
  • What do you plan to ship or announce at the Festival? Please share a brief description of what you will do / ship / announce. (Including date, time and location.):
    • Launching "Open Badger" beta. a lightweight OBI compliant badge issuing platform, will be released in beta. Mozilla Webmaker badges will be created and issued utilizing Open Badger. The code base for Open Badger is available for any organization interested in creating and issuing badges.
    • New and improved "Badge Backpack." We have made user experience improvements to the OpenBadges "badge backpack." The backpack is gives users a single interface for collecting, managing, grouping and sharing their badges across the web. It allows users to collect badges earned from multiple issuers into a single unified view. At the Festival we will share and test these new features and improvements.
  • Please provide a quote we can use with media. Why are the announcements or accomplishments you've listed above important / newsworthy / world-changing?
    • For Open Badges UX Improvements: We've been focusing a great deal of our attention on populating the badges ecosystem with high caliber badges. While we continue with that effort, we want to ensure a great user experience for the learner, the person earning and collecting their badges. The improved backpack will allow for more intuitive grouping, managing and sharing of one's badges.
    • For Open Badger: We've been focusing a great deal of our attention on populating the badges ecosystem with high caliber badges. As part of that effort, we've created Open Badger, a code base that allows organizations that are interested in issuing badges to easily create and issue badges to their community of learners. Mozilla's webmaker badges will be the first client of this badge issuing platform. Our hope is that more issuers can leverage this code for their organizations as well.
  • Your short bio.
    • Chris McAvoy: Chris leads the Mozilla Open Badges development team and the Mozilla Webmaker development team. Before joining the Mozilla Foundation, Chris was the VP of Technology for Threadless, a funny t-shirt company, the VP of Open Source for PSC Group and held several positions at Doubleclick (aquired by Google) and Chicago Public Schools. Chris is a technology leader with a passion for open source communities, software, and system architecture. In addition to his professional life, he founded the Chicago Python Users Group, the Chicago Chapter of the Awesome Foundation, built the infrastructure for two Chicago music labels and performed at Chicago's Improv Olympic theater for ten years. His publications include articles in Linux Journal and McSweeney's.
    • Sunny Lee: Sunny Lee is the Project Lead of Open Badges. In this role, she talks to people tirelessly about badges and the potential for open badges as an alternative system for credentialing, strategize partnerships that would grow and advance the ecosystem and work to promote badges as a viable and evidence-based way to evaluate candidates for career and educational opportunities. Sunny has a Master of Information Management & Systems degree from UC Berkeley with an emphasis in Education & Technology. In another lifetime, Sunny used to develop TV shows in Los Angeles.

Please attach or add links for if you have for:

  • Logos (JPEG large enough for print (300dpi)
  • Your photo (printable, 300 dpi)
  • Photo of your project at work / in the field (screen shot, event shots, etc.)
  • Videos / demos or any other visual that you would like to include
  • Press coverage on OpenBadges (including New York Times): http://delicious.com/mozilladrumbeat/badges