One of the often discussed challenges of Open Badges is what to use to identify the recipients (or earners) of badges. For a long while, Open Badges could only be issued to email addresses. For at least a couple of reasons this was not a great solution: 1) email is not an identifier, 2) what happens when the badge earner doesn’t have access to that email anymore or leaves a job or school?

Then, in late 2016, the recipient property was expanded to include URLs. Most platforms still use email but this opened up the possibility of using other identifiers that could be verified using a URL. …

Open Badges launched in 2011 as a type of digital credential that could recognize learning, skills, and achievements happening anywhere at any time. They are referred to as “Open” Badges in some respects because of their capability to use evidence to demonstrate achievements that had no other form of recognition such as learning how to code, participating in an afterschool program, demonstrating soft skills, or volunteering at a local community center.

These digital credentials are hosted on web servers and contain metadata that describe the achievements. They can be emailed, shared and uploaded online. Like digital photos which are embedded with date, camera, and location info, Open Badges contain information such as the criteria to earn the badge, who issued it, and who earned it. The data is verifiable because it is digitally traceable back to the issuing party. …

Background: The Open Badges specification describes a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable image files as digital badges, and establishing an infrastructure for its validation. This data should makes it possible to verify the asserted achievements by identifying the issuer and recipient, explaining the criteria required along with the evidence of the achievement. Open Badges are JSON-LD compatible, making it possible for them to be consumed by applications, APIs, as well as searchable and findable on the web.

Open Badges is currently at V1.1 and movement has started in the direction of 2.0 to address long-standing issues in the badges ecosystem and new innovations. Issues have been compiled and it’s been requested that the community vote on the priority of these issues. The community can vote here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uDTQeq41BGefaX2XSq8sq-jNTBJDjvR4i2lxXowaiQ0/edit#gid=0 …

This post is the third in a series of five blog posts designed to explore, inform, and encourage public discussions about the possibilities, opportunities, and challenges arising at the intersection of Open Badges and blockchain technology.
Part 1: “The Open Badges Part”
Part 2: “The Blockchain Part”

– Carla Casilli & Kerri Lemoie

Over the last five years, we have dedicated ourselves to working in the open as founding members of the open badges revolution. We continue to share our insights publicly in this blog post, exploring the possibilities of combining badges and blockchain, two innovative, new technologies. As always, we aim to keep the language simple and straightforward. …

Originally published at www.edsurge.com on May 12, 2016.

When you hear the word blockchain does it make your head spin? Wall Street analysts and fintech experts claim it could make traditional banking obsolete; Airbnb just acquired a team of blockchain experts; and the country of Estonia will use it to secure a million patient health records.

But what exactly is blockchain, and what are its implications for higher education?

Originally created as the underlying database for bitcoin (the peer-to-peer digital asset and payment system), blockchain’s technology is now being seen as valuable and purposeful beyond the financial sector. …

This post is the second in a series of five blog posts designed to explore, inform, and encourage public discussions about the possibilities, opportunities, and challenges arising at the intersection of Open Badges and blockchain technology. Find the first post, “The Open Badges Part” here.
– Carla Casilli & Kerri Lemoie

Starting from open

Over the last five years, we have dedicated ourselves to working in the open as key players in the open badges revolution. With this series of blog posts, we continue to share our ideas, insights and explorations publicly.

A quick aside

Since we began preparing this second post a few weeks ago, a number of truly excellent blockchain posts have been written here, here, and here. Those recently published posts have made the writing journey of “the blockchain part” of From Badges to BadgeChain both exciting and tremendously humbling. …

This post kicks off a series of five blog posts designed to explore, inform, and encourage public discussions about the possibilities, opportunities, and challenges arising at the intersection of Open Badges and blockchain technology.
– Carla Casilli & Kerri Lemoie

Starting from open

Working together with the community to build the Open Badges ecosystem over the past five years has always been both exciting and rewarding — and if response to our first Welcome to BadgeChain blog post is any indication, this year will be even more so. Since that post went live we’ve been blitzed with questions, excitement, and interest from a variety of individuals and sectors. …

Open Badges makes it possible for anyone to issue a badge. The badge data or the public keys are hosted on the issuer’s web server. The metadata of badges contains links to where they are hosted. But what happens if the issuer goes away? or the web server goes down? Whether you are new to badges or have been issuing badges for some time, it’s an important consideration. As Open Badges works now, the long-term verifiability & validity of the badges is the obligation of the issuer or issuing platform.

So what are the options? How can issuers ensure that their earners will keep their badges for as long as they need them? …