The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition winners were announced yesterday at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Francisco. The winners—awarded grants ranging from $25,000 to $175,000 —will use Mozilla’s new free and open source “Open Badges” software to issue, manage and display digital badges for learning across the Web.

The competition brought together Web developers, designers and technologists with educators, online learning innovators and collaborators that range from NASA, the U.S. Department of Education and the Girl Scouts of America to Intel, Disney-Pixar and Motorola.

The goal: explore how digital badges can provide learners of all ages new ways to gain 21st century skills, harness the full educational power of the Internet, and unlock career and learning opportunities in the real world.

And the winners are…
The Competition was held in collaboration with the Mozilla, and is part of the Digital Media and Learning Competition supported by the MacArthur Foundation and administered by HASTAC. Winners include:

* NASA’s Robotics and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) System will engage learners in exploring new STEM topics and create digital badges for learners of all ages.
* The Disney-Pixar Wilderness Explorers badges will engage youth in nature-based explorations, offering ways to learn about and become advocates for wildlife and wild places.
* The Manufacturing Institute’s National Manufacturing badges will recognize the range of skills and achievements workers need to be competitive in today’s advanced manufacturing workplace.
* The Young Adult Library Services Association’s Badge Program will help librarians develop the skills they need to meet the needs of 21st century teens.
A complete list of all 30 competition winners is available here

Why digital badges for learning?
Learning today happens everywhere and at every age. But its often difficult to get recognition for learning that happens online or outside of school.
“We believe digital badges have the power to unlock the full educational potential of the Web,” said Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla. “Our goal is to provide a free and open infrastructure that today’s award winners—and any organization or community in the world—can use to easily issue and share badges across the web. This will empower learners to take charge of their online identity and reputation, gathering badges from any site on the Internet, and combining them into a single story about what they know and what they have achieved.”

Learn more about Mozilla Open Badges for learning
* Learn more about the Mozilla Open Badges project
* See the complete list of MacArthur Foundation competition winners and project descriptions
* Learn more about why Mozilla is building an open infrastructure for digital badges 

Mozilla has taken over stewardship of Hive Learning Network NYC: a network of over 30 organizations using digital technology and web culture to fuel learning. Hive NYC links educators from libraries, museums and after schools programs around creative, digital projects with youth.  Member organizations — of which there are 30 including The American Museum of Natural History, MoMA, New York Public Library, Global Kids and Urban Word NYC — collaborate on learning programs around youth-driven interests in everything from art and writing to history and web design.

The Hive Learning Network model pushes technology into the background, focusing instead on whatever kids want to learn about. The result is increased interest from youth in the short term, and a larger number of learners exposed to web literacy and digital skills over the long term.

Hive NYC will also act as a Mozilla-led “learning lab” to explore how youth can thrive in a remixable digital world. This will include continued development and testing of Mozilla digital learning tools including Hackasaurus or Popcorn with youth in New York City. We’ll also be prototyping the Hive Learning Network concept in London at the Mozilla Festival next month: Hive London Pop-Up for Young People.

Created with support from MacArthur Foundation, Hive NYC will continue to be a part of MacArthur’s broader Digital Media & Learning portfolio. Hive NYC is  part of a broader Hive Learning Network, which includes Hive Chicago (not directly affiliated with Mozilla).

Read more on HiveNYC, Mozilla and learning.

Today we announced Mozilla’s Open Badge Infrastructure project, an effort to make it easy to issue and share digital learning badges across the web.

More and more people are looking at badges to show skills and achievements online. Mozilla is currently developing its own badges for things like Javascript courses at the School of Webcraft. We’ve also talked to groups as diverse as 4H, NASA, PBS, P2PU, Intel and the US Department of Education, all of whom plan to develop digital badges.

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. There is a real chance to create learning that works more like the web.

Also, this sort of badge collection may eventually become a central part of online reputation, helping you get a job, find collaborators and build prestige. This is another reason Mozilla wants to build an open badge format: it can show the real potential of open identity tools on the web.

Released today, the first Open Badges beta was developed by Brian Brennan and Erin Knight, with support from Dan Mills and Ben Adida in Mozilla Labs. It includes a badge format spec, APIs and reference implementation for ‘badge backpack’ software. It also builds on other Mozilla open identity technology like Browser ID. Our first implementation will be as part of School of Webcraft, an initiative Mozilla runs jointly with P2PU.

Today’s announcement coincides with the launch of a $2 million badges for learning competition funded by MacArthur Foundation and run by HASTAC. Earlier this week, MacArthur approved a $1 million grant to Mozilla to work on the Open Badges Infrastructure, a platform that will be used by all winners of the competition.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, MacArthur Foundation VP Programs Julia Stasch and Mozilla Executive Director Mark Surman spoke at the competition launch in Washington DC earlier today. Here is the MacArthur Foundation press release.