Mozilla Open Badges ships Beta release

Adding skills and achievements to your online identity

When Mozilla’s Open Badges project began in late 2010, it was little more than a demo and an audaciously big idea: what if we could use the web to create whole new ways to “show what you know?”

Today, that big idea is becoming reality, with impressive partners and new Mozilla Open Badges Beta software coming together to test how digital badges can supercharge learning and identity.

Collaborators building badges on Mozilla software

Mozilla’s Open Badges project now includes leading partners like the MacArthur Foundation, impressive collaborators (including NASA, Intel, Disney-Pixar, 4H and dozens of others now building badge programs using Mozilla tools) and — thanks to today’s new Beta release of Mozilla’s Open Badges Infrastructure — publicly available software for badge issuers and developers to get on board and build with.

Integration with Mozilla Persona = adding skills and achievements to your online identity

The new Beta release includes integration with Mozilla Persona (formerly BrowserID). This opens the door for users to create a single user-centric identity across the web, with tools like Mozilla Open Badges adding a “reputation layer” that provides a complete story about what they know and have achieved. All through an open, standards-based infrastructure that puts user sovereignty, privacy and security first.

Open Badges Beta: what’s new?

Today’s Beta release includes:

• New tools for badge issuers. A new and improved badge issuer API makes it easier for any organization to award their own digital badges for learning, skills or achievements.
• New ways for users to manage their badges. Improvements to Mozilla’s “Badge Backpack” make it easier for users to store, manage, import and group badges earned from multiple sites through a single location.
• New tools for badge displayers. A new displayer API will make it easier to display digital badges across the web, from personal web sites to social networking platforms.
• New documentation and privacy features. Including an updated privacy policy, terms of use and FAQs for developers.

Learn more and get involved:

• Learn more about Mozilla Open Badges — and earn your first badge
• Learn more about becoming a badge issuer or displayer
• Read more about the Beta release from Mozilla’s Senior Director of Learning, Erin Knight
• Developers: access the source code and technical documentation
• Join Mozilla Open Badges community calls