We Are Open Co-op is delighted to announce a new partnership with Participate to create a knowledge base around Open Badges. This will be a sustainable community project, so we will be looking for volunteers in the near future.

One of the biggest problems when it comes to any new technology is in its application. People want to know more than just what it’s capable of — they want to know how others are using it in practice, particularly in their own sector.

“A wiki works best where you’re trying to answer a question that you can’t easily pose, where there’s not a natural structure that’s known in advance to what you need to know.” (Ward Cunningham)

The same applies to Open Badges, which are connected, verifiable credentials represented in portable image files. The opportunities of this technology are endless, making examples and case studies important to those looking to use it.

Those of us who have spent the last few years in this area know where to point those new to badges, but we end up being a bottleneck in the system for those who just want to get on quickly with implementation. What’s needed is a ‘knowledge base’.

“Wikis don’t build community. Communities build wikis.” (Howard Rheingold)

Since the start of 2017, when Mozilla handed over the stewardship of the Open Badges specification to IMS Global Learning Consortium, we have been working to sustain and grow the badges community. Badge Wiki will build on our success working with clients, Badge Bootcamp, and Badge News, the regular newsletter we send out to almost 500 subscribers.

This is a multi-phase project, with the first being the installation and configuration of MediaWiki, which we will be using to power Badge Wiki. Hit the Follow below to keep up-to-date with further announcements via this blog, or (better yet!) sign up to Badge News where we share updates on all of our projects, as well as the latest news from the community.

We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can.