What is an Open Badge?
An Open Badge is a digital photo of your skills. Like a photo which not only has a picture, but also provides information on the place and time it was shot, the Badge too contains extra information – metadata – which can be read by all the applications which can read Open Badges. Metadata allow one to make sure that the Badge was really assigned to you and to access all the descriptive contents of the Badge, hosted on the platform which issued it.
Metadata are written in the Open Badge using an open source format: so a great many platforms assign Open Badges and allow one to collect and show them. Bestr is one of these.
On Bestr, there is a page describing the contents for each Badge (see the page dedicated to Badge Bestr Friend), and anyone who obtains a Badge has a dedicated page, with his name, the date on which he obtained the Badge and a description of the Badge.
Open Badges are for everyone to recognize skills gained through a variety of experiences, regardless of your age or background. They allow you to follow your interests and passions and unlock opportunities in life and work by standing out from the crowd.
Organizations create and issue Open Badges for you to earn, enabling you to build up your own unique collection and share them across the web. Each badge you earn contains data about your skills and the issuing organization within a portable image file. This data can be viewed when you display and share your badges, helping people find out more about you.
You can share your badges in:
►Blogs, websites, ePortfolios, and professional networks
►Job applications
►Social media sites - Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn
►Even in your email signature!
Bicocca’s students need to use e-mail @campus.unimib.it in order to register and to pick up a badge.
For more information
e-mail: [email protected]