AUSTIN, TX – March 10, 2015 –
The Open Badge Passport has been announced as one of the thirteen winners of the Digital Media Learning (DML) Trust Challenge. The announcement was made by educational innovator Richard Culatta, director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, TX.
Applicants from 22 countries tackled some of the thorniest issues around trust, privacy, and safety that are critical to learning in an open online world: How can learners exercise control over who sees and uses their data? What tools are needed need to navigate, collaborate, and learn online with confidence? What solutions will foster greater civility and respect in online learning environments?
The approach of the Open Badge Passport is to provide the means for the individuals to be the makers and the curators of a new type of — bottom-up — trust infrastructure. It is an open source project, open to the collective intelligence of the community, in particular the other 12 awarded projects.
“The Open Badge Passport will enable everyone to seamlessly send, receive, organise, display search and verify Open Badges to establish and nurture trust networks” explains Serge Ravet, the innovation director at ADPIOS, a not for profit organisation dedicated to the exploration of identity construction in a digital world. “The Open Badge Passport also aims at creating the conditions for the emergence of a new generation of trusted services supporting learning, employment (self-employment), social inclusion and citizenship.”
For Eric Rousselle, the CEO of Discendum Oy, editor of the Open Badge Factory, “the Open Badge Passport had become an absolute necessity to respond to the demands of the educational institutions we are working with and the learners they are serving: the process of issuing, receiving, displaying and verifying badges must be simplified.” Moreover, explains Eric Rousselle: “The learners we have interviewed told us that they would like to do more than just displaying the badges they have earned. Sharing and endorsing badges, ePortfolios will be among the tracks we will explore with them.”
The Open Badge Passport project will be launched at the ePIC conference, Barcelona June 8-10 2015 (http://www.epforum.eu). During three days, practitioners from Europe and the world will meet to explore and hack the very first prototype of the Open Badge Passport.
About the Open Badge Passport partners
ADPIOS, FRANCE
ADPIOS is a not-for-profit organisation which mission is to explore the issues related to identity construction in a world where digital and networked technologies colonise an ever increasing space in our lives.
ADPIOS is currently leading the Badge Europe project (http://www.openbadges.eu/) and is involved in a number of European and international projects related to learning and technologies.
Contact: Serge Ravet: +33 607686727 http://www.iosf.org
Discendum Oy, Finland
Discendum Oy is an eLearning software company. Leading member of the Open Badge community, Discendum is the editor of the Open Badge Factory, a platform conceived to provide a seamless experience in the design, delivery and management of Open Badges.
Contact: Eric Rousselle, , http://www.discendum.com
OMNIA, Finland
Omnia is a multisector vocational education provider and regional development centre operating in a number of national and international education development projects. OMNIA serves 10,000 learners yearly, 5,000 of them in upper secondary education.
Contact: Satu Järvinen, , http://www.omnia.fi
About the Trust Challenge
Thirteen projects have been awarded a total of $1.2 million, as part of the Digital Media and Learning Competition’s “Trust Challenge,” to foster trust in online learning environments. Tech developers, youth-serving institutions, collaborative networks, school systems, and universities will develop innovative digital badge systems, data management platforms, digital learning environments, online learning content and related digital tools to promote trust in connected learning experiences.
The Trust Challenge is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and administered by HASTAC, an alliance of more than 14,000 humanists, artists, scientists, and technologists working together to change the future of learning. “The Internet and social media represent incredible opportunities to learn, but solutions to ensure youth feel safe in online spaces and are confident their online data are used in their best interest have not kept pace,” said Connie Yowell, Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation. “This competition has been designed to surface the most promising approaches to help foster trust amongst youth, their parents, mentors and teachers in using the online world for learning.
The other awarded projects:
- Building Connected Credentials
- Code, Compose, Collaborate
- Digital Literacy Toolkit
- Global Gateway: Building Trust Through Peer Review
- Gooru Trust Lab
- MediaBreaker Learning Pathways
- Open Badge Passport
- OurNet: Building trusted network infrastructures for youth
- Resilience Network: Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online
- RyeCatcher Family Trust Network
Three other projects received a grant for technology purchases for their respective organisations: “Education through Global Engagement Mobile App,” “Tools for Managing Learning Through Internships” and “Parents Guide to Media and Technology.”
For the DML press release: link
About Open Badges
Open Badges are portable and verifiable records of achievements, allowing learners to showcase work, document competencies and create a robust portrait of their abilities wherever they were acquired: whether in school, in the community, on the job or online.
Millions of badges have already been delivered and the initiative has received the support from leading organisations in the field of education, business, policy and citizenship.
