BadgeMaker at Mozilla Festival

What a weekend! This is the second time that Snook has taken our BadgeMaker project to Mozilla Festival (Mozfest), a brilliant testing ground for new innovative tech ideas. Mozfest had a brilliant buzz, with organisations from all over the world meeting to share insights on emerging technologies and celebrate the open web.

A whole floor dedicated to Open Badges

We are passionate about Open Badges as we see the potential to recognise and demonstrate skills, and change the way we see qualifications.

The project we’ve been working on, BadgeMaker, is a service to help organisations explore Open Badges. We focus on bringing them the guidance, tools and support to start or grow their practice. BadgeMaker’s first product is a free open source Moodle plugin to inspire learners to gain different skills and showcase them to employers. Here’s our video demonstrating how this process works.

Learning by doing

During our workshop, people learned how to prototype by creating little monsters. The workshop attracted people of all ages. Charley, Marie and Charlotte quickly got people to learn by doing. Participants were encouraged to make a scary monster out of play-doh. Then, they had to ask the people around them for feedback and iterate their monster based on that feedback to earn a badge.

Identifying skills

We encouraged participants to identify and discuss which skills they used. So, what did they say? Ideation, teamwork, iteration, communication and creativity to name a few. This simple activity had people using all the same skills they would need in many workplaces.

Make your own badge

People also designed their own new badge on paper, capturing some of the skills they had learned. We used a skills board to gather the new badges that people created. By creating badges people had an opportunity to think about what life and work skills they valued. One person reflected on their experience of moving house. This life transition encompassed many skills including organisation, packing, communicating and even a bit of accounting. From this, they created a badge that reflected that journey.

Live feedback

Through the workshop, participants learned new skills, created and earned a badge and learned about the potential of Open Badges. For us, it was invaluable to get live feedback on what life and work skills people value through the activities, and share BadgeMaker with a variety of people and age groups.

Get in touch to talk about partnering with us to use BadgeMaker at your college. We’re excited about embedding Open Badges inside and outside the curriculum. We also have some plans underway to offer support to other organisations, so drop us a line: curious@wearesnook.com

BadgeMaker was developed in partnership with Borders College and funded by the VocLearnTech Fund from the UFI Charitable Trust. If you are working at a school, college or learning institution, you can access our Open Badges plugin using Moodle. You can read more about the whole Open Badges project here.