Open Badges

[iankronquist]

According to my understanding of the Mozilla docs open badges work like this:

• We choose what badges we want to give out
• We create a series of PNGs which represent the badges we want to give out
• We embed JSON metadata of a certain schema into the PNGs (or SVGs?) ( the process of "baking")
• We make the badges available on the website using the Mozilla API or we email them to participants
• We provide docs how to upload/export the badges to the Mozilla backpack (Or we just use the API)
• We introduce the badges program at the devops meeting (maybe make a slide deck)

How this works: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

Badge type ideas:

• Devopsbootcamp attendee, for attending 1 or more sessions
• Devopsdaycamp attendee
• Completion award, for successfully completing all the projects
• Sous-chef/puppet master, for writing a cookbook for the webapp
• Web wizard, for writing more views for the webapp
• Worker Bee, for contributing to an open source project outside of bootcamp
• DOBC presenter, to encourage current students to someday present a lesson
• Others?

Would Elsie/@lucywyman /someone graphically talented be interested in drawing up the badges? We'll probably need small, medium and large PNGs (or SVGs?)

They should be themed or something. Maybe they could all fit together like this: http://www.symbolsofadventure.com/uploads/Occoneechee2010Patch_set.png

"Baking" or embedding the data in the image works like this: https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Badge-Baking

Or we could just use Mozilla's API: https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Using-the-Issuer-API

Since we are basing this all off of in-person demonstration of skill we should probably either:

• Email the badge to the recepient
• Cook up a script to send a badge to the Mozilla API

We should pick one and stick with it.

[iankronquist]

@jordane @edunham @ramereth @lucywyman thoughts?

[ramereth]

I don't recall exactly how open badges work but I was thinking it would make sense if we make them all hosted by the OSL and given by the OSL. The Devops specific badges are just some badges, we can make other ones for OSL employees eventually. So if we can have one instance for Devopsbootcamp and OSL I'd prefer that.

So my question is, what is involved with running the open badge software ourselves?

[iankronquist]

Badges are just PNGs with metadata. We really don't need special software except for creating the badges and awarding them. Badges can be stored in the Mozilla Backpack, or elsewhere. I see two ways of doing this:

1. Create a website devoted to awarding badges to devops students (or build similar functionality into an existing one). It would need user accounts and an admin interface for awarding badges to users. When a user accepts an award we export it to the Mozilla backpack website with their API (or not, but then what's the point?). Basically write a webapp. I believe users will need two accounts in this setup.
2. Create a script to generate the right badge, and email it to the user to upload to Mozilla Backpack manually. Users only have one account. We only write one simple script. Does that answer your question?

[iankronquist]

https://github.com/mozilla/django-badger This seems worth investigating.

[pop]

I'd be interested in contributing art and ideas for the badges, I don't have enough excuses to use blender these days :smile: . I also like @ramereth's idea of having general OSL badges and a subset of those are DOBC badges, although they'd best be served in the DOBC to encourage more people to show up and keep showing up via gamification.

Ideas for DOBC Badges:

• Fall / Winter / Spring Term Attendee
• Year Attendee (I participated in 201#!)
• Badge for attending n times every term of the year
• Attending Devops Daycamp 20## (possible custom badge for every year)
• People like getting badges but people really like custom badges, like finding a super rare card in a booster pack, so we should keep in mind as we design the badges and infrastructure to allow us to easily add new badges for special events and uniqueness. For instance getting a Spring badge is pretty cool but getting a Spring2016 badge is awesome because the pool for that achievement is much smaller.
• The website Roosterteeth has badges (called milestones) , similar to how Reddit has awards based on different criteria, and they implemented a Staff Badge where staff can arbitrarily give a badge to a community member for doing something that staff member liked. We could also implement something like this for all of the badges we don't think to explicitly create.