Mozilla's Open Badges Offer Ways for You to Showcase Your Skills

If you're a tech-savvy person who has spent time around other tech-savvy people in a workplace or development environment, you're probably either familiar with "constant learners" who are always adding to their tech-focused accomplishments, or you are one yourself. Many techies complete coursework on the side, obtain certification after certification, and display an unwavering effort to keep learning. Mozilla has now opened up its Open Badges Infrastructure project, which allows constant tech learners to showcase their skills and achievements.

You can read more about the Open Badges Infrastructure project at this page.  As it notes:

"Learning today happens everywhere, not just in the classroom. But it's often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements that happen outside of school. Mozilla's Open Badges project is working to solve that problem, making it easy for anyone to issue, earn and display badges across the web -- through a shared infrastructure that's free and open to all. The result: helping learners everywhere display 21st century skills, unlock career and educational opportunities, and level up in their life and work."

There is also information on the project on this page. Open Badges is similar in some ways to the certification programs that companies such as Cisco and Microsoft have become famous for. It is essential that academic degrees are not the only markers for tech-focused achievements in today's world--a function of how very fast technology moves, and how slow many structured academic programs are to catch up. It would be especially great to see Open Badges offer ways for people with specialized open source skills showcase what they know.