Open Source System for Acknowledging Lifelong Achievement Sees Rapid Adoption from Wide Range of Organizations

BadgeOS, the open source framework for recognizing achievement, rewarding community engagement, and issuing digital badges, has now been installed over 2,000 times.

The powerful operating system is empowering organizations and communities to observe,  acknowledge and issue credit for the skills, contributions and knowledge they value most.

“We are seeing new groups each day using BadgeOS to reward achievement across the full spectrum of lifelong learning,” said Jonathan Finkelstein, Director of the BadgeOS Project. “Many of the uses are mind-boggling in terms of their potential and the collective impact.”

Organizations using BadgeOS include those who previously did not offer recognition for learning and achievement. The rapid growth of the platform means that many more people are now earning credit they deserve, in a manner that makes their talents more visible to employers and peers.

Some of the organizations using BadgeOS and contributing to its ongoing development include:

HP, New Media Consortium, and ISTE through the HP Catalyst Academy; the Smithsonian; American Museum of Natural History; YMCA of Greater NY; the American Alliance of Museums; Dallas Museum of Art; the American Association for State and Local History; NYC Department of Education; CyberWise; Georgia Department of Education; Cincinnati Museum Center; Yale University; and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

HP Catalyst Academy, a series of professional development courses for educators, is one of thousands of sites now running BadgeOS.

From issuing credentials to professionals in the workforce, to recognizing youth as they reach STEM, health or fitness goals, the systems being deployed are far-reaching and are having a real-world impact.

Total BadgeOS installations top 3,500, with over 1,000 sites also installing the BadgeOS Community Add-on, which extends the framework to reward peer-to-peer interactions and showcase individual achievement within an online community.

BadgeOS users are also taking advantage of built-in integration with Credly and the Open Credit API, the universal way to issue, store, curate and share evidence of lifelong achievement and recognition. Digital badges earned in BadgeOS sites can be curated together with credit received from other sites, mobile apps, and venues. They can also be shared to social networks, the Mozilla Open Badge Backpack, the Credly Facebook App, and other sites and profiles.

Through Open Credit integration, achievements and badges created on BadgeOS are available for issue and display on the free Credly iOS mobile app as well.

Many projects are finding BadgeOS to be an ideal framework for assessing field-based achievement in mobile apps and settings. The Smithsonian EdLab, for example, runs programs whereby youth visit museums and use smartphones running BadgeOS-enabled apps to collect artifacts and share insights that earn them sharable badges.

BadgeOS and its related add-ons are available to download for free on WordPress.org, and the source code is on GitHub, where feature ideas and code contributions are encouraged.

Stay up to date on BadgeOS and new ways to recognize achievement by following the project on Twitter @credly, LinkedIn, Facebook, or the project blog.