First post of 2011! What better way to ring in the New Year than a post about the 3rd (and final) piece of the badge system - the open badge infrastructure. I have already (briefly) talked about the assessments and badges, but there is a bigger piece that extends beyond our pilot and even our own definition of badges (hint: the badge infrastructure). As I have discussed before here and here, an alternative form of assessment and certification are necessary because learning is happening all around us, all across the Web and other experiences and yet none of that learning ‘counts’ or is transferable to other contexts. Assessments and associated badges can help us with this by providing a mechanism to demonstrate and capture the learning wherever it happens and then carry the evidence with us back to recruiters, formal institutions or our peer community.

Yeah yeah yeah, I have said all of this before, but the key part that I have not yet addressed is the ‘wherever it happens’ piece (hint: that’s where the open badge infrastructure comes in)… A lot of my day-to-day work lately has been mapping out an assessment/badge plan for the School of Webcraft, a set of P2PU courses on web development. And that’s really cool and important because it is a free, accessible and open path to learning and its also a peer learning environment - all of which are relatively unchartered territories as far as assessment and certification goes. And through these focused efforts we will learn a bunch, potentially (hopefully) provide more incentives for P2PU learners and even provide a model for other people to work from. All good and critical things, but they are still isolated. If we only build our system, we are not supporting learners much better than any individual institution does.  If someone chooses another perfectly legitimate path, it won’t ‘count’ because they can’t get the proof or evidence (degree, badges, etc).

So what are the options?  Well, we could work to design/vet/support badges that cover everyone for every type of learning and every skill/topic and manage all of the badges centrally… Hopefully that concept seems as ridiculous to you as it does to me. Who are we to try to do that? The beauty of the world we live in now is that again, learning is happening everywhere and that everywhere changes and grows constantly. So a truly valuable badge system is one that supports badges from that everywhere. It should support badges from any issuer, collect those badges to a persistent identity (for each individual) and allow the badges to be shared out back into the everywhere. It must be open so that every need and path can be captured and demonstrated and the learner remains in control. This is the open badge infrastructure. And Mozilla is building it.

The open badge infrastructure will support badges issued by anyone across the Web, and allow an individual learner to collect these badges (from those anyone), store them to a single identity and then carry them with them and share them across contexts. Said in plain(er) English, if I am taking a few courses at P2PU and I am also using a series of OER materials in another context that is issuing associated badges, I can collect badges from these independent issuers, have all of the earned badges connected with my open identity, and then I can take those badges with me to interviews, back to my formal institution or post on this blog or LinkedIn profile to demonstrate my learning and skills for various audiences.  This infrastructure is critical to truly support learning across the Web.

Now obviously this is idealized somewhat. In order for ‘every need and path’ to be supported, there would need to be badge issuers at every step. We can’t control who issues badges but we can provide the infrastructure to support anyone who wants to. So we are. And eventually, if and when the value is apparent, sites/providers/communities will want to have badges. And if it is truly open, learners could even create or suggest badges along the way.

Open scares a lot of people. I have heard a colleague say (paraphrasing): “Everyone loves open education until they consider education being truly open.”  Wait, ANYONE can issue badges? It could get messy! There might be a lot of badges?! There might be ‘bad’ badges! And people might game the system! True. All things to watch closely. But a centralized or closed system WILL NOT solve our problems, and in fact will simply recreate the ones we already have by only supporting a small subset of the learning that is occuring, putting the power to decide what ‘counts’ in a small number of hands, created prescribed learning paths, demotivating learners…and so on and so on.

Besides, I seem to remember a similar case in the early days of the Web. Wait, ANYONE can create a website? It could get messy! There might be a lot of websites?! There might be ‘bad’ websites! Then we had Google and various services that help us find, rate and share websites that are credible and/or are valuable/relevant/interesting to us.  Maybe we will need something like that for badges, we don’t know yet.  But just as a closed and controlled Web would have never resulted in the explosion of creativity, expression, transparency and access that we value and depend on today, a closed badge system will never reach full potential. Open badge infrastructure FTW!

It goes without saying that Mozilla, ambassador of the open web, is the right entity to be building this open badge infrastructure. There is a team already cranking away to open up badges and take this thing the the next level. They built a prototype in Barcelona and haven’t looked back. More to come over the next few months!

-E

We just opened signups for the third cycle of courses at P2PU which are starting in September. This is our third, and largest cycle yet. We had 6 courses in the first, 16 in the second, and 23 so far for the third cycle. I'm organizing a course called "Web 200: The Anatomy of a Request" as part of the School of Webcraft. Here's the story from the P2PU blog:

The Peer 2 Peer University announced its third round of free and open online courses today, opening sign-ups for a growing list of courses dealing in su bject areas ranging from Collaborative Lesson Planning to Manifestations of Human Trafficking.

P2PU is also excited to announce the launch of the P2PU School of Webcraft, run in conjunction with the Mozilla Foundation. The School of Webcraft is a powerful new way to learn open, standards based web development in a collaborative environment. School of Webcraft courses include Beginning Python Webservices and HTML5.

All classes are globally accessible, free, and powered entirely by learners, mentors and contributors with the goal of creating a vibrant, peer-led system that helps people around the world easy access to build careers on open web technology.

The P2PU community is growing and excited to have these new courses and their organizers on board.

Since the last round of courses, a few changes have taken place at P2PU, most noticeably on the P2PU site which has seen a major overhaul, and is simpler and easier to use than ever before. However, the nature of the P2PU community remains the same, and all community generated content is open and shareable under CC BY-SA.

The P2PU community consists of a diverse group of people. They are writers, teachers, designers, doctoral and alternative grad students, artists, copyright specialists, scientists, and blues guitar players. Above all, they are learners–peers working together to learn from each other.

Sign-ups for all courses are available at http://p2pu.org/course/list. Deadlines for sign-ups are 8th September 2010. The courses will run until October 27th. Each course application may require additional information.

I put together a proposal for our Mozilla Drumbeat project, P2PU School of Webcraft, to go to SXSW Interactive and we need your help.

1. Please register for an account on the panel picker website: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
2. Confirm your email address
3. Vote up our proposal: http://bit.ly/sxsw_webcraft
4. Leave comments and start a discussion

Please pass this along to as many people as you can. If you tweet, RT this: http://twitter.com/johndbritton/status/20906260210

Mozilla School of Webcraft @P2PU

P2PU School of Webcraft: Web developer training that’s free, open and globally accessible. Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web developer skills. Our classes are globally accessible, 100% free, and powered by learners, mentors and contributors like you. Our goal is to provide a free pathway to skills and certification to help people build careers on open web technology. Existing developer training is expensive, out of touch, and out of reach. We leverage peer learning powered by mentors and learners like you and self-organized study groups. We use existing open and free learning materials In this sixty minute session we'll briefly cover the inception of the Peer 2 Peer University along with details and success stories from the first three cycles of courses. We'll then dive into more detail about our collaboration with Mozilla Drumbeat including Mozilla's mission to engage the next million Mozillians. We'll present the P2PU School of Webcraft, and a case study of courses offered so far, including the first course, 'Mashing Up the Open Web.' Additionally, we'll introduce our plans to separate learning from assessment and our community driven credentialing system. At the end of the session we will invite the audience, and all of SXSW, to join a course on open web skills to be offered during the week of the event. Read more: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/one_pager

August 7, 2010 - 12:00pm - 5:00pm
OpenPlans
148 Lafayette Street
New York, NY, 10013
http://www.drumbeat.org/events/drumbeat-new-york

Join us Saturday, August 7th for a look at some cool people and projects that are keeping the web open. Plus, free pizza and beer!

About Mozilla Drumbeat
Will the web still be open in 100 years? Mozilla thinks it can, and should, and must be. That's why we're starting Mozilla Drumbeat, an invitation to everyday internet users to imagine ideas and projects that build a more open web. We want you to get involved!

We are building a new community that includes teachers, artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, lawyers, and policymakers—not just open web geeks. Online, Drumbeat is catalyzing new open web projects that address critical needs and make the Web healthier. Check out current projects or initiate your own at www.drumbeat.org/projects.

About Drumbeat NYC
The Drumbeat NYC event will showcase cool projects and people that are keeping the web open. Come to Drumbeat NYC and learn how you can get involved, or show others what you've been working on.

Drumbeat events aren't just for geeks. We're here to weave together local networks of creative, Web-loving people and start new projects to make the web better.

Please RSVP at Facebook OR Eventbrite

Check out the agenda.

The Mozilla Summit far surpassed my expectations. The event was personal, technical, creative and inspiring all at once.

The Mozilla Summit is an invitation-only gathering of some of the most active contributors in the Mozilla community. This year's theme was "Be More Like the Web".

I was lucky enough to be among those who were invited, due to my involvement with the Drumbeat project. There were a total of around 600 Mozilla community members at the event: hackers, localizers, testers, marketers, and the individuals formerly known as 'users'.

Background

Mozilla is most well known for the open source browser, Firefox. In addition to Firefox, there are number of other software projects like Jetpack at Mozilla Labs. Although Mozilla has been incredibly successful with open source software, they're ambitious and ready for the next big challenge. As stewards of the open web, Mozillians around the world are banding together through Drumbeat: a collection of practical projects and local events that gather smart, creative people around big ideas that improve the open web. The Summit was our forum to share the project with the greater Mozilla community.

Day 0: Arrival & Reception

I flew in from Alaska, direct from my family vacation to Vancouver and then hopped on a bus to Whistler, BC. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon just in time to join the Mozilla Foundation meeting and presenter's workshop. I spent the better part of the afternoon working on a speed geek with my new partner in crime at P2PU, Pippa Buchanan. We rehearsed our talk a few times and got valuable feedback for the next day.

The rest of the attendees arrived in time for a reception, where we had a chance to get to know each other and kick off the event properly.

Day 1: Getting Started

The day started off early with a few inspiring keynote speakers and an extended lunch break to watch some of the World Cup. After lunch I headed to a session from Mozilla Messaging where they demoed experimental Thunderbird mail client features.

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA, Nathaniel James

The next session was "Drumbeat in 2100 Seconds," led by Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation. Mark took about four minutes to describe Drumbeat and why it is important to Mozilla before splitting the crowd into groups for the speed geek sessions. All three of the featured Drumbeat projects (P2PU School of Webcraft, Web Made Movies, &amp Universal Subtitles) were represented along with Drumbeat Events and a couple others. The speed geek session went really well; we got a few people to join the project.

Day 2: In the Groove

The second day was filled with more sessions, and some especially interesting HTML5 demos including WebGL and the <audio> and <video> tags. I had a chance to talk to Ben Moskowitz about open video and the upcoming Open Video Conference in New York City.

The Flight of the Navigator is a WebGL demo rendered in the browser that built by the Mozilla audio team. The demo pulls in live data and video from the web while rendering. Everyone in the crowd was awe-struck.

I spent the better part of the afternoon at the Summit Science Fair. There were around thirty individual booths showcasing all kinds of software. Everything from accessibility for the blind to a JavaScript framework for building Firefox extensions.

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA, Michael Morgan

We rounded out the day with the Summit World Expo and International Dinner, where representatives from the over forty countries in attendance showcased their local communities and cultures.

After dinner, there was a late night JetPack hackathon. I built a Firefox extension (more details in a later blog post) in just a few hours. The extension is called 'Clickable Phone Numbers' and it makes any number on the web into a click-to-call number using the Twilio API.

Day 3: Grand Finale

The final day of the conference was a bit more laid back, we talked about the Drumbeat event strategy and did a bit of planning for Drumbeat NYC (August 7th) and the Drumbeat Festival (November 3-5) which is going to be held in Barcelona. I attended a few more lightning talks and a session on the future of client-side debugging.

Pippa and I ran our session on the P2PU School of Webcraft. There was a 10 minute intro, and then we split the audience into four groups with tasks:

1. Design a course for P2PU School of Webcraft
2. Brainstorm a list of core web developer skills
3. Brainstorm a list of 'soft-skills' that employers look for in web developers
4. Come up with ways to legitimize P2PU School of Webcraft so that we have some 'street-cred'

The session went incredibly well, so well that we had a lineup of people to talk to for almost 30 minutes after it was over.

At the end of the day, we took a Gondola ride up to the peak for a farewell party of sorts. The views of Whistler were magnificent and the "Army of Awesome" was incredibly fun. We enjoyed a delicious dinner, cartoony mascots, toasts, and a dance party before calling it a night.

Day 4: Departure

We left Whistler by bus through the mountains, luckily unobstructed by rock slides. Now I'm on the ground in Seattle for the next week, followed by a trip to Portland for OSCON. Get in touch if you're nearby.

Crowd-sourced Coverage

• Flickr Photos
• Tweets
• Delicious Links

P2PU just got coverage in The Hindu, which, according to Wikipedia "is the second-largest circulated daily English newspaper in India." The author, Ajai Sreevatsan, quoted me and mentioned my course "Mashing Up the Open Web."

Video discussions

John Britton, course organiser of 'Mashing up the Open Web,' says time zones are a problem while attempting to simulate a "sit around the fire and learn by discussion" environment virtually. "But lively weekly video discussions (using a combination of Skype and IRC) to review materials and work through the questions presented by the peers still happen."

The 'class' is very diverse, he says. "We have peers from Korea, Japan, India, Spain, the U.S. and Canada. They're artists, technologists, environmentalists, and traditional students."

Aside: This blog post was posted while on a moving bus from Vancouver to Seattle. The wonders of modern technology.

The School of Webcraft is our first foray into building an entire “Department” for a discipline – courses, a community of course organizers and new assessment models and metrics. We are gearing up to launch the first round of courses in September and are looking for more people to get involved in democratizing web developer training.

Call for course organizers is below:

Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, a great place to learn the craft of open and standards-based web development.

This coming September we’ll be launching our first cycle of six week courses including Introduction to HTML5 and Building Social with the Open Web. We still have space for a few more courses, so whether you can teach a class for novice web developers, or run a workshop for web developers managing thousands of user accounts, we’d love to have you involved.

Following on the delivery model developed by P2PU, course organizers volunteer to take existing open learning materials or develop their own content and lead a group of peers through 6 weeks of online classes. Courses focus on project based learning in a peer environment and are proposed, created and led by members of the web development community – so the content will always be up to date with the latest technologies.

Over the next 18 months we’ll be developing a new way of assessing and recognizing skills, hacker attitudes and knowledge that rewards project portfolios and realistic developer challenges, rather than hours spent cramming for a meaningless exam.

We’d love for you to become a part of this project and until July 18 we’re inviting course proposals for P2PU School of Webcraft. We’ve made it really easy to get started, just fill out the proposal form, it takes less than 5 minutes!

Propose a Course -> Fill out this short form.

If you’re unable to commit to organising a course this September, there are other great ways to become a part of the community whether as a curriculum adviser, web development guru and of course, as a student.

If you are interested in taking a course -> add your name.

Join the P2PU Webcraft community -> subscribe to our mailing list.

Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, the ultimate environment in which to learn the craft of open and standards-based web development.

This coming September we'll be launching our first cycle of six week courses including Introduction to HTML5 and Building Social with the Open Web. We still have space for a few more courses, so whether you can teach a class for novice web developers, or run a workshop for web developers managing thousands of user accounts, we'd love to have you involved.

Following on the delivery model developed by P2PU, course organizers volunteer to take existing open learning materials or develop their own content and lead a group of peers through 6 weeks of online classes. Courses focus on project based learning in a peer environment and are proposed, created and led by members of the web development community — so the content will always be up to date with the latest technologies.

Over the next 18 months we'll be developing a new way of assessing and recognizing skills, hacker attitudes and knowledge that rewards project portfolios and realistic developer challenges, rather than hours spent cramming for a meaningless exam.

We'd love for you to become a part of this project and until July 18 we're inviting course proposals for P2PU School of Webcraft. We've made it really easy to get started, just fill out the proposal form, it takes less than 5 minutes!

Propose a Course

If you're unable to commit to organising a course this September, there are other great ways to become a part of the community whether as a curriculum adviser, web development guru and of course, as a student.

Participate in a Course

Join the P2PU Webcraft community

Find out more about P2PU School of Webcraft

Mozilla Drumbeat is a global community of people who use web technology in new ways that help them understand, participate, improve and take control of their online lives. The P2PU School of Webcraft is just one of many exciting projects that Drumbeat supports. Find out more here.

Mozilla Drumbeat: Innovation on the open web. Powered by everybody.

Photo CC-BY-SA gi

As I mentioned in my previous post, my course, Mashing Up the Open Web, was a huge success. Since I started participating in P2PU, I've wanted to organize a course. I haven't yet taken part in a course that someone else has organized, although that is on my todo list. I really would have liked to join in on Kitchen Science, but alas my schedule did not permit it.

Background

Since I'm a web developer by trade, I naturally swayed toward the subject area when I was coming up with course ideas. I knew I wanted to organize a course at P2PU, but I wasn't really sure what it would be about. After a few days of thinking I came up with a few different ideas. By chance, while I was toying around with the idea of creating a course on building web mashups, I got wind of the Mozilla Drumbeat project. I don't remember how it all came together exactly, but there was already some steam behind a collaboration between Mozilla and P2PU. The Drumbeat connection definitely made openness even more important. One thing led to another and soon enough I had settled on organizing Mashing Up the Open Web.

When I started, I didn't really know what the course was going to be about so I got on the wiki and started hacking away at a syllabus. The course was designed pretty much top down without anyone helping out or vetting me. If I could do it again, I'd have a few people review the syllabus and help me improve it before running the course. By convention, P2PU courses last six weeks. Mashing Up the Open Web was no exception. I decided to stick with a six week course because it gave us ample time to cover the materials without being over taxing on me or the other participants. Also worth noting, I wrote the entire syllabus while riding a bus back and forth to work.

What did it look like?

The course was project based, and split into two parts alternating between theory and practical skills each week. For the theory segment we covered things like what it means to be open, why openness is important in web development, and how to be open. For the practical skills component we covered some basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and a number of APIs. Although I didn't state it so clearly at the beginning of the course, we basically focused our efforts on answering a question. Each participant needed to come up with an idea for a mashup that would answer a question of importance.

Dennis Riedel was wondering how search results differ from language to language so he built i18n-picture-search on top of the Flickr and Google Translate APIs. See it in action.

Between each class session participants had three assignments. The first and ongoing assignment was to work on the project, be it drawing wireframes, searching for applicable APIs, or actual coding, the project was always the most important aspect of the course. The second assignment between each meeting was a passive assignment to prepare for the next discussion. Participants read papers like The Cathedral and the Bazaar and watched videos on the semantic web by Tim Berners-Lee. The third and final assignment between each class was an active assignment. Participants were to write short essays reflecting on the previous discussion, imagining a closed web, or even contributing to open source projects in the form on patches, bug reports, or support.

Notes from Mashing Up the Open Web Week 3

Who Participated?

The course received 32 sign ups. I admitted 27 of the 32 applicants based upon application completeness. I only rejected applicants that didn't answer all of the questions on the very short application form. Immediately after closing signups I set out to coordinate a weekly time slot for us to have synchronous meetings. The best we could do was 11AM & 1PM Eastern time which would allow for around 20 of the accepted applicants to make the course. For the first week I held two sections, but consolidated to one section at 11AM Eastern for the remaining five weeks.

The participants were extremely varied in skill level, from complete novice to expert. I wasn't incredibly surprised by the wide array of skill levels because I didn't put any technical barrier to entry in place. Over the six weeks a core group of around ten participants emerged. If one was unable to attend, I would receive an email in advance announcing the absence. All of the members of the core group were on a first name basis by the end of the second week.

Participation in Mashing Up the Open Web was truly global. In the initial pool of 27 accepted participants there were almost as many countries represented. Among the core group we had participants from Japan, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the USA.

In the Classroom.

We started the course by using a web based video conferencing tool, Tokbox. Each week at 11AM Eastern, the group would gather in a video conference room to do three things. First each participant would give a project update, followed by a review of the active assignment, and finally a group discussion around the passive assignment. During class, I encouraged participants to ask questions and lead the discussion in whatever direction they wanted it to go. My goal was to facilitate the discussion, not control it. I generally tried to defer answering questions to other participants, unless I was the only one able to answer.

Two sections of Mashing Up the Open Web at P2PU in Tokbox

In addition to the weekly hour of class time, I held two office hours. One at 10AM Eastern (before class) and another at 12PM Eastern (after class). I had a much higher participation rate in the office hours after class than before class, but generally always had at least one participant taking advantage of the time. Office hours were especially useful for working with the less experienced participants.

Why Bother?

This course was an experiment. I wanted to prove a few things. There is a demand for this type of course. Participants will lead themselves to what they want to learn. Organizing a course is intellectually stimulating for the organizer. All three are absolutely true.

What Next?

We're working on a whole series of courses like Mashing Up the Open Web. The goal is to create an entire academy within P2PU where anyone can come and learn all the requisite skills of an open web developer for free. We're also working on a way to provide recognition of accomplishments and certification for the participants who want it. We're not quite sure what that's going to look like yet, but we're working with Mozilla and a panel of experts to give it some real weight.

Sign Me Up!

If you're interested in getting involved with planning and organizing courses you should join the mailing list and introduce yourself. If you're not quite ready to organize a course, but want to be notified when we release our next round, please fill out this very short form. I promise to keep your data safe. You can also fill out the form if you have a course idea that you'd like to share with us.

CC-BY-SA Alison Jean Cole

A few years ago, I had an idea: I wanted to travel around the world and meet interesting people who I could learn from in exchange for sharing my skills. I remember having the idea very vividly. I was on an airplane, as I often was back in those days, and I was scribbling as fast as I could in my notebook. There was going to be an online component to a mostly offline experience. People would be able to lend resources such as classrooms, domain knowledge, books, supplies, and equipment. I was convinced something like this should already exist, so I did what you'd expect, I scoured the net high and low. As I searched I came across a number of different communities and resources but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

Sure there was CouchSurfing, but that was mainly focused on the travel community with a very minor attempt at a skill sharing system. I also found things like MIT's Open Course Ware, but there was something lacking, the community, the people. In my searching I came across a new term, Open Education. I had long known of FLOSS, so the concept of open education was pretty natural to me. Further down the road I heard about the annual Open Education Conference, so in 2008, I attended. My trip was kindly funded by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation based on my intent to share the idea. As it turned out, I wasn't alone in my thinking and I met Philipp, Stian, and Joel.

At this point, tons of ideas were brewing for all of us. There were a million directions that we could go. Different people had different ideas and we took a slow growth route in order to solidify what it was we were trying to accomplish.

Fast forward two years and you've got Peer 2 Peer University, a thriving community of individuals passionate about learning. Our core values are clear. We're an open community for peer learning. We're here to facilitate learning groups and give participants the recognition they deserve. P2PU encourages experimentation, and I love experiments.

As of now we've run more than twenty courses in two cycles. In the most recent cycle, I organized my first course, Mashing Up the Open Web. Mashing up The Open Web is the first course in a series of Open Web courses that we're working on in conjunction with Mozilla as part of the Drumbeat initiative. I'll save the details for a later post, but I will say that the course was an amazing success and that I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. I've always had the idea of becoming a teacher in the back of my mind, P2PU has helped me prove that idea is a good one.