So, I’ve been playing around with Open Badges, a “micro-credentialing protocol” — basically, a way of showing that someone has learned or done some specific thing. Think of it as a digital version of Boy Scout merit badges. Here’s the first one I earned, from a company called Concentric Sky, which puts out software to support the Open Badges standard.

You can string individual badges together into a sort of curriculum, and mix and match equivalent badges from different awarders. It’s a bit complicated to set up a whole system, but it’s pretty nifty.