Tomorrow’s update makes creating and looking after your badges easier. To
get you familiar with the latest update, check out the video below.
This brief video introduces you to the fantastic new Design Section that houses certificates and badges all in one place. The Badge Builder has also been upgraded so now you can save, revisit and repurpose your badge, just like certificate designs.
We hope you enjoy the improved performance of the Design Section!
If you have any questions about any of the information covered in this video or if you have any feedback for us, let us know at support@accredible.com.
We want to keep you up to speed with important upgrades, big and small, so that your experience with your Accredible account is as easy as possible. To get you familiar with the latest update, check out the video below.
In just under 2 minutes we cover changes that have been made to the Dashboard Menu, as well as the Department Settings layout. These updates have simplified and reorganized some of the features on the dashboard menu to make managing your account easier.
We hope you enjoy using the cleaner, de-cluttered dashboard menu!
If you have any questions about any of the information covered in this video or if you have any feedback for us, let us know at support@accredible.com.
At Accredible we are underway with updating and improving our knowledge base. Accompanying this is the release of new videos to further help you and your recipients get the most out of digital credentials and the Accredible platform.
To make sure that your recipients are getting the most out of their credentials, we’ll show you and your recipients exactly how they can use them so they don’t miss out.
Any time a recipient receives a credential, this video appears in the credential notification email they receive; it’s your recipients first port of call to learn about the value and utility of their new digital certificate of badge.
The video has been updated to reflect all the updates for your recipients’ experience, along with clear, concise instructions on how to use their credentials.
If you have any questions regarding the new video or have any feedback for us, please let us know at support@accredible.com.
Like many things in life you need to treat your Open Badge with care, in order to ensure you get the most from it.
Why? Because an Open Badge complies with the Open Badges Specification. Information about your award is embedded into the badge image: the badge is more than an image alone.
Now, the badge is issued by Accredible, and I cannot tamper with it in its web location. However, as with a digital badge from any issuer, I can also download a local image file. To all intents and purposes the downloaded image behaves like a normal .png file. However, it is a valid Open Badge, and I can show this by using a verification service. For example, Accredible’s verification service lets me upload and validate:
Open Badge is shown to be valid.
Since the badge is Open Badge compliant, I can verify it using another tool, such as the IACET OpenBadge Verification Tool. If I upload my badge and verify it, the page reports that the badge is valid, and displays more information such as the issuer, issue date, name etc.
So how do I share my badge? What happens if rather than using the original image, or the embed links that it comes with, I simply grab a screenshot and save it? Because let’s face it, we’re busy and that is easy to do! 🙂
My badge still looks okay:
But let’s go and verify it by uploading to a verification service:
The screenshot of our badge cannot be verified.
All is not well. The embedded information has been lost.
If I convert the badge file to a JPEG the same thing happens
– the embedded information has been lost.
What about if I edit the downloaded badge image and then save it as a PNG, such as this one, to make it look as if I have a better award than I really have:
Manually edited badge image.
Interestingly it still verifies, but even better the verification retrieves the original badge image that I cannot tamper with and my deviousness is exposed:
Verification shows the correct badge image.
To wrap up then, here are some do’s and don’ts for caring for your Open Badges:
Do
Use the original image for the badge that you can download from the issuing site
Where provided, use the built in mechanisms for emailing, embedding, and social media sharing, rather than attempting a DIY solution
Verify any badges that you are relying on to prove a person’s achievements
Don’t
Take and use screenshots of your badges
Save the badge in a different file format
Edit or change the badge using image editing software
Here at Accredible, we often get asked how we’re different from PDFs. Other times people think that’s all we do – issue digital copies of a paper certificate. We usually explain it this way: a photograph of a check isn’t the same as electronic banking. Similarly, a PDF isn’t the same as a digital credential. In this guide we’ll walkthrough the difference between a PDF certificate and a digital credential.
Traditionally, organizations use a paper certificate to recognize achievement for completing a class or program. These certificates would be used to show employers that you’d gained a particular certification, and that certificate would be the record of truth you would show when you needed to prove your credibility.
This post is an excerpt from our new, comprehensive ebook on Digital Badges. You can download your free copy here.
The Many Functions of Digital Badges
One of the first questions we usually receive from organizations first diving into digital badges is “Why do people typically issue digital badges?” The answer is “lots of reasons.”
Just like their real-world counterparts, digital badges serve a wide variety of purposes depending on the issuing body and the individual. For the most part, badges’ functions can be bucketed into one of five categories.
