1. Read the Mozilla Open Badge announcement made in Septemeber of 2011: http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/15/openbadges/

2. Visit http://openbadges.org/ and comb through all of the information available. Pay particular attention to the 'About' page and the organizations teaming up with Mozilla.

3. Read up on the Open Badges Roadmap: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/roadmap

4.  Learn more about the Open Badge validation process from Jon Buckley: http://jbuckley.ca/2012/01/validating-open-badges/, who works at the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology (CDOT).