Concentric Sky grew steadily from its founding in 2005. In 2008, the company announced a partnership with GoldMoney to create an
iPhone app to allow the transfer of digital units of gold. In 2009, the company formed a partnership with
Encyclopædia Britannica to launch a series of
iOS apps for the
K-12 education market. That same year, the company released the official iOS app for
NASA's
Astronomy Picture of the Day and also developed the website for film maker
Michael Moore's
Capitalism: A Love Story. In 2010, Concentric Sky Founder Wayne Skipper was asked by
Google to submit expert testimony to the
Federal Trade Commission regarding Google's acquisition of
Admob. That same year, the company partnered with the
World Bank to develop a series of data visualization apps and partnered with
National Geographic to design and build a series of official study apps for the
National Geographic Bee. In 2011, the company partnered with the
United Nations to develop a data visualization app to support the UN's annual reports. That same year, the company was named "the only App Developer officially endorsed by
Mashable." In 2012, the company designed and built an
iPad version of the
Encyclopædia Britannica. The app received widespread recognition, including an
Appy Award. In 2013, products featuring Concentric Sky's work for partner
Cengage Learning won 2
Codie awards. That same year, the company's work resulted in a US
patent for usability improvements to
electronic medical records. In 2014, the company joined the
Open Badges movement and launched the Oregon Badge Alliance with partners including
Oregon State University. Later that year, the company released an open source
Android viewer app for
Khan Academy content. In 2015, the company led the development of Open Badges 2.0 in partnership with
MacArthur Foundation spin off, Collective Shift. That same year, the company launched the Badgr project with partner
edX. The use of Badgr grew rapidly, and by early 2018 the product had grown to serve nearly 10,000 organizations around the world. and took over development of GlassLab Games, which included the educational variants of several popular
video games including
Civilization and
SimCity. GlassLab Games was shut down at the end of 2018, and Concentric Sky worked to release many of the games open source. In 2017, the company became a founding member of the
IEEE Industry Consortium for Learning Engineering, and announced partnerships with the
California Community Colleges System,
Georgia Department of Education, and
SURFnet. The success of the company's Badgr product led to Founder Wayne Skipper being interviewed broadly in the education community, as well as Badgr's inclusion in the
European Commission Joint Research Centre's 2017 "Blockchain in Education" report. That same year, the company offered digital badges to commemorate
The Great American Eclipse, and another product featuring the company's work for partner Cengage Learning won a
Codie award. In 2018, the company expanded the
digital badges ecosystem by releasing an
open technology standard called Open Pathways, and by creating a program to award digital badges to learning content aligned to the
Next Generation Science Standards. That same year,
Mozilla announced the retirement of the Mozilla Backpack and the migration of its users to Badgr, the company announced a new suite of open source tools for edX, Badgr was selected as the native badging solution for the
Canvas Learning Management System, the company announced a 4-year partnership with the
community college system of
Washington state, and products featuring the company's work for partner Cengage Learning won another 2
Codie awards. Later that year, the company's EdRec initiative was named a winner of the
US Dept of Education Reimagining Higher Education Ecosystem Challenge for its blockchain-based approach to digital
transcripts, and the company's work was featured in the book "The Interconnected Individual.” In 2019,
SURFnet announced a plan for
The Netherlands to adopt a national digital credential strategy based on the company's Badgr platform, the company launched a series of tools in partnership with the
California Community Colleges System designed to help prospective community college students and their families identify regional educational programs and employment opportunities, and company founder Wayne Skipper was invited to speak at
SXSW EDU on the topic of “Open Standards & the Quantification of Learning." During 2019, the company's work was featured by
Digital Promise,
EdSurge,
Educause,
IBM, The
Inter-American Development Bank, and the Technology Association of Oregon. In 2020,
Microsoft announced the integration of the company's Badgr product into
Microsoft Teams, the company co-founded the Open Skills Network with partners including
Western Governors University and
Walmart, the company's Badgr product was demonstrated by
Salesforce and
Walmart to the
United States Department of Commerce as part of a program serving over 2 million US workers, the company launched a first-of-its-kind comprehensive learner record with the
University of North Texas, and the company announced partnerships with The International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET), Credential Engine, and Emsi. In December 2020, Concentric Sky and partners including
Instructure and
Zoom wrote a public letter to the incoming US presidential administration urging an immediate focus on improving student learning outcomes in order to address ongoing issues impacting the
US education system. In 2021, the company announced a proposal for version 3.0 of Open Badges, bringing together the company's work across the
World Wide Web Consortium and
Decentralized Identity communities, the company released the Open Skills Management Toolkit in partnership with Western Governors University, and the company announced several new partnerships including
Blackboard, Postman, and Open eLMS. During 2021, the company's work was featured by the
American Institutes for Research, Futuro Health, and numerous other organizations around the world. In early 2022, the company announced partnerships with the
National Student Clearinghouse, and the
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In April 2022, the company was acquired by
Instructure. == Culture ==