Solid’s core idea is that people use Pods, or personal online data stores, and apps can read/write data from those Pods with permission, rather than each app owning a separate silo of user data.
This is where Solid helps conceptually. A school, club, festival, WoW project or Positive News-style editorial challenge could issue a badge or learning record into the child’s Pod. The child and parent can then decide whether to share that evidence with another club, a school, a mentor, or a public showcase.
Inrupt, the company commercialising Solid technology, has also framed newer data-wallet work around accessing and verifying credentials such as educational certificates, which is close to the “learning passport” direction, though LOL Fish Club would need a youth-safe, mutual version rather than simply adopting an enterprise wallet product.
Solid also separates the Pod Provider from the Identity Provider, so the place where data is stored and the service used to log in do not have to be the same organisation.
# What Solid gives you Solid can help with five core design principles. **1. Data portability** The child’s data can move across apps and institutions. They are not locked into a single vendor’s youth platform. **2. Permissioned sharing** Different people and apps can be given different levels of access. A parent might see consent settings. A teacher might see learning evidence. A public gallery might see only approved artwork under a pseudonym. **3. Interoperability** Solid is based on web standards and linked data ideas, so different applications can potentially work with the same underlying data model. Inrupt describes linked data as key to interoperability on the web. ([inrupt.com][3]) **4. Separation of powers** The app, identity provider, Pod provider, school, club and mutual do not all have to be the same entity. Solid’s FAQ explicitly says Pod Providers and Identity Providers are separable services. ([Solid Project][4]) **5. Values alignment** Solid’s own public framing is “your data, your choice,” and Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s stated motivation is to return the web to a more human-first model where people have direct control over their data. ([Solid Project][5])