Create a Stage to Showcase Creativity, Focus, Persistence, and Achievement
Ace fighter pilots with kills on the nose of their plane, Boy Scout and Girl Scout sashes, wrestler belts and olympic medallions; we have long celebrated achievement and excellence in human history with badges.
Changing Classroom Culture With Badges
As mentioned in many educational circles (and previous Shupester post) providing achievement badges is very meaningful in a personalized learning classroom.
Digital or Physical?
Digital badges have become a thing in online games and in many learning systems. When you level up in a game, or take a short course and pass a test, we have digital badges and micro credentials.
Unfortunately, digital badges are only visible when logged into that particular learning system and often require you to navigate to each individual's profile rather than being showcased in the learning community.
For this reason, I decide to take digital badging back into the physical world.
Some say the first badges were scrawled into cave walls by brave hunters millennia ago.
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Decades ago, a keynote speaker at an education conference noted how education institutions at all levels celebrate achievements in athletics, and sometimes the arts (theater, band, chorus). Aside from the honor role – we did very little to showcase individual learning gains and achievements. I committed that day to find ways to provide a stage for learning achievements.
That became a focus of our school news program, Stone Students Rock! Web Blog, Facebook page, and Badging program.
A former student and friend shared a Norwegian news article with me and asked me what I thought… a Facebook question and response turned into a blog post. You may want to start with the new article:
Even though this article reports on education in Norway, we have seen similar policies in the good old U.S. of A. We have often said that student success has a high correlation with stable, healthy home environments and supportive, educated parents. So the big question is can (or should) teachers be held responsible or accountable for parent learning or educational involvement? The Denmark regulation states: The school and now will: facilitate cooperation with the home and ensure that parents / guardians share responsibility in schools. Good teachers should already be doing that. The concern is when it becomes law and must be documented, assessed and enforced.
