Sunday 15 March 2015

Road to GAFE - Digital Badges

So... I have officially been accepted as a presenter at the #gafesummit in the school holidays! Am somewhat excited and a bit nervous as I haven't presented at a conference for years!

Digital badges - hmmmmm where do I start? No literally... it is three weeks out from the conference and I need to start.  Today I have redesigned my school leadership passport into a Google Slide so that it is more accessible to children.  It will now also include the digital badge component which will outline a child's individual digital footprint progress via the gaining of digital badges.  

Next step: to make the actual badges.  There are so many option out there but have decided to stick to ICT skills to begin with the focus my first two sets of badges around the following:

Blogging - my class have learnt so much about blogging already this year.  None of them knew what a blog really was at the start of the 2015 school year so I feel a set of badges around the use of blogs (101) would be really motivating for them.  We have talked about this is class and they came up with he idea of having steps of badges in terms of difficulty.  They are also very keen to become involved with the designing of badges later in the year.

Computer Use and Google Docs - This has been another steep learning curve for my little poppets! We are now all set up on Good Docs and everyday the learning continues with logging on, keeping folders tidy, making new docs, moving documents between folders, inserting pictures to documents, sharing work with others.  This takes teachers some time to learn but children have the innate ability to 'just get it'.  Possible next step will be using some of these badges for my colleagues too.

I like the idea of eventually expanding the digital badge idea into other areas of the curriculum.  I have already seen other badge for literacy skills which I think might tie in really nicely with the person inquiry this year - watch this space!

Right off to create my first badge! 


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