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Badges
This upcoming school year (2015-2016), I want to start playing with badges both for myself and my students.
I have kept away from badges because they remind me of stickers that teachers give to kids, you know the whole ‘punishment/reward’ (must read book on this topic is written by Alfie Kohn and titled Punished by Rewards). Mitch Resnick is also has some reservations on badges.
Colleagues that believe in badges tell me they’re just like badges designed for Girl Guides and Scouts and the idea is to celebrate achievements and do not foster competition.
We will see how my little experiment works out. In the meantime, here’s my first badge from remind (click on the badge for info on what remind does. Click on the badge below for more info on the remind app which I will test with my McGill students this upcoming fall.
Here’s the badges I hope to get this year if I don’t get bogged down in corrections, workshops, and presentations:
I’m curious to see if the process will be challenging and fun or if it becomes tedious. I will post the badges on the main page as I earn them.
Let’s see how long I am motivated to do this. Another reason I want to give this a try is because the New Horizons Report on Emerging Technologies lists ditigal badges as having potential .
Paper submitted ~ summer vacation officially starts
I submitted my paper for my course Constructions of Cultural Spaces yesterday. Dale is happy that all the articles and books lying around the house will be finally put away. I really enjoyed the course, probably the best so far, I liked the fact that the prof used films that were used to help us understand the main course themes. My tasks for the summer are to soak the sun, read several fiction books that have been sitting on my desk (Maisie Dobbs, the new Inspector Gamache book, Nora Webster by Toibin, etc.)
I also update the websites for the 2 courses I teach. On the personal learning I am curious to look at the Thinglink and EdTech Summer Camp activities. I may design a series of challenge activities based on this concept for our school administrators this fall. Anyway time to recharge my Kobo and start reading.
Back from ISTE 2015
Busy week. The LBP EdTech Institute just wrapped up I will be posting the presentation links early next week. As usual we had amazing participants and speakers. I was lucky to be able to attend ISTE 2015 conference in Philadelphia. Will blog about a few of the sessions over the next little while. I also just added a blog counter for this blog. I’m just curious to see if Sandbox gadget works.
