Tuesday, April 19, 2016

FTT - OpenBadge.me

Changing the Educational Game
with Digital Badging

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff


A couple of years ago, I attended a conference that hosted a TEDx event instead of a Keynote address. Perhaps the most outstanding speaker I saw that night was Ali Carr-Chellman from Penn State University who talked about her program, "Re-Engaging Boys." If you have a few minutes, you can watch her TED Talk below:


If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, here's a brief summary of a couple of the statistics she cites:

  • For every 100 girls suspended from school, there are 250 boys suspended from school.
  • For every 100 girls expelled from school, there are 335 boys expelled from school.
  • For every 100 girls in special education, there are 217 boys.
  • For every 100 girls diagnosed with emotional disturbance, there are 324 boys.
  • The numbers are worse for boys of color, or boys who come from economically challenged homes.
  • Boys are 4 times as likely as girls to be identified with ADHD.
  • 60% of Baccalaureate Degrees go to women - some universities are approaching 70%
One of Professor Carr-Chellman's suggestions is that we can re-engage boys by utilizing video games in the classroom. While her research might be the most extensive on the topic, Professor Carr-Chellman's conclusions are not unique. There is a growing chorus of teachers out there who suggest that adding some elements of gamification can boost student engagement across the board, but especially in boys. 

I started thinking about this topic again because Lisa and I attended the CoSN conference two weeks ago, and the most dynamic session I attended while I was there was about gamification in the classroom by Dr. Liz Kolb from the University of Michigan. Dr. Kolb said her research was really in its beginning phases, but she had seen some positive results by adding elements of gaming to her preservice education courses, and she reported that those gains were highest amongst her male students.

Dr. Kolb suggested that it is fairly easy to start the process of gamification by instituting some student choice into your classroom activities and awarding students digital badges based on accomplishments. I think I'll have much more to offer the district from Dr. Kolb's work in the very near future, but for those of you who might be ready to start badging in the classroom, you need two things. You need a site for creating badges, and you need a site for posting and awarding your badges. For this week, let's focus on creating digital badges.

Part of the Mozilla Open Badges Project, OpenBadges.me allows you to create simple graphic badges that you can download to your computer and post to any website. According to the website, the OpenBadges.me "designer provides a simple way to layer different shapes and images on top of each other to create an attractive Open Badge graphic. The tool lets you add text, color elements, move certain elements and even fade items in and out - all presented in an easy-to-use web page."


















Click here for an easy to follow guide on using OpenBadges.me. If you get stuck, you can even go to the guide and post a question. Someone from the Open Badges community will respond to your question.
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Next week, I'll provide you with three different platforms for posting and awarding badges to your students.

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