In the first part of this series, I explained how the use of digital badges in District Online Professional Development has taken off. In this article, I explain how I set up our Badge Leader-board. In our district, I have had a great response to professional development, and I wouldn't necessarily guess it is because of the badges themselves - although many people like to have that tangible (digital) item to show they have completed something. No, I believe what has created such a surge in online PD is the leader-board! Some people in general are naturally competitive - they see that others are involved, and they want to be at the same level - or greater - in terms of training and understanding. As a result, I created our leader-board to show how many and what type of badges have been earned by each building/school site. Each week, I send a reminder of which school is in the lead. I created our leader-board using Google Sheets, and then posted (embedded) my Google Sheet on the Google Site we use for Professional Development. This allows those who have completed /earned a badge to show off their name, and allows everyone to see who is in the lead. This video explains how I set up our Google Sheet/Leader-board. Enjoy!
Recently while putting together some online classes for District Professional Development, I decided to reward teacher attendance with Digital Badges. I had thought about doing this on several occasions in the past, but had never gotten the process off the ground. While face to face attendance to PD workshops was somewhat steady, it was not exactly as high as I had wanted it to be. Knowing that availability of time is finite, and that teachers have many responsibilities after school, I thought an online course here and there might help them get the training they needed, when it was convenient for them. So I created one class on Google Classroom to start with, and created a Badge in Google Drawings as a reward for participating.
After the first teacher had earned their badge, I decided to create a Leader Board for the district, showing how many badges had been earned at each site. I posted the first badge, announcing that we had 1 school in the lead and that they were winning. I never expected what happened next! After posting this, I had 25 enrollments come through by email. That competitive spirit that resides in some of us came to a head when the "We have a winner!" email went out. Since then, we have had a great deal of activity online. Nevertheless, I thought I would share my process for setting up classes and rewarding badges. For this series, I'll start with the creation of the badges themselves. It is a simple process that I've explained in this video. I hope you like it.
In our district, I have had a great response to professional development, and I wouldn't necessarily guess it is because of the badges themselves - although many people like to have that tangible (digital) item to show they have completed something. No, I believe what has created such a surge in online PD is the leader-board! Some people in general are naturally competitive - they see that others are involved, and they want to be at the same level - or greater - in terms of training and understanding. As a result, I created our leader-board to show how many and what type of badges have been earned by each building/school site. Each week, I send a reminder of which school is in the lead.
