Badges . . . anyone?

[Greg Williams]

A classmate (Katie) and I are undertaking a small project in which we will be making a few informal educational badges for her mom's 8th grade English class. You can check out our process on the blog and see a prototype here (click on the badge itself). Has anyone worked with badges or heard much about them? 

As I mentioned, we are using these in an informal way - and students in the 8th grade class will have the option to participate for extra credit. I am working to create a small Prezi/screencast to introduce the idea to them next week. Our goals is to have the badges act as a supplement to the material the teacher will be offering, encouraging the kids to interact with what they are learning and with each other and get recognized for it in a way they can show others (which is way better than extra credit!). 

Ideas? Critiques? Cautions? Your feedback is very valuable. 

[Ryan Goble]

Oh my, you keep me thinking Greg... see: http://dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-about.php and http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03badges.h05.html

[Greg Williams]

Ha ha - well katie is taking the lead on this and she will be joining the community here soon too which will be great. Thanks for the references - those will be helpful to me as I am trying to get a better picture of what we can do with these kids. 

Thanks Ryan

[Katie Wilkie]

Yeah, DML! There are some cool people working on badge projects. I've collected some of their contact/website info here: http://kcwdigitized.blogspot.com/p/badges.html. 

Also, thinking about the badge project in terms of mcpop--I wonder if we could use the badges as an opportunity to get students thinking about ways pop culture ties in with their learning. Like, use more video or pop culture examples?