Technology Tuesday: Badges for Teachers

I am not sure when I first heard about digital badges, but it is something I keep coming back to as something I'd like to try.  And I think the time has come...

I know the power of being a connected educator and I want more people on my campus to experience the spark that a PLN can ignite.  I think they just need a little push so here I go jumping into something and flying by the seat of my pants again.  Many of the teachers on my campus are taking baby steps out of their technological comfort zones and I would like to find a way to acknowledge and encourage them.  I think digital badges might be a fun way to do this.  

I had a few articles saved in my "pocket" about badges and it has come up a couple of time in Twitter chats that I have been in this fall.  Back in October after one such chat, I emailed my teachers and asked who might be interested in earning badges for different technological tasks or achievements.  I gave them a couple of examples of badges I had created on credly.com

I told them they could earn these badges and then print them out to display in the classroom and/or post them on their blogs and I asked them to email me back if this is something that might interest them.  I received quite a few "Yes!" responses and so it was something I had on my "to be continued" list. 

Recently in an #edtechchat over the winter break, Shawna Ford tweeted

which got me thinking about it again.  I went back and reread the articles and tweets I had saved and got to work.  I reread "Building a Better Badging System" by Marc Toner and Alice Keener's  "Creating Badges with Google Sheets" .  Then Shawna Ford tweeted out a link to her blog post about "Professional Learning Options" and badging which pointed me to more models.  

So I think I have a working (in-progess) system to offer teachers.  I have created a page on my library website where I will post the different badges they can earn and a link to a google form they can fill out to request the badge.  I will receive an email when a form has been submitted and then through credly.com, I can "send credit" to them where they can then print and/or display on their blog by following these directions.

I am going to cross my fingers and hope I have thought this through.  Lucky for me my teachers are pretty flexible so if I screwed something up they will patiently wait until I can figure it out.  I am excited about this and am looking forward to seeing how badges might fuel growth at my campus.  

I would love to to hear any ideas about badging or how you have used digital badges with students or teachers.