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.

It's 10:00 and My Brain Won't Turn Off

Call it a side effect of attending a technology conference, but my brain is on full overload. Swimming with apps, websites and ideas to share back on my campus, my wheels are spinning from 2 full days at TCEA 2015 and the thought of 2 more to go.

We started yesterday off at an iPad academy with Leslie Fisher (@lesliefisher).  HILARIOUS. Perfect person to start of an 8:00 session.  She gave us some of the coolest ipad apps and tips in 50 minutes.  My favorite was Plickers.

 A free app in the "iPhone Only" part of the app store, it is the perfect assessment tool for teachers with only a few iPads.  Teachers create an account and form classes.  Within the class, they assign students a number. There are cards on the website to print off that each have a number, a distinctive shape and the letters A,B,C,D in the corners.  Give the students the cards that corresponds with their number in the class. The teacher asks a multiple choice question and gives the answer choices.  The students decide on their answer and with their numbered card point the corner with the letter they think is the correct answer up to the ceiling.  The teachers gets her iPad with the Plicker app downloaded and uses the app to scan the crowd of students.  The app reads the cards and lets the teacher know instantly who has the correct answer and who has the wrong answer.  How cool is that??

Chirp, Augmented Reality, Photobabble, Adobe Voice, Hyperlapse, ChatterPix Kids, Makerspaces, Google Hangouts... See now why I can't turn off thinking about how to use these great tools in my library, but also how to share them with the teachers in a way that is meaningful for them.  

How do you share technology ideas with your teachers?

Technology Tuesday: A Giant Step for Me

At the beginning of the year, I posted 3 goals that I had for myself this year, professionally.  One of those goals was to network more and develop a PLN.  I am happy to say that I have been doing that through the use of Twitter.

Twitter is an amazing tool for professional learning.  I have gotten so many great ideas in the few short months that I have become a tweeter.  I have participated in many chats, some as a "lurker" not saying much and some as a participant sharing ideas.  

Last night, however, I took a giant step and MODERATED a chat for the first time!

At one of our district mini-sessions on twitter, we talked about chatting and how we, as a district, should chat more since our elementary and secondary librarians never meet together.  Well, that was all that needed to be said to get my little wheels spinning.  I sent out an email to the librarians saying that I would like to have a chat about the management and check out of Nexus tablets that a lot of us had gotten from a bond.  I set a date, time and hashtag and hoped people would "show up".  Last night about 10 of us chatted for about 45 min.  Sharing concerns, ideas and brainstorming management of these eReaders that we were going to be checking out to students.  

What I loved most about the chat was that there were some new chatters that had never even posted on Twitter before.  They saw how easy it was to become involved, even when their intention was only to lurk.  I am hoping that we will have many more opportunities to do this within our district as all librarians know that while this is the best job in the school, it is also the loneliest in the sense that you are the only one on your campus.  

Now on to learn about Tweetdeck...

Connected Librarian Day

I am finding so many cool things to help me grow as a librarian from being connected on Twitter. Last night I participated in two sessions in the Connected Librarian Day Conference.  

 These sessions were streamed on Blackboard Collaborate.  The first session was "When Sherry Met Matthew: Finding Your Educational Soulmate and Helping Kids Rule the World.  This session was presented by Matthew Winner and Sherry Gick.  These two are an amazing team who are not even in the same state.  Matthew is in Maryland and Sherry is in Indiana.  However, the connected on Twitter and planned some connected activities with their students and are what they call "educational soulmates".  I love that term!  After a tremendously successful collaborative experience they cal "Earth Pals", they are opening the same type of experience up to others in their GeniusCon arena.  Read more about it on Sherry's Blog.  

The second session I participated in was Jennifer LaGarde's (aka Library Girl) "Imagining Library Spaces of the Future Today".  I heard Jennifer speak at our Texas Library Association Conference last spring.  She is an amazingly inspirational speaker who makes changing the face of libraries seem easy.  In this session, she talks about ways librarians can help students become thinkers and learners, solve big problems, engage and collaborate.  My favorite quote from this session was "in libraries of the future students CREATE instead of CONSUME".  I haven't figured out what that looks like in my library program yet, but I am sure I will get plenty more ideas from my new PLN on Twitter!