Digital Badging takes a Village
Wales Elementary fifth grade educators have taken a new approach to help empower students to take charge of their own learning and to acknowledge student strengths in what’s being referred to as “digital badging.” These badges build upon Wales Elementary’s aim to develop students as independent
Online digital badges, like those earned in Girl/Boy Scouts, are earned once a student is ready to demonstrate understanding in areas such as touch keyboarding, USA geography knowledge, argument essays, math fractions computation, and Guidance Career Skills ePortfolio.
There are other badges offered as incentive to get students to explore themselves as learners. They may earn a badge for developing a personalized learning plan, analyzing themselves as a kinesthetic, audio or visual learner. In addition, students are able to earn a badge when she or he demonstrates higher order thinking innovations using a newly implemented Makerspace.
“This new approach is a good fit to Kettle Moraine School District’s vision of personalized learning,” said Library Media Specialist Stephanie Wieczorek. “Allowing students freedom in choice and voice in their learning path gives them great motivation in developing learners of today. Evidence is clear in the satisfaction on a student’s face when they work hard to achieve a learning goal set with the variety of badges.”
Implementing the digital badges has been a collaborative approach since the onset. Students focus specifically on improving independent learning skills four times a week for a half hour at a time called Achieve. Three supervisors (Candice Cullen, Laura Kirley and Stephanie Wieczorek) collaborate to guide and monitor student progress. The language arts teacher, Laurel Hopkins, checks the Argument Essay badge. The school guidance counselor, Kim Osborn, monitors the online career readiness ePortfolios badge. The math teachers, Debra Culhane and Cari Racine, check the Pizza fraction computation proficiency. All teachers involved maintain high expectations for evidence of student competencies and motivate students to push themselves to a new potential as a learner.
If they are not actively obtaining a badge, students read articles and complete quizzes in an online tool called Newsela. They also practice math through classroom applications like Front Row and Ten Marks. In addition, they read or listen to school library books through Overdrive to summarize and offer their opinion.
Wieczorek said the success of digital badging is attributed to the village of teachers and support staff that demonstrate daily the love of learning and help students achieve new heights.
