NAACE digital badges
During this lecture we explored digital badges. Prior to this I had very little understanding as to what a digital badge is or how they could be implemented into the classroom.
Within this lecture we looked at makewav.es which is an online platform that allows teachers to safely upload videos, podcasts and blogs. This allows the teacher to set up safe blogging for the class or school. These blogs can be safely shared with family, friends and other schools across the globe. “I like being able to write down my thoughts and ideas then publish these on the site for others to see. It makes you feel really good when someone leaves a comment on your page.” — Student from Corby Reads Project
Children are able to log into their accounts and are able to access the badges they are working on and view the badges they have already collected. These can also been seen by the class teacher or parents can use their own account to monitor their child’s progress.
“An Open Badge is an image with digital data woven into it about who earned it, what they had to do and the evidence of them having done the task e.g. a link to a blog or a video – All this can be displayed on your social media profile page so visitors can easily see what skills you have and what you have achieved.” (Makewav.es, https://www.makewav.es/badgesabout)
These badges are fantastic tools to help motivate and encourage children to complete tasks set by the class teacher or challenge themselves to complete tasks to earn badges from the public library. This is a brilliant way to encourage children to create more. For teachers, badges are not only superb motivation tools but are also useful in helping track a child’s progress. This is because teachers can create their own badges that fit the aims and objectives for the class and students.
Would I use Badges in my class?
In short, yes. I feel that the badges are fantastic tools that help motivate children to create content for their blogs that they may otherwise find arduous if were being written in books. By having such motivation to create content, I feel that badges in my class would help the children to create high quality work that demonstrates their full capabilities. I feel that Makewav.es and their badges would also be useful when setting homework tasks as it will allow me to set children work online that shows them the other capabilities of the internet. Other than gaming, youtube and searching. Therefore encouraging them to become future content creators.
KidSMART
kidSMART provides teachers of KS1 and KS2 children with useful resources that promote e-safety. The site also provides children with information on how to be safe online whilst doing their favourite thing, whether that is playing games, chatting to friends or using social media.
The resources available for teachers cover many different scenarios and issues that can arise when using the internet. These resources provide children with the knowledge of how to spot the issues and what to do if they ever encounter such problems. Some of the resources also get the children to think about how they think someone would feel if they were dealing with one of the issues such as cyber bullying.
The information given to children on how to be a smart surfer uses videos and text in colourful text boxes to surmises the key thing to remember when using phones, social media, games, etc. These concise information pages provide a children with the information they need to make informed safe choices online.
The site provides children and teachers with lots of interesting and useful information and resources to help children be safe online. The information is presented using lots of bright exciting colours which makes it exciting and engaging for the children. If i were to be teaching about e-safety I would definitely use resources from this site and encourage the children to use the site to learn more about the information.
Rupert Haywood-Pope 