Final Reflection

Now that the dust has settled from the craziness that was the roll out and the attempted implementation of the Badge OS project - I feel like I have been able to gain a lot of clarity into my growth as an educator in this process.

So the technology did not work - - but is that what this is really about anyways? Or was this experience really about creating an independent learning project for students where they were able to be scaffolded through a process to achieve mastery in understanding a topic of their choice? Was this really about how to backwards map both content and the steps need for independent learning? I think when reflecting on this experience it was wholly about creating rich, authentic, independent learning opportunities in my classroom that all students could access.

I had a major breakthrough in my thinking out planning and implementation of curriculum through this process. They way that one needs to plan when creating a badgified learning opportunity you have to think to the end of the instruction and really plan out all of the steps. This was a huge shift for me. I felt like it tied my hands at first - how was I going to use formative assessment to then change or shift my instruction? I had to think through all of the steps students would have to take - have very clear end goals put in place with the supports and resources already compiled and ready for a student to just jump in and look at it. It reminded me of an old high school history teacher - taking out the binder for their unit on the civil war, and then on the first day of the unit going to the trusty power point slides the had compiled five years ago and boom! they are ready to teach for the next four weeks and then all they have to do is copy the final assessment - a test created long ago that they knew would hit all the key concepts and facts that they wanted students to know.

As a middle level instructor this felt so weird to me. How am I going to plan through to the end of a unit and then let students just chip away at it. But in reality it made me really stop and think about what was the most important things every student needed to know. What were the key experiences that they needed to walk away with. In designing curriculum using a "constellation" model, which was recommended by badgestack I feel like I was really able to create an independent learning opportunity for students that was both authentic in its independence and in the rigor of instruction


. 

And so it continues...

Yesterday the website was up and running and I was ready to jump in with both feet. I worked with the platform for my first class and was feeling OK about the work that we were doing. These students had spent a day on the site - then were having to do work off the site for two days and then went back onto the site. It was hard trying to get seventh grade students to try and get them back into their work on the site. They reluctantly signed back in and got to work. 

I found that they were struggling with the independence of the project. It felt too frustrating that there was too much work to do. Students wanted to jump in and submit their work without reading directions and were having a hard time navigating the site - trying to figure out the scope and sequence of the work they were to be doing. On my end it felt very frustrating to see my students struggling. In my day to day class when I see this I am able to quickly jump in using this formative assessment to change the direction - modify the google doc they are working on or change the task completely. Using badges4edu I felt like I could not put my hands in what the students were working on. Instead of planning based on what my students were doing and what they needed - I felt like I had to plan out for three weeks with all the performance tasks completed and finalized at the beginning of a unit and was worried about changing anything. I also felt like I was spending most of my time at a computer instead of spending my time with my students. 

After my first class I was able to do a google hangout with Susan and Audrey which was tremendously helpful. I renamed some of the steps and made the work more sequential. I took away the quest and badge buttons and rolled out to my second class and it went GREAT! Students were plugging away. At the end of the class students were asking if they could continue working on their badges. They were psyched about the points and seemed to really take to the idea of the site. 

I was finally feeling great about all of this hard work that my students were putting into the site and I was feeling like the hours of planning that I had put in was worth it. 

Then 3:30 rolled around and I was going to start looking at submissions from students to look at the work that they had done over the day. This is what I saw:

So here I am back at where I was last week. I have taken all of the quests and turned them into Google documents and created buttons on the website for the students to work through. 

It is not so exciting or as sleek at the badges4edu - but it works and it feels secure in the work that we are doing that students will be able to access their work and know how to do it. We will keep you posted on what happens next!

If I could FIRE a FIREwall

Ok so here is the story. Yesterday was roll out day! YAY! After major issues with Credly and coming up with creative work arounds everything was set and ready to go and I was ready for a great day.

Students in our first class got in, signed up, with the typical seventh grade - "wait what?" or "what is my user name again?" Students started working, they were feeling like it was a lot of work and a little frustrating at times for them, but it was all working and we were taking their feedback as useful information to use in future planning.

Then came the 10:30 class. Full of happy smiling faces fresh from recess where they were enjoying sunshine and fresh air. I told students to go to the website and this is what we were met with.

Being the quick thinking tech integrated teacher that I am I told students "Do not worry class...everything will be fine..." while in my head I was saying a bunch of words that if used in the classroom would create a lot of trouble for me. So I jumped to firefox! What a great idea I thought...

Ok this is when I started to get frustrated. I could not even log in on my end and I had ALL of my work stored in the website. I could not even pull the work that students could do - so we watched a movie about the Civil War and said we would try again tomorrow. 

Today is tomorrow and I can still not access the site in the building. I am able to access it out of the building and at home I was able to pull the quests and turn them into google docs and have students work on their choice of three quests today in class - but it is so not the experience that I was hoping for my students to have. 

This is clearly an issue with the firewall at school - however I am not having much support in getting this fixed so here I am sitting and waiting - hoping that this "issue fixes itself." Bill Slocum. 

Here goes to deeps breaths and smiles through the challenges! 

Making Headway!

I feel like I am finally plugging and chugging when it comes to this whole badge thing. I have so far been creating two badges a day!! I still have to put some final touches on the badges. I am a little confused as to how to link these into quests and how to create the hidden badges etc. but am feeling great about the creation of the badges and feel like I am on a roll!

Back from Break

Back from spring break and the thought of the next seven weeks of school seems rather daunting to me. I cannot believe that there is just a short amount of time to finish everything. Jordy and I had the hopes of working together over the break to work through the creation of our badges. However, the way that vacations go, we both were unable to meet. I am starting to feel like there is not going to be enough time to finish doing out badges with all of the interruptions of the typical school day, between  meetings etc. it seems that we never have actual planning time together. We were able to look at our constellation and put it in a Google document and have been able to think about what badges need to be made and which videos need to be made for the students.

I have also been thinking about how to make videos for the students who are using the Google app. How can I make a screen cast video on an iPad? I know that we came up with this challenge in the fall and did not come up with a good way to get this done without needing a computer. I was thinking that I would look online and see if someone (like google) has already done this.

I am really excited to be able to introduce gamification into my classroom. On a side not, I finished reading the novel Ready Player One  which made me floored with how well this book was put together, although also fearful of the future in this dystopian-ish sci-fi novel. If you have not read it yet -- I highly suggest that you do. It is fascinated in thinking about the gamification and the augmneted reality that is coming into education today.

Here is a book trailer for this book as well:

First Post

This is my first post for my TIIE action research for the spring of 2014. I am really excited about working with Badge OS and am feeling really stressed about getting everything finished for the site to be able to roll it out to our students, but I am excited looking towards the future of deigning and implementing curriculum to my students.