Warning: Professional Development Overload

The past six weeks have been a whirlwind of learning! I have attended my first EdCamp, first iPad Institute, first Literacy Institute and first ISTE...interspersed with on campus and online classes...and capped it off yesterday by presenting my first two sessions ever!

I have also been busy networking with fellow Graphite Educators, fellow PBS Media Digital Innovators as well as my invaluable PLN Tweeps (@megcurlteach).

As a learner, I have been challenged by the daunting task of archiving all the great resources I want to use as well as deciding which resources to bring to my classroom (lab) this year. I have been taking digital notes, photographs and videos as a way to remember great ideas shared by other educators.

Now comes the real fun, planning my beginning of the year learning activities along with the rituals and routines necessary to make the whole set function!

I plan to discard last year's lesson plans in Evernote, read through the hundreds of resources I have saved to Pocket, scan my Google Drive for examples of student work to retool, and reuse.

I hope my enthusiasm spreads to my students and colleagues as we launch another brave new beginning!

I will be posting specific activities from my work with students. I would love to know about some of your successes!

Taking Steps Towards Digital Badges

As somewhat of a "conscientious objector" regarding the grading of students, I am very excited about badges. I loved earning them as a girl scout; the idea of having proven a set of skills or accomplishments appealed to me then and still does. When I first heard of digital badges, I knew I needed to find out more. I did some research and got advice from my Twitter PLN. I have settled on using ClassBadges at classbadges.com. ClassBadges is a free tool that allows teachers to design, describe and award badges to students.

While there are many icons provided, you can also upload your own images. I created some of my images and edited some from Creative Commons.

I am a huge fan of giving my students options. During my decades as a classroom teacher, I used Academic Choice, a Responsive Classroom component. As a new Technology Specialist, I have been rethinking and revising ways to provide meaningful choices in the computer lab. When students complete their daily assignment, they will be able to work towards badges. I am implementing this with students in grades 3-5.





I am starting out with 10 badges. I feel it will give students enough variety, while being manageable.


I created a Google document that gives students a description and the requirements for each badge.  I have also created a Symbaloo webmix for all the websites and shared documents they will need to access.


My next step is to create a screencast for each badge, introducing it and modeling some components. This way, students can jump right into the work without having to listen to me explain all the details of every badge. Each screencast will also be a link in the webmix which is color-coded.