Digital Badge Design Unit: My First PBL Experience

I'm the kind of teacher that takes the time to think through a lesson or unit and plan, but at some point you can't anticipate everything and just need to jump in!

This is precisely what I did with my first real PBL (project based learning) unit. Before the planning stages I read Setting the Standards for Project Based Learning and Implementing Project-Based Learning, then as I planned my unit I worked through the Project Based Learning Starter Kit, which was so helpful. Another great resource was the Buck Institute for Education's (BIE) website of resources.

So my first official PBL unit was a doozy, but hey go big or go home, right? I needed a way to assess my students' basic technology knowledge and skills and had been looking at using digital badges. As I contemplated designing a badging system that would entice students to earn them and be easily manageable, I thought who would know better then my students. I immediately started working with the resources above to create a PBL unit for my 8th graders that would have them designing the entire badge system. Here is my unit plan and my teaching and learning guide, both templates I tweaked from BIE's resources. 

The unit began with a solid start; I had planned well. I knew my students didn't know about digital badges and couldn't design a system without having a base knowledge of the kind of system we wanted to create. Using Schoology, I created a differentiated reading group activity where groups of students read and discussed a video or article about badging. 

Video and Articles My Students Read

I grouped students according to their reading level, provided them questions to answer, and required them to comment on their peers answers, to facilitate a conversation.

Instructions for Completing the Reading

Once the groups were done, all the students completed a whole class discussion in Schoology about what we needed to consider when designing our badge system.

Directions for the Whole Class Discussion

This was a great start, but my students were still unsure about what exactly we were creating, so we looked at models of badge systems. We looked at the Aurora Public School Badge System and a Schoology based teacher professional development badge system, designed by Brandi Miller. We then had a ton of discussion and captured our thoughts using Padlet, Google Docs, and more Schoology discussions. After a week of establishing our base knowledge and brainstorming which tech skills to create badges for, we got into groups and started our work.

Here was the tricky part. I have 3 classes of 8th graders and we wanted to all work together to create 1 badge system. To manage 90 students working on the same project I created a team of 3 project managers in each class whose job it was to manage groups and help me design the overall system pieces, like where would we house the system and what the process would be for submitting evidence and issuing badges. Each class also had 8-9 groups of 3-4 students, with a group leader. The group leader was the main contact to the project managers and the project managers were the main contact to me. I only worked with 9 students total, the project managers, and only jumped into working with a group if all other attempts by the students to work out conflict failed. This system worked well, allowed me time to get into group's work and give feedback and train project managers on how to manage groups and run meetings to check in with work progress and group dynamics.

Project Manager Running Group Check-up Meeting

Guidelines for Groups, List Generated by Students

During this 5 week unit, 8th graders were engaged all the way through the last week of school. We had amazing conversations about how to write instructions and create tutorials for the specific audiences of 6th, 7th, or 8th graders. Students deepened their understanding of using information and images ethically and steered clear of copyright or trademark infringement. They also demonstrated their complete understanding of basic tech content. But the best part of all....they took pride in their work and completely exceeded my expectations! 

Students Engaged in Designing Badges

I have a little bit of work to do to string together all the different pieces of our system, but they created outstanding resources for our 6-8th graders to independently learn and earn badges that will demonstrate their basic tech knowledge. This system will also help me pinpoint who knows what and allow me to better plan learning experiences and access tech skills, encourage students to become the teacher, and eventually turn over running the system to a team of students. My 8th graders successfully created 23 badges, each with 4-5 microbadges, and a variety of learning resources to help the earner learn. Here is just a small sample of what was created.

I know some of my colleagues thought I was nuts to tackle such a large scale project with 90 8th graders at the end of the school year, but this amazing work came about through the power of PBL. I'm inspired by the work my students did and look forward to implementing our new digital badge system in August.

Not Your Mama's Computer Class

Technology class is not about the technology.

Shocking that a technology teacher is saying this? Maybe, but stop for a moment and think how technology is used in the world around us. How many people stop to learn the tech before they use it? Instead they use the tech in a specific context, thus learning how to use the tech as they use it in a meaningful, purposeful way.

This week I joined the #connectedTL, connected teacher leaders, Voxer chat as they discussed "To Lab or Not to Lab" in terms of the relevancy of the traditional computer lab classroom in schools. I currently teach in a traditional computer lab classroom, the one with rows and rows of computers on tables, but what happens in my classroom is no where near what happens in a traditional computer lab.

I view my roll as the technology teacher like an octopus, reaching my arms into every content, finding ways to incorporate all subject areas into my classroom, so we have meaningful and purposeful ways to use our technology. I very rarely teach the tech tool, but I do have my students play and explore with it when we get started with a project, so they have a sense of how to use the tech. Then, it becomes all about the content and how we can use the tech to create something about or with our content. This leads to cross-curricular projects and stand alone technology class projects.

Students working on creating a better backpack during a design thinking unit.

             

Students filming a dark voyeur shot for one of their filming projects.

   

Working with my colleagues this year has helped me sure up my vision that my technology classroom is a place for making, designing, and problem solving as we become tech savvy. As my colleagues use more and more tech in their content area classrooms, the more my class can become the space where we take creating with tech to new levels and perhaps get into truly innovating. This will also lead to more complex and exciting cross-curricular projects as long as I continue to view myself as the octopus, reaching my arms into every content. That is the way the "computer lab" should be, certainly not your mama's computer class.

Why PBL?

Over spring break I decided to relax like most teachers and read a few professional books. One of those books was Implementing Project-Based Learning by Suzie Boss. I followed the Buck Institute on Twitter, as well as perused their website. And, I will also be reading Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning by John Larmer, John Mergendoller and Suzie Boss. I like to think that I design thought provoking projects that give my students opportunity to critically think and problem solve, but if that was the case my students would begin to show signs of growth in these areas by this point in the year. As I have reflected though, this is not the case. This is precisely the reason I needed to research and understand project/problem based learning (PBL) more. Maybe I need more structure, maybe I need to craft better driving questions, or maybe I'm not allowing my students to be creative. What I do know is that I need to get this right because my students' futures depend on it!

This never was so apparent to me as today...

Have you ever heard someone say that it is ok for a small percentage of students to receive Ds and/or Fs because society needs low level workers, and those students will be just fine, or, don't worry if that student can't think critically, they just have to know how to flip a burger? I have, and some of these people have been my colleagues. Let me make this clear. This is not acceptable! 

All students can be powerful thinkers and problem solvers.

Even in those so called "low level" jobs, employees need to be thinkers, and solve problems. 

I'm an observer; I like to watch how things work. I've always been this way since I was little. So naturally as I watched my car being washed today at one of those "done by hand, take longer, better wash" places, I watched how the system worked. See my husband always takes my car to be washed, so I had never been to a carwash like this before today. 

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Imagine cars lined up at every part of the process. Some were at the start getting vacuumed, some were waiting to go through the wash, and others were getting detailed. This while several, including mine, were in a holding pattern as those cars done with the wash were stacking up waiting for the detail. At the start (vacuum) and the end (detail) there seemed to be a manager/owner working along side of the other employees. Noble, I thought. It's always nice to see the leaders jump in and help when needed. But, remember, my car and several others were in a holding pattern because the detail work was backing up. I watched how all the employees diligently did their job, but that was it. None of them noticed the back up. Then one of them did and pointed it out to another and then another. It was more of a "look how busy we are", not a "oh man let's figure out how to remedy this". Here in lies the problem. None of them would or maybe even could solve the problem. I watched as 5 cars pulled in, saw cars everywhere and turned around and left. It took a customer complaining about his car being in the holding pattern too long to get the manager/owner at the vacuum station to go see what was happening. He walked over, spoke to the other manger/owner and quickly the employees were reorganized to get the detail on cars done faster. And, before you knew it, there were no cars in the holding pattern after about 15 minutes. Not only had none of the employees solved the problem, but the carwash lost some business. How much business would have been lost if the customer had not complained or the employees stepped up to solve the back up issue?

As I watched this unfold I asked myself: do these guys want to solve this problem or, can they solve this problem? Maybe they weren't allowed to make those kinds of reorganizing decisions, or maybe they were just lazy and wanted to do the bare minimum? After moving closer to listen to what the employees were saying to one another, remember I'm an observer, I believe it was neither of those. I think they couldn't solve the problem, because once they were redistributed to cars, as a way to double up, I noticed that they continued to double up until the back up was gone, then they went back to the original organization, without being told to. 

So what does this have with project/problem based learning? If all classrooms took this approach to learning, doing true PBL, every student would be a creative thinker, problem solver, and collaborator. Many might even be great initiators. No matter what job you have as an adult, you need to be a creative problem solver. My time at the car wash today could have been cut in half if one of the employees saw the problem and initiated a solution, even it was just telling the manager/owner that there was a problem.

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PBL is not about students completing projects at the end of the unit to show what they've learned. It's about students showing the learning through the entire process. It's about not giving all the pieces, but letting students figure out those pieces as they complete the unit.

I'm excited about honing this process in my own classroom and urge every teacher to consider moving to a more PBL classroom. No matter where students end up as adults, they all deserve learning how to think creatively. Our future depends on it.

1,2,3,4,5 Challenge

I have been seeing this challenge floating around twitter and my school and thought, "You know this would be a good time to reflect!" and "I really do need to blog." 

So voila...

1. What has been your one biggest struggle during this school year?

Some people may see the word "struggle" and think of a negative experience. My biggest struggle this year, though, is putting me in such a positive space that I feel so blessed. I chose to start fresh with a new position, a new school, and of course some struggle. I've struggled to wrap my head around teaching technology for the first time, struggled to find my place in a new staff, and struggled to create all my own curriculum.

Struggle has never felt so good! 

2. Share two accomplishments that you are proud of from this school year.

• My collaboration with a colleague to design a project where all my students learned how to podcast. I blogged about it here. This happened early in the year and my students blew me away. It showed me that I could plan a unit with such depth for my students.
• Getting back to my roots as an educator by building relationships with my students. Being in a school that values this is refreshing. When a student was having a hard time coping with some previous bullying and resorting to bullying himself, and the principal, helping him with some strategies to talk out his feelings, asked if there was an adult on campus he trusted talking to, he said me. It solidified the need to always work on those relationships. Needless to say, the student didn't bully anyone again.

3. What are three things you wish to accomplish before the end of the school year?

• Survive - I'm very tired given all the newness I've experienced this year and by surviving, I mean working at the same level I started the year with.

• Empower my 7th graders to take the lead on a digital photography and drawing unit. I will ask my students to use what knowledge they already know to teach lessons to their peers, or learn on their own and then teach. This will be my first attempt at turning my classroom into truly a collaborative learning space. I want to learn with them and share the leadership.
• Guide my 8th graders in creating a badge system for acquiring the basic skills of technology. This will be a legacy project, one where the product stays with the school when they leave. They will create a badge system for 6-8th grade with badge designs, tasks, and a system for submitting evidence and receiving the badge. This is a bit ambitious, but I think my 8th graders have a good sense of what tech skills are needed at each grade level. I'm excited to see what they think of.

4. Give four reasons why you remain in education in today's rough culture.

• The kids - Not only is it amazing to help students realize their potential, but it is also pretty amazing how much they help me realize my potential. 

• My colleagues - I'm inspired by my peers everyday. They give me reasons to improve through watching what they do and support me when I need a shoulder to lean on.
• Constant learning - I am continuously learning: about tech, teaching, building trust, how to have fun, etc. What other profession can you learn not only content, but also life skills?
• The challenge - No two classes are the same, no two students learn quite the same way. I'm always striving to improve, use different strategies, design better learning experiences, reach that one difficult student. All the challenge will keep me young, right? I think so!

5. Which five people do you hope will take the challenge of answering these questions.

• Kristins Allison @kshevy
• Lisa Guardino @LisaGuardino
• Jenell Novello @expNovello
• Corey Coble @CVRscience7
• Jenna Rogers @mrsJennaRogers

My #oneword 2016

As I drove home from school today, it dawned on me. I needed to write my #oneword post for 2016. Not because I've done this post for the past two years and I want to keep with the tradition, but because I realized the power of the #oneword.

In 2014 I wrote about finding my JOY, and though it took until the middle of 2015, I found the joy in my profession again when I decided to take a leap and change schools, districts, and content. It required some sacrifice, but I am so much happier teaching in a space where my colleagues share my philosophy and want to create amazing learning experiences for students too. The new joy in my work environment led to more joy in my personal life, hmm, go figure.

In 2015 I wrote about BALANCING my work and personal life. It took quite a bit of will power and then I totally threw my balance out of whack when I took a new job, mentioned above that brought me joy, and took part in the Area 3 Writing Project Summer Invitational Institute and became one of the Project's Teacher Consultants. But, by the end of the year the joy of my new job allowed me to balance work and home by leaving school work at work (for the most part). 

Now, as the new year begins, and I reach the middle of the school year, I realize that my #oneword for 2016 is BREATHE. 

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I am midway through the first year of being a new technology teacher, something I've not done before. The learning curve for my "content" has had no curve at all and is more like a straight line. And, I still have five and a half months left of this not so curved learning curve. Today was another day of me feeling overwhelmed and that I wasn't good at my job, which I know is not the case. If I can remember to breathe and remember I am learning my "content", not how to teach, then I'll be fine. I know how to teach and design learning experiences. So I need to learn with my students a little more this year, no biggie. After all, showing my students that we are in this learning together is a good thing. 

I just need to breathe so I can find my joy, which helps me balance it all.