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Proposed change and wild rambling thoughts of an American


mmclaughlin

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Hey all,

I was driving into school today and had a revelation and wanted to get your opinions about it.  I know you are on a bank holiday this weekend.  We have Memorial Day so I won't be on till Tuesday as well.  

One of the items that has really interested me is micro-credentialing or badging.  Basically it is getting badges for accomplishing different activities and meeting certain competencies.  See https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/03/30/can-micro-credentialing-salvage-teacher-pd.html or https://study.com/academy/popular/what-is-micro-credentialing.html for more information about them.  I believe that they could really help both teachers and students demonstrate growth.  

I had seen @Sean_M's comments about digital badges as well as the discussion, the discussion of house points and the awards, which led me to really think deep on this issue.  So here we go with Matt's wild musings.

I am not sure how complicated this would be to implement, and I know that it would not be a quick fix because it hits many different systems.  

1.  Adjust the group fields to include a joined date into the displayed data.  I would love to be able to search a group by join date (ascending or descending).  

2.  Allow an option for the individual who creates the group to set a time of group end on their group so that it automatically deletes all members of the group when that date hits. Set the default as not to delete, but give it as an option

3.  Add a micro credential group as a type of group like house, location, and class

4.  Add a field in each group that allows you to upload an icon for the group.  This would allow you to have different icons to show membership.

5.   Create a widget that would allow you to display the icons based on group membership.  

If you don't want to add this for all of the groups, create the credentials group that allows for a single icon to be used.  Then have a widget that does it called my credentials that would display the credentials to the screen.

Now here is where the rubber meets the road:

Using the ePortfolios, have each teacher create an online resume that can be linked to the main Frog Page or Website for the school.  These would be online portfolios with contact info, the teacher's credentials and accomplishments.  Part of the portfolio would be to display their credentials to the community.  They could also have a link to their email and their academic history.  A credential should only last for 2 years or less, that is where the date joined comes in.  The director/ head teacher/ other person with this job could then sort by date on the credentials and delete those who would be 2 or more years old.  (It would also allow for an easier clearing of classes so we don't have to call Frog every year.)  

My thoughts would be that including the credentials on student and teacher portfolios would allow parents to see a more professional atmosphere.  They can see how amazing your staff is and that they are constantly growing as teachers and individuals.  It would allow schools to recognize teacher growth over time and see that they have been pushing for new and exciting ideas and implementing new methods of teaching that they have learned.  

So as I have said, wild musings... I have yet to put this in the idea portal as it would be a series of changes and does not fit in to there.  

@ADT I would love to see your response as we sometimes have very different viewpoints.  

@Graham Quince This is something I think we talked about doing through Progress, but this may be a more elegant solution.

Really, I would love to know the thoughts of those in the UK if this would work and if it is a much or little work as I think it is.  

Matt McLaughlin
American Teacher and Technologist

@emoseley

 

Edited by mmclaughlin
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For once... this all sounds great...:P

@Graham Quince helped our Junior School to create a badge wall...  for usual things 100% attendance...  form rep... haven’t wet their pants all day.... etc!!

The lad across there created images and grayed our versions which can be turned on and off with rules!!  Kids are added to groups and then they get the colour images!!  For me it’s all a bit clunky and a manual task!!!  But for a school with 500 ish kids in it ... it works!!   

Scale that up and it becomes a mammoth task!!

If you had a widget like the Sites one that could display groups you are in....  and you could put an image on a group!!  The badge wall would make itself!!

Add in an ability to see date joined....  which could then help to delete members...  even better!!

Just got to figure out a way to get the data in from an MIS.... then it would be perfect!!!

:P

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On 25/05/2018 at 17:47, mmclaughlin said:

Using the ePortfolios, have each teacher create an online resume that can be linked to the main Frog Page or Website for the school.  These would be online portfolios with contact info, the teacher's credentials and accomplishments.  Part of the portfolio would be to display their credentials to the community.  They could also have a link to their email and their academic history

This is certainly possible with ePortfolios right now.  With some thought out setting up and using the Site List widget, you could quickly create a staff directory like this.  Each would have to be individually maintained of course.

I’m presenting a webinar on Tuesday and will attempt to elaborate on this during the presentation.

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That makes sense.  I would like an easier way to manage with dates and the like, but that should work in creating a credentialing methods.  Also it would be possible to place the certificate on the site.  For dates, we could duplicate the site and then delete the site when they lose the badge.  hmmmm... let me think on this.  

Does the site widget button display the icon or the name of the site or both?

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9 minutes ago, mmclaughlin said:

That makes sense.  I would like an easier way to manage with dates and the like, but that should work in creating a credentialing methods.  Also it would be possible to place the certificate on the site.  For dates, we could duplicate the site and then delete the site when they lose the badge.  hmmmm... let me think on this.  

Does the site widget button display the icon or the name of the site or both?

Rules could help dates or you could just edit the sites to remove certificates

Sending certificates as images and using tags (when sending), will allow the Photo Stream, Image Carousel or Site Timeline to display just those certficates.  Giving you that ease of sending and displaying.  If you include in the widgets to only display tags with specific year tags - that might work.  You'd probably want each year to have it's own page and widgets on.  That way historic images wouldn't need to be removed.  You could use date Rules on pages to display only the current year.

The Site List widget gives you 4 different display options (including the site icon and name)

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I think that this would work better than using progress to give the badges.  You could do it quarterly and create a the expiration date directly in the site name.  Then you could sort the sites that you have and delete the ones that you need to delete.  The items like the badge, the certificate and information could be placed on the site that you sent out and the teacher would then be able to see the site.  You could control the options by using the rules function which would be powerful as well.  

So you would need to set the sites as public so that the person could show their badges and people could see them, but you could then create a group that would allow them to download the items.  This would work within the framework that Frog already has.  

So if my ramblings would be correct:

1.  You could build a micro-credentialing system in Progress.  This would be used to track the progress to a badge.  (You could also have a micro-credentialing main site and have the learners choose their own path using pages.)  The learner would then turn in all of the work to the credentialing agent.  This would allow them to earn the badge.  

2.  The credentialing body would create certificates/ badges and place them on sites that would be set as public, but the person would be unable to download them.  This would allow the control from the agent.  Each quarter these sites would be duplicated and the badge with the current expiration would be uploaded. 

3.  Quarterly, the credentials would be distributed to the participants through adding them to the site or group.  They will then have the ability to download and keep the badge (this is why the badge needs an expiration date as well as metadata embedded).  They can use the e-portfolio to show the badges using the site list widget. 

Hmm. there may be an issue with others seeing the site... time to experiment.

Matt

Edited by mmclaughlin
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It may be more work.  I get the idea of not worrying about downloading, but the issue is the expiration dates.  one of the keys to microcredentialing is that they are not forever.  As with all fields things change and you need to relearn different aspects.  That is the idea of the microcredentialing.  It could be semesterly as well, but you would want to have some form of expiration date on there.  

Rules would work in some ways.  I may mock up my ideas and shoot you a message.  I have some thoughts on keeping it from being too costly time wise.  It could be as simple as creating and deleting groups.  Not sure what is easiest.  

 

Matt

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