Author: lanapeterson

On March 12, 2014 I listened in on a presentation from Jean-Phillippe Choinière of Buzz Math. Buzz Math is a proprietary website that leads middle-school students through a series of Common Core aligned math challenges. Students can sign up through their school or through their family and whatever adult is working with them can see their progress through a dashboard.

Etherpad Presentation

Call Recording

Jean-Phillippe’s Slides

Many things intrigued me about this site, one is that is was a for-profit site using Open Badges. I hadn’t yet seen an example of that and although it does have and education focus it is not free. Two is that it is up and running; I say this because a lot of presentations I have seen are about future plans or theoretical conversations around badges and it was interesting to see a site that had a lot of momentum. Thirdly, and what has really stuck with me is the look and organization of the site.

via Buzz Math

As soon as you visit Buzz Math you are welcomed with vibrant but clearly branded colors. There are cartoon figures keeping it fun and representing a diverse group of people. The page that inspired me the most was the badge overview page that listed all of the badges that are possible to earn. They broke all of their badges into three categories: content knowledge, process knowledge, and achievement. While the computer can calculate content knowledge and achievement the teacher or adult facilitator gives out the process knowledge badges.

via Buzz Math

The design of the badges is sleek, branded, and progressive. By progressive I mean the badge changes as you earn more within the same area. For instance some badges have a number that changes as you reach certain milestones or some badges begin as bronze then move to silver, gold or even platinum! That way you can push your users to higher engagement or more math knowledge if that is your focus.

When you click on any of the badges in the badge overview section you are able to see the description of the badge, how many people have earned that badge, what a user needs to do to earn that badge, and if applicable, what Common Core Standard it represents. I would love to do a similar library keeping in mind that I would like some of the badges we want to offer to be a secret. Similar to playing a video game and you win a bonus or an extra life you didn’t even know was there.

As Buzz Math members earn their badges they sit on a literal virtual shelf on the member’s profile. Each shelf is labeled content knowledge, process knowledge, or achievement, which is an interesting idea. I am not exactly sure how I could label different categories of badges, I have categories but I am not sure if it would be keen to share that information with my members.

Another thing to note would be that Buzz Math does not just award badges but stars. The stars acknowledge smaller achievements and often lead to badges but can also let a student know how far through the challenge they are.

What this means for my work

I believe I shared this in the following paragraphs but to reiterate I will include a badge library where members can learn more about all the badges offered. Each badge will have a clear description of what needs to be done to earn that badge, a description, and some information about how many people have earned that badge. Many of our badges are progressive and will hopefully encourage members not to just participate or contribute once but continue to engage within the com

In my last blog I shared about two calls that happen weekly that are moderated by Mozilla. I have been participating in these calls sporadically for the past few months. They are recorded, which is convenient because attending the live call is not always possible. On February 26th, Ugochi Acholonu a postdoctoral research at DePaul University shared work that her and Dan Hickey, a professor at the University of Indiana on the difference between equity and access. This call is prime example that there are many, many layers that need to be considered and researched related to badge design, program design, and evaluation.

Etherpad notes and Call Recording

Acholonu gave an overview of the 2013 Chicago Summer of Learning, which is a program that promotes both summer learning. Some youth participated independently online, and other youth as a part pre-existing youth programming and education both online, hybrid, and in-person. Digital badges were used to document and acknowledge participation across the spectrum and across the city.

The researchers on the project were able to identify four different groups of participants and their findings show that those who were “self-directed” or students who joined on their own and not a part of a larger program stopped engaging with the program quickly.

See slide 10

This finding is what drove Acholonu and Hickey to think about the difference between access and equity. All the students both working independently or within a larger program had the access to earn the digital badges but their pathway to those badges were not necessarily equitable because some had better structure and adult mentors to support them. Students from different backgrounds also bring a different perspective and interest to the topics that need to be explored in order to earn badges.

For next year the researchers recommend increased online mentorship and recommendations for students who are participating independently. Also, thinking more holistically about the organizations that the Summer of Learning outreaches to.

Questions for Ugochi Acholonu (the questions listed below are copied from the etherpad, her answers are summarized by me):

Yet it seems that ‘access’ is limited to “access to learning.” How about access to recognition of what the person already is (past) and dreams (future).- Serge Ravet

Answer synopsis: If there is a badge that is offered and the youth already had experience in that area and could prove it through some sort of evidence then a badge was issued. My side note: For instance, if it was a video editing badge and a young person already knew how to edit videos, they would just upload their video to earn the badge.

Is it true that students have access to the same resources? What if they don’t have technology access?  How do they get access to the resources? – Karen Jeffrey

Answer synopsis: Acknowledged the access is an issue as well as budget to address the issue. Drop in sites especially libraries were offered but transportation to those locations can also be an issue. “I don’t think access comes before equity, I think you have to talk about access and equity at the same time”. In the design of the program organizers chose free programs for the badge challenges as to not create barriers for students.

Carla Casilli (Mozilla call organizer) reminded the group that badges do not necessarily need to be digital badges.

What does this mean for my work?

Service-Learning is most prominent in schools that are more affluent, including private schools. As a pedagogy service-learning has proven to be effective with high risk populations because it creates an engaging educational environment. Our organization is making a concerted effort to focus our programming on high-risk and minority populations.

As we start to use badges across our programming, how are we ensuring access to the Generator School Network? Are we creating an equitable incentive system if students are unable to sign on regularly? This issue might be best addressed by working on a plan with the schools we work with closely. It seems it would also be keen of us to adopt the strategy that Acholonu shared about tailoring badge design to appeal to the populations we are looking to engage.

That is one of my biggest struggles is that the GSN serves a very broad range of people based on age, location, education affiliation (K12, Higher ED, out of school time, etc.), background, experience with service-learning, etc. Once the badging system is underway our organization should look to see who is reacting (if anyone) positively to the badging system and who we may need to outreach to.

It is not surprising that the students who were working independently dropped off quickly. Whether you are an adult or young person independent learning can be very difficult and takes a lot of passion and/or a skill set for time management and resourcefulness. Online we could offer more pathways to learning so that the process is not so overwhelming.

Where are my badge people?

Discussing (in depth) digital badges is something that not something everyone can or is interested in doing. Especially as the development and research around this ED tech movement gets more complicated and advanced. I felt like I was on an island working in isolation without anyone to really discuss the implications for my organization’s website and the broader use.

After a bit of searching I came upon HASTAC

HASTAC is an alliance of more than 13,000 humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists and technologists working together to transform the future of learning.

via HASTAC

Essentially it is an online community of graduate students and professors (and others) from around the field interested in talking about the latest movements and innovations in education and technology- WHAT? That is me. One of the most robust topics on HASTAC was about digital badging and helped me see some of the conflict on the topic.

Because the community and some of this research is well underway you could spend weeks reading the blog posts of field leaders such as Daniel Hickey, Cathy Davidson, and Sheryl Grant. Grant curates a lot of the badge information on the site including this bibliography, which I found particularly helpful when creating my research proposal.

I reached out to Grant to find out more about digital badges, share some ideas I had around my research paper, and find out more about her role at HASTAC. It wasn’t a formal interview so I won’t quote her but I found her very helpful and she recommended a lot of resources and people to read. She shared that there is two weekly calls hosted by Mozilla, one more research/system design focused and the other a community call. While I prefer to be on the live call, they do record all of the activity within their Etherpad.

These calls have been essential for my growth in CI5190 and for my job at NYLC. My first call was in January, Neil Price of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada giving a presentation on Badges in the Afterschool Space. Hearing someone explain his design process in relation to his programming made me want to jump out of my chair with excitement. I am not alone! And there are people willing to share ideas, challenge each other with thoughtful questions, and move the practice forward.

The calls have stretched my understanding of digital badges and the multitude of research topics around them: assessment, motivation, social currency, program design, access and equity, etc. This list truly goes on an on, now my challenge is how I can get more involved.

Now that I have shared about the website I work on, and our impetus for integrating digital badges. I want to ensure all my readers know what I mean by digital badges. There is a lot of media and reports on digital badges, below are some of my favorite resources. That being said, what I have shared in previous posts and what I hope is clearly illustrated below is that there is still a lot we do not know about digital badges.

Definition:

“A badge is a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest. From the Boy and Girl Scouts, to PADI diving instruction, to the more recently popular geo-location game, Foursquare, badges have been successfully used to set goals, motivate behaviors, represent achievements and communicate success in many contexts. A “digital badge” is an online record of achievements, tracking the recipient’s communities of interaction that issued the badge and the work completed to get it. Digital badges can support connected learning environments by motivating learning and signaling achievement both within particular communities as well as across communities and institutions. (Source: Erin Knight White Paper)”

From: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges

To follow that definition, I would like to share a video I created in the fall semester of 2013 in CI 5331, Introductions to Learning Technologies taught by Aaron Doering. This was an issue paper assignment and the Youtube was the oral presentation of the research paper.

In my video I outlined research being the key issue for digital badges. There is some research being done and thankfully funded by some great foundations. But we still have a lot to learn about the design and use of digital badges.

The next video is the announcement of the 4th Annual Launch of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition. This iteration of the competition specifically focuses on digital badges. You may not be interested in watching the whole video; I found this video while reading Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan’s remarks. It was nice to see his speech in the broader context of the event. His remarks are at 22:20 but can be read on the U.S. Department of Education’s website.

This video, was posted on September 16, 2011 and I shared it because I believe it encapsulates the hopes that government, for-profit, foundations, non-profits, and schools have in digital badges.

Quote from Secretary Duncan:

“We’re excited that, this year, this competition will serve as a catalyst to advance the potential of digital badges. Badges can help engage students in learning, and broaden the avenues for learners of all ages to acquire and demonstrate – as well as document and display – their skills.

Badges can help speed the shift from credentials that simply measure seat time, to ones that more accurately measure competency. We must accelerate that transition. And, badges can help account for formal and informal learning in a variety of settings.”

And while I share in that excitement of the potential digital badges (3 years later) have on education in a wide variety of contexts. I cannot help but understand where some of the skeptics were coming from. Sheryl Grant of HASTAC outlines some of the badge supporters as well as skeptics in her post Badges are Made of People: The Social Psychological Motivations of Badges.

How does badging work?

Here is an infographic created by Mozilla OpenBadges, a free software that can be used by anyone. Mark Surman Mozilla Foundation introduced the OpenBadges software development at 14:30 in the video above but there has been quite a bit of progress since then. Mozilla Open Badges is not the only way to distribute badges but again it is the free and widely used non-proprietary software. Here is how it works:

From: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges

Additional Badge Resources:

Alliance for Excellent Education’s report Expanding Education and Workforce Opportunities Through Digital Badges.

HASTAC.org’s collection of digital badge related blog posts and resources.

Small bump in the road and lesson learned. But now the GSN is back, better than ever. We updated the Ruby on Rails platform the site is built on, it has a new fresh look, and we uploaded 2,000+ resources that we acquired from a federal program that is no longer funded. To ensure that the content is discoverable we opened up half of the site so that search engines can locate resources.

Before I get too far into my project, this might be the perfect time to give you a tour of the space.

The GSN is a 3,600+ member (and growing) online community comprised of young people and adults ages 13+. The dashboard gives an overview of the latest happenings on the website, a scrolling banner of the latest information, and a feed of upcoming webinars and the latest tweets.

www.gsn.nylc.org

The sight is broken into four main areas: Clearinghouse, Learn, Plan, and Connect

Clearinghouse houses all of the aforementioned resources that we recently acquired and serves as an unbiased showcase of the service-learning field’s resources. It has a robust search function to help users find exactly what they are looking for.

 www.gsn.nylc.org/clearinghouse

Learn is where we at NYLC upload all of our free professional development resources including, recorded webinars, downloadable resources, and discussions. We organize this area in different topic areas.

www.gsn.nylc.org/learn

Plan is a user-generated showcase of service-learning projects. We encourage members to upload their project at the inception of the idea vs. after they are all done and build the project as they go. This section will be transformed once the project-planning tool goes live because at this point there is not a lot of incentive for users to upload their projects. Maybe they want to share, see the community as a place to stay organized, or need to collaborate with a peer; but at this point we at NYLC are not supporting service-learning project planners as well as we could.

 www.gsn.nylc.org/plan

Connect is where members can organize groups and discussions with peers that they work with locally or colleagues from across the field. It can also serve as a great organizer after an event to stay connected.

www.gsn.nylc.org/connect 

Now badges will be integrated across the platform and will encourage participation and contribution in all of the areas. The exact design is still to be decided but it will acknowledge behavior as simple as signing on to creating and administering a group.

Despite the technical issues we were having with our website, the show must go on. I was lucky to have an event like Digital Learning Day to take my mind off the server drama. While not directly connected to my project, the event taught me a lot and truly shifted my perspective on just how many people and organizations are invested in educational technology.

At the heart of Digital Learning Day is quality teaching and learning from educators and students around the world. The day itself is really a celebration of the innovative lessons and projects that we know happen everyday in and out of classrooms. It is an opportunity to highlight some of the best tech-forward districts, organizations, and corporations from around the country. In order to make such a large international observance, the Alliance for Excellent Education calls upon the support of schools, nonprofits, and for-profits who believe that digital learning is a key component of a strong education.

The National Youth Leadership Council shares in that belief and is honored to support Digital Learning Day as a core partner annually. As a core partner, we encourage our networks of educators and young people to participate in Digital Learning Day. To further support this initiative, partner organizations also share their quality resources for the digital learning toolkits that can be found on digitallearningday.org. One of the best benefits of being a partner for this initiative is attending the national event in-person. And one of the biggest benefits of being the “ED tech” specialist at work is getting to be that representative to attend the in-person celebration.

The celebration started the night before at a beautiful reception held at the Alliance for Excellent Education’s office. It was nice to have a few hours to meet professionals who have mutual interests in educational technology, youth leadership, and access to quality teaching and learning tools. I left the celebration buzzing from all the wonderful conversations and new connections I had made. My excitement for the next day was growing by the second.

Climbing up the steps to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., butterflies started fluttering as I knew the day would be dynamic both in-person and online. A large group gathered to take a tour of the building that is covered in beautiful detail and symbolism. Libraries are the foundational setting for digital learning and media, which made the Library of Congress a perfect location for the celebration. And that location has also been the setting for many historical political decisions related to educational technology.

After the tour we piled into the Coolidge Auditorium where we were welcomed by Dr. James Billington to the library. While the day of amazing examples of digital learning was just beginning, Tom Wheeler, the Chairman of the FCC reminded us that many educators do not have the access to the internet they need in their classroom. He shared that his goal was to have the first Erate updates completed before fall of 2014. Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy, echoed Wheeler’s concern for internet access and added that this is really an issue of equity within education.

The day became an exhibit of some of the best digital learning from around the country. Participants had the opportunity to talk with youth, educators, and administrators that were eager to share their replicable programs and projects. In the midst of the live celebration, many of us were also trying to keep up through Twitter and the Google Hangouts throughout the day. These digital and in-person opportunities to connect expanded personal learning networks and added new resources to our ED tech tool belts.

The live event culminated with a panel of district staff, state administrators, federal employees, and leaders from national organizations. The most dynamic panelist was a student, Amber Garrett from Talladega County, who shared the youth perspective from before and after the personalized learning initiative was implemented in her district. She cited that technology helped her develop 21st century skills and gave her opportunities to use those skills in the real world.

Digital Learning Day 2014 taught me that while at the core of this issue is teaching and learning, everyone should have a vested interest and role in educational technology. If we don’t provide our young people with the best education possible our society, economy, and future is at risk. The use and access to technology and media, quality teaching methods, and excellent curriculum must be supported by students, educators, administrators, policy makers, IT professionals, community-based organizations, and corporate partners. The Alliance for Excellent Education does an amazing job organizing Digital Learning Day. NYLC is honored to be a core partner.

If you missed the excitement from the day, check out #DLDay on Twitter or digitallearningday.org

My view at lunch : )

The young scholar on the right and the older scholar on the left represent life-long learning.

After a meeting with Angelica about my final project was feeling energized and ready to take action! Our web developer was working on some updates to the Ruby on Rails Platform, changing some settings on the site, and giving the GSN an updated look. Everything was falling into place to have a new and improved Generator School Network.

Then…

The GSN was mysteriously down due to server maintenance. Our web contractor submitted a help ticket to our server and received this message in return:

We regret to inform you that the host machine that Cloud Server, gsn-demo, resides on cannot be recovered despite the very best efforts of our Engineering and Data Center Operations teams.  It has been determined that this server has experienced complete data loss.

If you have a recent server image, your next step should be to build a new server from that image. Should you require the same IP, please contact support prior to deleting the impacted server from your account and we will assist you in sharing the IP to the new device.

If you do not have a current server image, your next step will be to build a new server from a stock image and upload data from your local backup.

Finally, you will need to delete the impacted server from your account to prevent any further billing associated with the device.

Say What? Essentially the company that we pay every month to back up everything just stopped working. And this would not have been a problem except the server took a back up of a broken website and the site had not been externally backed up since SEPTEMBER! Which means we lost everything from September to the end of January that users and our staff had uploaded.

At that point we had to decide to bring back the September version of the site or just wait two weeks and launch the new and improved GSN. We chose the latter because it meant things would move faster. We came up with some clever marketing in the meantime:

The GSN is experiencing flu-like symptoms which requires rest.

Don’t worry — it isn’t contagious.

Our cloud server crashed taking back-up copies with it.

What this means to you: the GSN will be offline for about two weeks for rest and recovery. When it comes back on February 14 it will be better than ever with an updated look and all the resources of the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

In the meantime, keep connected on Twitter, Facebook, and the K-12, HE, or CBO listservs. Visit nylc.org for service-learning resources, stories, and news, and check out our YouTube channel for recorded webinars. If you have any questions, please email us at gsn@nylc.org.

Thank you for wishing the GSN a speedy recovery!

Lana Peterson

Deep breathes. Bad timing. I was trying to be grateful we didn’t loose everything. Needless to say this shifted my project a bit until I was able to get everything back to speed. I gave myself a crisis badge because… well I didn’t cry and crawl under my desk, and I really wanted to.

Time really does fly when you are having fun; it is hard to believe I am already at my final semester for my M.Ed. in Learning Technologies. This initial post is an introduction to my final project for CI5190; I will be using my blog to document my progress throughout the semester.

Although I had some ideas for what I wanted my final project to be, in January the CI5190 students received an email from our new adviser Angelica Pazurek to give us further guidance for completing our final project. An excerpt from that email:

Details About the M.Ed. Final Project

The objective of the final capstone project is to showcase your skills and knowledge gained during the M.Ed.  This final project must be new work– it cannot be a repurposing of work that you have already done in other classes during your program.  However, it can be an extension of prior work; for example, you could add new things to a project you have been developing throughout your M.Ed. program.  The additions should be significant; that is, they must require a sufficient amount of effort and time investment from you befitting an M.Ed final capstone project.  If you choose to go this route, I will ask you to explain exactly what will be new or what you will add, extend, develop further, etc.  Or, you may have a whole new idea!

… As you are envisioning your M.Ed. project, you should strive to:

1) Create something that solves a problem you care about.

2) Create something that might be useful for others

3) Use your LT knowledge

The following excerpt is what I love about the Learning Technologies program at the University of Minnesota. Their aim is for you to be spending time on projects and assignments that are relative to your work and have actual application in the real world. This call to action makes the line between my work life and school life practically non-existent.

Currently I am a Professional Development Manager at the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC). Specifically I train adults and young people about leadership and service-learning both face-to-face and online. I manage our online platform, the Generator School Network (www.gsn.nylc.org) a community for youth and adults to learn, plan, and connect around service-learning. It is this role and my love for educational technology that drew me into the Learning Technologies program in the first place.

Some Background

The Generator School Network as an online community is almost five years old, my organization created it initially to stay connected to teachers that we work with across the country. The site has been built from the ground up but if we were starting this network now we would most likely use a pre-existing LMS. While the site has transformed throughout the years from it’s initial thinking one of the biggest changes was in July of 2012. The site was originally created for K-12 teachers to collaborate, but we had many non-formal educators and other educational professionals using the site as well.  Only catering to adults did not align with our mission so we opened the site to youth ages 13-18 and updated our security features.

While young people were welcome to use the site it really wasn’t a community designed for young people. It needed a fresh look, more youth driven content, and some sort of incentive for participating. I asked one of our high school interns to give me feedback and she shared, “Participation is a big thing in making the GSN amazing. Youth are going to want an incentive in why they will participate [for instance] with @15, people got points when they participated and then they could use those points for other goodies, DoSomething.org has grants, and the 26 second campaign sends you a t-shirt just for liking them on Facebook”.

She was right! But I would add it is not just youth who have a choice, adults have a choice as well. It was from that impetus that I began looking at user incentives for online participation not just to drawn them to our site but to get them to contribute and collaborate on our site. My search to find the holy grail of online incentives sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole of digital badges (which I will explain further in my blogs). This quest has pushed me to grow as a financial developer, an instructional designer, a project manager, evaluator, and technical developer all with the help of the LT program.

The Project

In the fall of 2013 NYLC secured funding through State Farm insurance to integrate digital badges and an interactive project-planning tool in the Generator School Network. Some initial thinking for this work happened in the fall in these classes (click the link to see the related projects)

CI 5336- Planning for Multimedia Design and Development:

CI5331 Introduction to Learning Technologies:

CI5177 Practical Research- This was the basis for my research and what will be submitted to the IRB after further updates.

The assignments in those courses allowed me to further research digital badges and create a draft plan for my project planning tool. To build on those projects I proposed my final M.Ed. project guide me through the first quarter of my website updates which includes:

• Writing a web development RFP
• Hiring a web developer
• Conceptualizing and designing the GSN’s badge system
• Conceptualizing and designing the GSN’s project planning tool
• Submit my practical research paper to the institutional review board

Read on to see how this project progresses throughout the semester!