Sunday 19 May 2013

Badges, Stickers and Achievement Points

During the course of this academic year I've become increasingly unhappy with the way I'm using rewards and praise. So I decided a complete reboot was required!

A few years ago I used @SchoolStickers. Looking back, I see that if pester-power is the gauge of a good rewards and praise system, then stickers were a great motivational tool. At the moment, my school uses Achievement Points which are logged on SIMS. The problem is, I am experiencing zero pester-power which, I believe, is a reflection of the effectiveness of SIMS-based achievement points.

So, what to do about it? Looking around, there's some interesting stuff on Open Badges and  Class Badges but I've been unable to see how I can easily integrate these into my teaching. I've been inspired by the way @MissPhilbin is using digital badges with Google Apps and @MrAColley has some great ideas for badges in his blog.

What I'm describing here is very much a work in progress - something which I'm looking to put in place for September 2013. What is emerging is a system which tries to take the best of Digital Badges, Stickers and Achievement Points. Firstly, I will get the @SchoolStickers (I have no affiliation to them) design team to produce a set of Achievement Point stickers/badges. All stickers contain a unique code which students can log online - a key motivational element. Rough drafts are shown below:
Achievement Points Badges/Stickers
In addition, each half-termly unit of work will have its own bronze, silver and gold badge/sticker - bronze for Year 7 and gold for Year 9. Below are some rough drafts for the Blogging sticker. This would be given out to students who produce the best Google Apps e-portfolios describing their work for a particular unit:  
Gold, Silver and Bronze Stickers/Badges for Blogging
As I've stated, this is a work in progress. Please let me know if you have any ideas or opinions on the kind of rewards and praise system that is evolving here.

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