Atlanta

The Epstein School in Atlanta launched its badging system in August 2011 within their sixth grade class.  With funding from the Covenant Foundation, the badging system supports the development of  21st Century and independent learning skills.  The badge system is designed to provide scaffolding, motivation, and recognition.

New Report of Global Kids' Badging System in Atlanta 

Submitted by bjoseph on Thu, 03/01/2012 - 02:29

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In the Spring of 2011, Global Kids began working with the Epstein School in Atlanta, introducing them to the power, potential and perils of digital badging systems. Epstein identified nine subject areas to badge, and together we developed a strategy for running the badging system and rolling it out to the school in August, 2011.

Below is the mid-year report we delivered this past January to the funder, the Covenant Foundation. With the permission of both the school and Foundation, we share it below in the hopes of advancing our collective knowledge about the use of badging systems to support lifelong learning skills, both inside and outside formal educational settings.

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To learn more about other badging programs at GK, please explore the links below:
Below are a number of resources which highlights Global Kids’ educational use of badges over the past three years:

Working on Badges in Atlanta 

Submitted by daria on Fri, 01/20/2012 - 14:34

6727545249_2ac559042d_m.jpgThis week, GK spent a productive day visiting The Epstein Middle School School in Atlanta, where the school has implemented a badging system beginning with their sixth grade. Global Kids, along with staff at Epstein, custom designed a badging system to support the development of independent learning skills amongst the student body, funded by the Covenant Foundation.

The system is based on the recognition that learning in the 21st Century takes place not just in classrooms, but after school and through informal uses of digital media. To develop life-long learning skills, youth need to recognize how they are learning valuable skills across these venues and how to strategically navigate these sites of learning. Badge systems are designed to provide scaffolding, motivation, and recognition.

(Youth who are working on badges at Epstein can receive a power-up to miss certain classes to work on their next badge. They must wear this tag on the right to identify themselves.)

The Epstein Badging System includes a number of elements, including the badges themselves, digital transcripts, a badge management system, a badge submission process, committees, learning rubrics, back-end infrastructure, and digital portfolios.

Report: The Introduction of Badges in a K-5 Jewish Day School 

Submitted by bjoseph on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 19:33

... download report ...

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The follow is a short report by Global Kids to the Covenant Foundation on the Introduction of Badges in a K-5 Jewish Day School. It was originally written November, 2010 then updated, with an addendum, in July, 2011. With the new level of attention to learning badges, ignited in large part from the focus of the fourth Digital Media and Learning Competition on "Badges for Lifelong Learning," we thought it would be useful to share one case study of creating a badging system from scratch within one learning institution. Currently, we are hard at work with a school in Atlanta iterating the process described within the report (and on a much broader scale) and looking at an addition site in Brooklyn as well. (more on all that here)

In short, in January, 2010, the Covenant Foundation introduced Global Kids to Bob Berk, a principal of a K-5 Jewish Day School in the South. Supported by a new grant from the Foundation, together we explored how this K-5 school could use up to 70 hours of Global Kids’ time to enhance and expand its use of digital media for learning. After some initial meetings, the school decided to move forward with an emerging model of alternative assessment, commonly found in today’s widely used video games: badges. This report is a description of the overall project.