AURORA | More than 160 educators and administrators from around the world flocked to Aurora Friday to learn more about how cities and school districts are implementing digital badging, an increasingly popular initiative that gives kids unofficial credentials for learning various skills.
In a first-of-its-kind event for Aurora Public Schools, the district’s recent Digital Badge Summit was intended to help educators and industry professionals learn about badging programs around the world — from Aurora to the United Kingdom.
“(The Badge Summit) gives us time to listen to the biggest thinkers around badging and helps us understand where we are on the right path, and where we’re not,” said John Youngquist, chief academic officer at APS.
Available to students in APS for about the past year, the program awards students digital accolades for finishing projects that demonstrate skills like critical thinking, invention and leadership, according to the district website.
APS has sunk significant resources into developing a districtwide badging program in recent years, culminating in the launch of a pilot program in the spring of 2015. Though adoption was slow at first, the district had issued 8,822 badges to 5,838 APS students by the end of last school year, according to Charles Dukes, director of APS’ postsecondary workforce readiness program.
By contrast, the city of Chicago dispensed nearly 100,000 badges during a novel summer program in 2013, according to press release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office. Nichole Pinkard, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago and a preeminent voice on badging in education, spoke about the implementation of badges in Chicago at the recent summit.
Part of APS Superintendent Rico Munn’s longstanding vision for the district, the APS badging program has been pushed forward since Munn came to the district in 2013. But to Munn and other APS administrators like Kevin Riebau, APS’ director of educational technology, badges are merely a means to an end. While relatively trivial themselves, the hope is that the digital credentials give students a chance to experience or even enter the workforce at an early age, according to Riebau.
“Because of the vision of our superintendent, our money ball is not the digital badge, but the connections that makes for our students,” he said. “It’s not earning the badge, it’s what are you actually doing with it to create a pipeline between school and jobs.”
Currently, the district has partnered with 22 local organizations that offer job shadow or potential internship opportunities to APS students. Partner organizations include: local auto repair shop AutoPros, Boulder Engineering Studio and the American Museum of Western Art, according to Josh Kusch, specialist for programs and partnerships with APS. Students are able to earn different shadowing and educational opportunities at those companies based on the badges they accrue.
Despite the recent progress, adoption of the badging process has been spotty in APS, according to Dukes, with only about 20 schools across the district truly participating. However, Dukes said that recent statistics lead him to believe the program will proliferate next school year.
“We have about 169 summit badges meaning that students went through all the steps to get that highest badge,” Dukes said. “Last year we had zero, and by December (2015) we only had one. So students are really activating and starting to engage.”
The summit badge is awarded to students who earn all of the lesser credentials available in the district.
Increasing that adoption rate starts with teachers, according to Steve Clagg, chief information officer for APS. Clagg said that though some teachers are skeptical about offering badges in their classroom, feedback among those who have participated has been positive.
“Some teachers are a little hesitant to do badging, but there are others that become really passionate,” he said. ”If a teacher gets behind it, suddenly things explode in school districts. If teachers are not behind it, we have challenges. I believe we’ve gotten to a point where we’re at that precipice.”