Hey Mom! I got a badge in Math today!!

I recently returned from a trip to the wonderful city of Philadelphia for a fantastic little conference called Educon.  While I was there, I attended a session on standards based grading.  While in the session, I didn't feel as if I was getting much from it (I actually left early to go to a different session), but the value in it came a day later when checking into foursquare at a Philly restaurant.  I thought to myself, "this is what grading should be like" and with a quick tweet I discovered that many others agreed.  I promised a blog with my thoughts and here it is.

What I'm thinking is that students could "check in" to standards.  The teacher, of course, would set up the standards and what tasks he/she wanted the students to complete in order to receive the "badge" for that standard.  Quite possibly for each standard check-in, the student could write a reflection on what they learned about that standard and/or upload attachments to receive the badge.  The teacher could then go in and check what the student has submitted, comment on their information and award them the badge.  Students would continue work until all badges were achieved.

What I like about this is that students in this method could potentially learn at their own pace. They could pick which standards they wanted to achieve, make a timeline for achieving it and learn at their own discretion in the way they learn best.  You could have lots of badges for standards and maybe additional ones to include other subjects, such as an art badge for that student who used their art skills to finish a project, etc.

There are, obviously a lot of different ways to look at this.  I'd like to hear from you.  I'm considering implementing this into my grading system for my educational technology college course next semester. I'll take your ideas, practice them and report back.  Maybe I'll even make an app for that!

Thanks in advance for your input!