Mari Venturino brings tech into the classroom with open badges
Posted by Benjamin Roome (@benjaroome).
To kick off our new blog series, “Open Badge Leaders”, I’m excited to highlight the work of Ms. Mari Venturino (@MsVenturino on twitter). Mari is a blended learning coach and 7th Grade science and AVID teacher in San Diego, California. She has done amazing work with badges including creating a badge-based teacher professional development system, presenting on gamifying with Badge List at the San Diego CUE conference, and being the first to earn the Badge List Community Leader badge.
Mari first learned about Badge List during a CUE conference earlier in 2015, and from there she hit the ground running by creating an open badge group called Getting Techy with the goal of helping her fellow teachers acquire blended learning skills. The badges include tutorials on how to get connected on Twitter, bring badges into the classroom, and how to use lots of other great tools like Padlet, Popplet, Pinterest, and Google Classroom. Mari believes that “digital badges encourage teacher learners to try out new technology tools without feeling overwhelmed by the amount to learn.”
Mari’s PD-focused Badge List group “Getting Techy”. If you’re interested in joining the Getting Techy group, Mari suggests that newcomers start with Badge Beginner.
Mari has built groups for her students in both science and AVID classes as well. She says that one of the main challenges of rolling out badges is the time it takes to get students to sign up and keep them motivated to try more badges. Once you get over the hump, though, she reiterates that the value is more than worth it for both students and teachers alike, providing valuable insights and capitalizing on students’ innate competitiveness.
Asked for tips for other budding badge builders, Mari suggests: “Just do it! Don't worry about creating the most perfect badge image, create one, add some evidence, invite learners and go!” Agreed! Get things off the ground quickly and then make little changes as you go.
Helpful Resources
For further reading and learning here are some fantastic resources which Mari has put together for other teachers interested in getting started with digital credentialing:
Video tutorial on creating custom badge images
Mari's presentation at #SDCUE
Click here to open google presentation
Mari’s Hyperlink Resources
Click here to open google docs tutorials on learning gamification
Thanks for joining us to celebrate Mari’s work! We’ll be back with another role model for you to learn from next week!