Hey, guys! So this is a little last minute, but in about a week and half from now, on Saturday, March 17th, I’ll be selling my Sailor Moon and Pokémon gum wrapper art prints at a booth at the 2nd annual CNUSD Festival of the Arts craft fair. It will be held at the Heritage Park in Corona. This is a public event that is open to everyone. There’s different art booths, as well as food vendors and live performances. Come hang out and have fun while supporting me and every other artist there! 😊 My Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AwkwardCharlie My Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/AwkwardCharlieEtsyShop/ My Twitter: @awkcharlieetsy My Instagram: @awkwardcharlieetsyshop #festivalofthearts #festivalofthearts2018 #cnusd #heritagepark #corona #theartcolony #craftsfair #artgallery #booth #coronaheritagemuseum #artist #sailormoon #pokemon #pokémon #prints #photoprints #forsale #gumwrapper #art #etsy #etsyshop #etsyseller #etsyshopowner #awkwardcharlie #awkwardcharlieetsyshop
Signs of Community, a nonprofit that helps cities set up networks of outdoor community announcement centers, built an LED message sign to introduce their concept to the City of Eastvale in California.
Speakers: Dr. April Moore & Leanne Cuicchi, Corona-Norco School District; Dr. Karen Jeffrey, ForAllBadges
Dr. Moore joined us with her colleague Leanne and badge system consultant Dr. Karen Jeffrey to talk about the work being done in the Corona-Norco Unified School District with badges. We heard a brief overview from her team back in November (read more here), and returned for a deep-dive discussion of their work on this week's Research and Badge System Design Call.
Full implementation
When we heard from April in November, the Corona-Norco Unified School District (CNUSD) offered 12 initial badges, split between the elementary, middle and high school levels. The badge system is now fully operational for Riverside County's 54,000 students, and the district has issued more than 300,000 badges. (Wow!)
The system was developed in partnership with ForAllBadges to allow for flexibility between the district's schools, to allow instructors to develop badges for school-specific programs that recognize different skills and behaviors across grades K-12.
While elementary students can earn badges for attendance and behavior, middle schoolers are earning badges for meeting formal standards within specific subjects, as well as developing career or college plans. Once in high school, students can earn badges for fulfilling entrance requirements for colleges and for exemplary scores on the exit exam as they leave school. The district is using a "Passport to Success" to track these achievements, complementing a college readiness program.
The Passport to Success platform and badging system was developed with the primary focus of preparing students for further education, career and beyond, exploring badge pathways that connect students' various learning experiences and making connections with local institutions of further education. They are even starting to work towards guaranteed admission to local community college for completion of the Passport to Success 12 core badges.
Due to COPPA's age restrictions on the badge backpack, the CNUSD badge system has been designed with students' privacy and confidentiality at the forefront. Once students are over 13 years of age, they can (choose to) push their badges to the Mozilla backpack and share them publicly from there.
Motivation and education
Throughout the badge system design and implementation process, April and her team have been looking at how the badges impact students motivation across the district, and they feel like they are beginning to achieve the motivational potential of badges.
Their initial research on student awareness and motivation in relation to badges looked at a sample pool of 112 students (50% female and 50% male) from 8th & 9th grade at JFK Middle College High School. They found that many students hadn't heard about badges or the Passport to Success program before participating, though each of the schools in the district are at a different stage in their implementation (e.g. some are focusing on staff awareness before expanding to students.)
When students logged in to the badging platform, some saw they had already been awarded badges, which got a number of students excited to earn more, according to April. Karen Jeffrey said that "rather than starting with a completely open slate, it helps to have a few badges" ready for students when they log in to kick-start the process and give them an idea of how to earn badges and what they can do with them.
The CNUSD team is now working with local schools to allow redemption of "points" earned within the badge system, as well as looking at opening a "points store" where students can redeem tangible rewards for their achievements.
If you want to learn more about the Corona-Norco Unified School District badging system and the Passport to Success, click here: http://pathways.forallbadges.com/
