Badges For Geographic Knowledge

Alex Chaucer

Working as an instructional technologist at Skidmore College, with a background as a certified Earth Science Teacher and Geospatial Technology expert, ALEX CHAUCER was looking for a way to recognize the development of skills and knowledge outside of the classroom. The Mozilla OPEN BADGES platform presented a way to recognize the addition of skill sets within the area of geographic information systems.

The prototypes started out small, with badges for completion of student assistant training within the GIS CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH, which is completed independently from the regular college curriculum. Digital badges recognize completion of training and knowledge units which are not necessarily recognized in any other way. Various open university platforms also utilize a badge system so participants have that concrete evidence that they have completed education modules on those sites.



Specifically, Mr. Chaucer was finding that college students within the geography major may not have the necessary knowledge and skill set to work within the areas of climate change and climate disaster, even following the standard curriculum. So, the additional training programs add those skills and technology knowledge and then recognize their completion with badges. He calls his project GEOCREDS.

Under "Start Here", there is information about the start of the project and then you can dig down into some of the early projects, including storytelling and the NYS Instructional Technology Training Program. In fact, that is the program which provided essential training that Alex used in his own project. Under "HP Catalyst Academy", you can connect with NMC ACADEMY, which has several online courses and workshops.

One of the badges on the Geocreds site.

"Bos" leads to information about a wordpress badge plug-in, including where the code can be found. The badger face leads to instructions about how to make your own badges, utilizing Mozilla backpack. The star leads to information about gamification for classroom use. This site is a work in progress and not yet completed. Additional information is found in links and also in Alex's blog.

Some of the students working at GIS Center For Interdisciplinary Research.

Thanks to this article from Pollination Project: https://thepollinationproject.org/grants-awarded/alex-chaucer-geocreds-learning-geo-earning-badges/; and the above links.

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