By Daria For the past few months, we’ve been meeting with a small group of Global Kids staff members called the Badges Fast Action Team or B-FAT. The group consists of five staff members who convene every other week to discuss big picture questions as we build out badges for our organization. So far, we've discussed what the overall badging schemata for Global Kids should look like, including what features there should be and what skills, abilities, accomplishments, etc. we want to badge. You can read about that in more detail here and a template of what it looks like here.
Most recently, we discussed two key questions: 1. Are their GK badges that we are offering to youth not in GK and GK badges that we want to certify other organizations to offer? 2. What is our process for rolling out the badges system and what challenges can we foresee? For the first question, there was unanimous consensus that we do want to certify other organizations and educators offer GK badges. The easiest places to start doing that would be to look a the partnerships that we currently have and which educators are already using GK curriculum or workshops. It could also be a way for us strengthen our partnerships with communities we work with outside of New York, such as Washington, D.C. We would start testing this out in the fall with a small number of organizations. Questions remain about whether or not we would be certifying what youth learn or what they learn through being in Global Kids, and whether or not the badge is about youth learning or GK teaching? Another question is that if we badge youth for content they learn in another program, is that us taking credit for work done by others? For the second question, we know that our priority is to develop a centralized plan for our staff. To begin, there will be training for our summer staff who are beta-testing the badges on how to use the system, and I will write a workshop that staff can use to explain to youth what the badges are about. In June, I will lead a badge development day for staff to develop badges by program, and there will be additional training on how to use the system in early September. The main challenges we foresee have to do with the human resources needed to sustain the badging system over the course of the school year. For example, who will be the staff person(s) for each program that are the key badge experts? What groups or staff are needed during the year to keep all the work moving forward? Additional challenges we foresee are technical. For example, how will we get all our youth into the system when many of our school sites have limited internet access? What will be each program's plan for getting their youth online? We also came across a new rule of thumb we could use moving forward for a recurring issue: how do we know if we are designing a new badge or rebuilding the wheel? If the rubrics are different, we decided, then the badges are different. If the rubrics are the same, then the badges are the same. This means that sometimes badges that are very specific, with unique rubrics, can be combined into one badge with a more general rubric. For example, a "blog writing" badge and a "fan fiction" badge can be combined into an "online writing" badge; this simplifies the system by cutting down on the number of badges but maintains what was unique about the two original badges by moving what made them special from the "badge" category into the "mission" category. In other words, potential missions for achieving an Online Writing Badge might be "Post a link to a blog you have written" and "Post a link to a piece of original fan fiction you have written." We COULD have kept them as seperate badges, but combining achievements at this level makes sense for how we plan to use badges. Finally, we discussed the idea that badges are an enhancement to an enhancement, and that it's important to remember that it's okay if some of our youth do not pursue badges and that we should be careful about not creating a power dynamic between those who are more involved with badges and those who are not. This affects what we choose as our power-ups and whether or not power-ups are required to access other GK activities or whether or not they should only relate to external rewards and opportunities within the badging system. Lastly, as we build out our summer beta badges, we have found that the templates we created are incredibly useful. For staff running our summer geocaching program, they went straight to the badges template to look for outcomes. They found that the Hard Skills and Knowledge categories were most useful in determining the educational outcomes they want youth to get out of the program, while the other categories were not as useful.
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By Juan Rubio
This past Saturday May 19, Global Kids in collaboration with the Brooklyn Public Library and The Hive Learning Network NYC conducted a game jam based on the popular game Minecraft and the equally popular books The Hunger Games.
We wanted to show a short video of the game as it happened in Minecraft and some pictures. We will publish a more complete video in the near future with all the participants, including interviews with the youth and partners in the program. We wanted, however, to acknowledge the success of the program soon after it happened. Click read more to learn more about what took place during the day. Gathered at the Main Branch in Grand Army Plaza, teens from two internship programs from the library participated in the day long game jam. The program was developed with the assistance fromMinecraft Edu who created a world in Minecraft to represent two sectors as depicted in the books: The Capitol and District 12. After the youth learned in a quick tutorial the basics of crafting, they began playing the HungerCraft game. In the game, two groups were divided and given the roles of being in The Capitol or District 12. Having unequal amount of resources, but needing from each other to survive, the groups engaged in a game that involved trading, strategy and crafting skills. This mechanic provided the group to later have a lengthy discussion about inequalities and imbalance of resource in societies past and present. The youth discussed The American Independence War, The American Civil War, and the French Revolution. They also spoke about current events in which power struggle has been present such as the Arab Spring and conflicts in Africa. The youth were engaged, enthusiastic and had lots of fun in the program. By Joliz Cedeño 5/16/12, New York—Using smart phones to map skateboarding hotspots in New York City, learning to view media critically by remixing commercials that reinforce stereotypes about older adults, projecting multimedia projects on building facades. Welcome to learning 3.0.
Grants from Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust support NYC nonprofits working with teens to develop ways of tapping into their digital lives to encourage creativity, interests, and learning. All grantees are members of Hive Learning Network NYC and work together on projects, sharing what works—and what doesn’t—in the ever-evolving worlds of digital media and education. For more information about the projects listed below, or to arrange a visit to see the work in action, contact Ani Hurwitz at (212) 686-0010 x224 or at [email protected]. “These projects are driven by the topics, platforms, and technologies that interest youth most,” says Chris Lawrence, director of Mozilla’s Hive Learning Network NYC. “This third round of funding supports both expanded versions of existing projects as well as new initiatives that share resources, expertise, and best practices as we continue to build an innovative, collaborative network of informal learning organizations across the five boroughs.” “The New York Community Trust’s role is not only to fund these exciting projects, but to use our knowledge about local arts and education to identify effective nonprofits developing digital media learning projects and to bring funders together to magnify impact,” says Kerry McCarthy, arts program officer at The Trust. “With the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and Mozilla Foundations, we are helping kids discover their interests, connect with others who share their passion, and tie it back to what they are learning in school.” The following grants were approved in April 2012: Bank Street College of Education, $50,000, for Civil Rights Remix, a youth-produced multimedia exhibition connecting contemporary and historic civil rights events in New York City. Partners: the Schomberg Center and People’s Production House Bronx Museum of the Arts, $23,000, for a summer program in which teens will record audio and video interviews with residents in Joyce Kilmer Park about living and working in the Bronx.Partner: City Lore Brooklyn Public Library, $32,000, for Brooklyn teens to develop multimedia book reviews and teach these skills to other teens at 10 library branches in Sunset Park, Crown Heights, Bushwick, and other neighborhoods. Partner: Eyebeam City Lore, $83,000, to expand a project in which teen skateboarders record and share videos of skate culture in New York City. Daylong programs in skate parks will introduce skaters to digital mapping, video production, and other innovative ways to share their passion. Partners: Reel Works and Bank Street College of Education Common Sense Media, $25,000, for a teen-produced activity kit that provides young people with the information, tools, and practical skills they need to consume and discuss media. Partner: WNYC’s Radio Rookies Joan Ganz Cooney Center for Media and Research, $100,000, to develop a series of video game design workshops at Hive Learning Network member sites that also encourage youth to participate in the National STEM Video Game Competition. Partner: Global Kids The Lamp, $50,000, for an intergenerational media literacy program covering biased media messages about seniors, in which participants respond by re-mixing video and audio clips on the topic. Partners: Museum of the Moving Image and OATS (Older Adults Technology Services) Museum of the Moving Image, $42,000, to help teens create digital videos using the Museum’s archive of presidential campaign ads. Partner: YMCA of Greater New York New York Public Radio/WNYC Radio Rookies, $150,000, for a program where teens learn journalism basics so they can produce print, audio, and video pieces that explain what it means to them to be Americans today. Partner: Facing History and Ourselves Parsons the New School for Design, $7,000, to create a series of projects, quests, and games that engage and reward youth while they explore the ecology of the urban environment. Queens Library Foundation, $38,400, to help youth who use the Far Rockaway Teen Library to look critically at the media they consume and produce their own print, digital, and broadcast news stories.Partners: the LAMP and People’s Production House Reel Works, $50,000, to help film and science students create an online database of short science clips and make films from the Museum’s archives. Partner: American Museum of Natural History Urban Word NYC, $150,000, for the Words on Walls project, in which teens create poems, blogs, and videos and present them at events around the City against the backdrop of their multimedia projections cast by City Lore’s POEMobile. Partners: City Lore, Bowery Arts & Science, Nuit Blanche NY/Bring to Light Festival, and Global Action Project Wildlife Conservation Society, $48,224, to help Bronx teens learn about climate change and create online games, oral histories, and other multimedia projects on the topic. Partner: Eyebeam World Up, $25,000, to help youth to create original music using digital recording tools. About Hive Digital Media Learning Fund In December 2010, The Trust joined with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to create Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust to promote adolescents’ and teens’ learning anytime, anywhere through digital media. This year, funds also are provided by the Mozilla Foundation and the Joan Ganz Cooney and Beth M. Uffner funds in The Trust. For more information, follow: @HiveLearningNYC and @SpotlightDML, and visit bit.ly/tyhvqG and explorecreateshare.org. About The New York Community Trust Through the generosity of New Yorkers past and present, The New York Community Trust makes grants for a range of charitable activity important to the well-being and vitality of our city. We’ve helped make donors’ charitable dreams come true since 1924. Grants made from these funds meet the changing needs of children, youth, and families; aid in community development; improve the environment; promote health; assist people with special needs; and support education, arts, and human justice. The Trust ended 2011 with assets of nearly $2 billion and made grants totaling $137 million. By Joliz Cedeño Curtis High School Global Kids Leaders have had a busy couple of weeks at the NYC Haunts program in collaboration with the St. George Library. At their first session youth were introduced to the program by play-testing the NYC Haunts game created by the team at the Seward Park Branch. They shared their feedback on both the game and the benefits and challenges of the ARIS system. Carli DeFillo from the Museum of the City of New York came and showcased some amazing artifacts from Staten Island as well as take the youth on a historical walking tour throughout the neighborhood. With plenty of insight from our guest visitors, NYC Haunts Curtis will soon be deciding the focus of their geolocative game!
By Barry Joseph When we began the badge development process at Global Kids, we focused heavily on "global"-badges, which is to say badges which could work across the institution. We looked at our organizational Outcomes & Indicators, and developed a process for analyzing nearly four dozenletters of recommendation. While that process continues, and is bearing fruit, a parallel process has moved faster and may be proving more productive: developing "local"-badges, or program-specific badges. Today we had our first meeting (dare we say of our fourth badging group - the Badge Betas?) of the four summer projects which will beta test the program over the summer. There are two 2-week long digital media-based programs, a 3-week long intensive camp at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a four week trip to Kenya. We developed templates for creating badges - one for any individual badge and one for the constellation of badges that are to found within any one Global Kids program (and tied to the "role badge" earned in the process), designed to produce something like this: Using the templates, each program went off to develop their constellation (and save the development of those particular badges for later). After an hour each group had a well-developed but idealized list of badges for their program. Some of the badges were specific to their program and others could be generalized to offer relevance to their and other GK programs.
For example, the animation program wanted a badge for taking inspiration from a professional animator. That was generalized to something like the "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" badge, in which the mission, when used for this summer program, will challenge the youth to list an animator who inspired them. However, the same badge can be used for the program at the Council on Foreign Relations, with a mission localized for their program, e.g. "To discuss one of the program speakers who inspired them and explain why." Same badge, different missions. It became clear that, as an overall direction, we want to have as small a number of badges as possible, by globalizing their use, but as many missions as we like, localizing their youth. We need to make sure the badges are clear and specific (otherwise we have squished too much together) and that the missions assess equal levels of related achievements so the badge can maintain validity across programs. So while today's meeting was aimed at developing project-specific badges it also helped us develop, in a very concrete and practical way, badges that can provide global value across the organization. When we next meet we intend to refine our program's badge ecology (most were too robust to develop in time for and run during rather short summer programs) and note what other badges we can globalize and share across our programs. The next steps after that is to identify the 8 characteristics we need for each badge and then move them over into LearningTime's Badgestack system. Two trainers, both rather new to GK's badging process, had this to report about today's process: "Thinking about the upcoming program in terms of badges is informing how we will shape the program," "This helps me to reflect on last year's program and the educational goals for this year," and "This will give youth tangible things to let them know they are on the right track, rather than us having to tell them over and over when they are not." By Joliz Cedeño In a recent blog post, Henry Jenkins shared a video from a dance party event he participated in with Global Kids Leaders in Second Life back in 2006. “This is how my avatar looked when I was at MIT, partying up with the young folks at Global Kids, and looking pretty lean and spry. I joked at the time that Second Life takes 20 pounds and several decades off you.”
By Barry Joseph Devon and I walked around Wingate High School to find a good place for a new geocache. The area around the school is a geocaching deadzone - there is NOTHING around for blocks and blocks. To show the youth what geocaching is all about we had little choice but to make our own.
By Juan Rubio Global Kids youth leaders from Create to Learn at Wingate School for Human Rights and School for Democracy and Leadership, visited the GK offices to present their game idea to First Playable designers and other Global Kids staff. After the main presentation, those attending play tested the game and gave feedback to the presenters. Create to Learn, sponsored by NYU Games for Learning Institute, is an after-school program designed for middle school girls to learn game design, while developing a game to teach math skills to their 6th grader peers. The girls have been working during the school year on a game called Nine Lives. Nine Lives is a game about rescuing a non-player character while going through obstacles that passed by answering math questions such as fraction conversions, and giving multiples of numbers.
You can see more of their design ideas and sketches here. By Barry Joseph Today we held second meeting of the Global Kids Badge ADvisory (or, B-AD for short). This is a meeting open to all GK staff members to offer feedback on and consult in a meaningful way about the development of the GK badging system. After reviewing the latest version of the GK Badge Design Schemata, we focused on how we could use the GK Outcomes and Indicators, developed during a strategic planning process, to create organizational-wide GK badges. (Meanwhile, the youth are using the letters of recommendation to suggest other organizational-wide badges and, in a parallel process, other staff will be creating program-specific badges.)
Staff noted all sorts of interesting things in their generally successful attempt to build badges from the indicators. Two trainers were in disagreement about the following indicator: "1.11 Increased college enrollment rate." To one it was simple just to make that a badge. To another, that was more about an achievement for Global Kids, not the youth itself. Getting into college - that is the desired mark of achievement with which no badge can compete; going to college is the power-up. So the two figured out that our goal is not to turn every indicator into a badge. Instead, the indicators can be used to suggest badges, and badges, in turn, can be used to support the indicator. So no, there will be no "I got into college" badge, but there CAN be a "College Readiness" role badge, earned by collecting the required achievement badges (conferred for visiting at least one college, writing a college essay, and any number of other more discrete but necessary steps for applying for college). In this way, the badging process becomes a form of scaffolded learning, supporting youth along their path to a college acceptance letter. Other thoughts raised are one we had heard in other GK internal badge meetings, specifically how matching GK programs to a badging system will require more planning from trainers and might change our whole process. This can be for the better, helping us be more rigourous and to plan in advance. This can be for the worse, making us do things just to ensure the youth can get a badge (e.g. talk with an elected official). How we control the badging system (and its affect on our practices) and avoid letting it control us will likely be an ongoing issue. Another trainer also recognized that, ultimately, each trainer will have their own personal style and approach for certifying badges. Having a solid rubric will be essential to ensure the validity of the badges across the organization. Those are some of the big picture issues that were raised. More practically, they created many badge ideas from the indicators (such as the Connect-the-Dot badge for integrating a global and local perspective) and began the process of creating organizational-wide badges. The next step is to put them all into a Google Doc spreadsheet over the next two weeks, review what we have, and compare that against what the youth develop off the Letters of Recommendation. By Barry Joseph This past week has been a veritable badge-a-palooza. The only reason we had four separate badge meetings was because the fifth was postponed for a week when an earlier meeting ran over. Phew! Global Kids' Youth Badge Advisory Last Thursday, Daria and I were so excited to launch the first meeting of the GK youth advisory. This group will ensure that GK youth leaders are playing a key and substantive role in the development of the GK badging system. After learning about digital badging systems and what GK has planned, they were ready to get down to work. We started with four dozen or so Global Kids Letters of Recommendations (with names changed to protect the innocent). Following the model we had developed earlier in the month, the youth color labeled the letters to identify whenever a GK staff member mentioned any of the following categories of learning: hard skills, soft skills, knowledge, participation in a GK program, and roles. When the youth finish this part of the task, they will be entered in a spreadsheet where, together, we will analyze the results and see if they suggest any GK-wide badges that should be incorporated into the badging system. It was hard work, and tedious at times, but they appreciated what they were learning and said they were motivated to keep at it when we meet next week. Hive Chicago Badging Meeting Yesterday, on Monday, Joliz and I traveled to Chicago for our first meeting with the Hive Chicago Learning Network to explore the development of a community-wide badging system. There were people there from most of the member organizations who expressed interest in getting involved: Agape Werks, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architecture Foundation, ChicagoQuest Schools, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Common Sense Media, Free Spirit Media, Museum of Science and Industry, Now Is The Time, Office of STEM Education Partnerships, Northwestern Univ., Project Exploration, Shedd Aquarium, and the YMCA Black and Latino Achievers Program They were superengaged and asked deep, provocative questions throughout. It became clear early on that, as we had all suspected, Hive Chicago is in a very different position than Hive NYC, when it comes to badges. Hive Chicago is a younger, smaller Network, so there are less organizations interested in a badging system. However, as this means they are small enough where "everyone knows your name," this potentially supports a closer and deeper level of collaboration. It might be a gross generalization, and might not hold up over time, but Hive NYC members have focused more on how each organization can use the collective badging system while Hive Chicago are considering flipping the frame, in which badges are not designed around organizations and their programs but, rather, around competencies shared across the Network. For example, rather than different members building their own badges with similar content, in essence rebuilding the wheel, they might collaborate to build one badge around that same content and share accreditation responsibilities. It is an interesting shift and we'll watch how this plays out. Hive Chicago also differs from New York in another other key way; while there is more previous and current experience with badging systems in NYC (e.g. two of the HASTAC competition winners were from Hive NYC, and none in Hive Chicago), those involved in Chicago are invested in two separate badging technical solutions, both currently under development. How can these two (can we say?) legacy systems interact with the new model - will they collaborate, or must some give way to make room for the others. Again, only time will tell. The meeting left with perhaps more questions asked than answered (a sign for us of a successful meeting), and a number of clear next steps about how we can approach them together. Hive NYC Badging Meeting Last Friday, Global Kids hosted the second meeting for the new Hive NYC Badging System. Around twenty members of our local learning network attended the meeting. After introducing ourselves (and sharing something we've each learned in recent weeks that we thought worthy of a badge), we had presentations from three Hive members talking about their upcoming plans for badging systems. The YMCA went first. They talked about their plans to introduce a badging system to encourage and certify healthy physical activities. The American Museum of American Museum went next, presenting the presentation they gave in the recent HASTAC competition. Finally, Global Kids released the plans for its badging structure, based on four types of achievement badges and one role badge (see below). After the presentations, John Walber from Learning Times gave a demonstration of the BadgeStack system, which will be the technical core of the Hive NYC Badging System. Many asked to see more details about the back-end of the system, so a Webinar will be held, open to all within Hive NYC, to give a tour of the backend later in May. Global Kids' B-FAT (Badge Fast Acting Team) B-FAT is the small group of senior staff who meet every two weeks to review progress and make key decisions in our GK badge development process. We meet last Thursday and approved what we have been informally calling, for lack of a better term, a GK Badge Design Schemata, which offers a visualization to explain the way badges will be development for the GK badging system. It was well received. It raised questions right away about how this process will formally establish standards across the organization. For example, if you run a program, and define badges youth can earn through the program, you now better make sure your lesson plans over the year actually create opportunities for youth to learn the skills related to those badges. We designed a system that structures the system into four achievement badges, which may be combined to achieve a role badge. The four achievement badges, as mentioned above, are hard skills, soft skills, knowledge, and participation in a GK program or the badging system. So, for example, youth in a GK gaming program might receive a badge for game design (hard skill), collaboration (soft skill), game design terminology (knowledge), and Being There (they have been to at least 90% of the meetings); these badges, combined with a variety of others, unlocks the mission for the Game Designer role badge. Some of the badges offers their own power-ups, some about the badging system (certifying other Game Designers) and about GK (getting to attend conferences). We built out the model for three different programs (around three different role badges) and then developed a visualization to show how these collections become different paths, or lens, directing youth through the full collection of GK badge offerings. This has all come together rather quickly, but the work being done with the GK youth, with the letters of recommendation, and with the other GK advisory, all lends credibility to this approach. Next steps are to work with particular GK programs to develop their own role badges and continue to develop GK-wide badges.
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