Badges

“I love earning badges. It shows the effort that I have put in has been recognised and my work is being appreciated. I think the badges encourages people to get involved as I get lots of people asking me how I have so many badges on Makewaves.” – Sweetheart1, Student

Above is a quote from a student who has been using Makewav.es in her school. Websites like Makewav.es give children a safe social networking platform from which they can blog and share stories with their classmates, also on Makewav.es is the children’s e-portfolio where all their badges are stored. Children can go home and log into their account and show their parents the badges that they have earned. Or, alternatively parents can also have an account to monitor their child’s progress.

Badges can be an extremely useful resource to use in primary school classrooms. They can help to engage and motivate learners by providing a reward for completion of tasks. For a teacher they can help to monitor progress and track attainment by seeing which pupils in the class have completed a task and which have not. As a teacher you also have the opportunity to review children’s work before the badge is awarded, this can help to prompt the children to go back and revisit the work and improve. For the pupil, badges can help to make a task seem more inviting. Knowing that you will earn a badge for completion of work can help to increase motivation.

Badges are something that I would like to use in my class when I am teaching, I feel that they help to promote a positive attitude towards completing work to a high standard. Personally, I can remember being set homework at primary school which at the time seemed very boring and pointless. However, had I known that I would have been rewarded with a badge for completion I’m sure my attitude would have been very different and I would have probably made more of an effort with it!

On the other hand I can see why some teachers may not be so pro badges. They may bring competitiveness into the classroom which may result in conflict or some children who don’t have access to the internet at home may not have the same opportunities to earn badges and therefore could end up feeling left out as they won’t have as many badges stored in their e-portfolio.

I feel that badges promote a behaviorist learning approach. Skinner (1987) hypothesized that student behavior can be understood through the motivations, reinforcers, and punishments imposed upon students by teachers. Student motivation, Skinner theorized, can be manipulated by teachers through systems of reinforcements and punishments to increase students’ engagement and learning. Badges can be used right across the curriculum and will provide children with the motivation needed and reinforcement needed.

I have seen how the use of house-points be really effective throughout all the primary school years. They work really well in increasing children’s motivations and engagement both in lessons and in other areas of school.From the perspective of a trainee teacher I know that I would much rather award a child a specific badge for completion of a specific piece of work than awarding a generic house-point. The badge can be something which shows what steps were taken in order for it to be awarded, and is something which can be shown to parents. In my opinion, I feel that house-points are too generic and don’t recognize children’s individual talents and achievements, whereas badges can be created for nearly anything which a child does in school. For the children who may not be so strong academically, they can be awarded a badge for things that they individually excel in.