Shedd Aquarium and digital badging: Reducing barriers to teachers’ professional development

by Daniel Anthony Chicago has the potential to become a nationally recognized center of ed-tech excellence. Many organizations, such as New Schools for Chicago, 1871 and Shedd Aquarium, are helping make this happen. Shedd Aquarium’s digital learning efforts are helping reduce the barriers to teachers’ professional development through its innovative Teacher Badging Program. The Illinois Policy Institute is excited...

by Daniel Anthony

Chicago has the potential to become a nationally recognized center of ed-tech excellence. Many organizations, such as New Schools for Chicago, 1871 and Shedd Aquarium, are helping make this happen.

Shedd Aquarium’s digital learning efforts are helping reduce the barriers to teachers’ professional development through its innovative Teacher Badging Program.

The Illinois Policy Institute is excited to welcome Shedd Aquarium’s Vice President of Learning, Melissa Williams, as a panelist at the Chicago Digital Learning Symposium. She will be sharing how digital learning models such as the Shedd Aquarium Teacher Badging Program help teachers everywhere integrate more science activities into curriculum.

Here is an overview of the program:

Shedd Aquarium Teacher Badging Program

Accessibility considerations for participating in on-site teacher professional development opportunities, such as location, time, finance and capacity can oftentimes be barriers to educators statewide.  In an effort to reduce some of these factors as well as extend the aquarium’s ability to reach teachers across the globe with engaging tools and opportunities, Shedd Aquarium is piloting a new digital learning platform that provides a customizable and flexible learning environment for teachers to share, learn and explore using Shedd resources and expertise.

In general, digital badging is a form of recognition, sometimes attached to a real-life incentive, which is awarded for the accomplishment or completion of a task(s). Structured similarly to how Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts traditionally earn and display badges, digital badging system allows teachers from Chicago to Australia the opportunity to earn them for completing certain projects in the virtual space.

Throughout 2013, Shedd will continue piloting a free, self-paced digital badging program for Pre-K-12 teachers. The experience is available for pre-service and in-service teachers and features a variety of “missions” (activities) relating to topics of Great Lakes environmental literacy, science literacy and 21st century skills.  Examples of missions include: completing food webs, analyzing study sites for water quality parameters, such as pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen, taking part in established citizen science projects, such as FrogWatch USA, and demonstrating the integration of science journals, citizen science or other projects in the classroom.

As teachers build their skills and accomplish learning activities, they will be awarded “digital badges,” as well as spark curiosity, investigation and critical thinking along the way.

Teachers who choose to participate in this process during the school year are encouraged to complete missions alongside their students. Classroom connections are an important piece of this professional development program. It is essential that teachers feel comfortable with the concepts and applications for themselves, but also know how they can transfer the skills and knowledge into their classrooms.

The program is also being extensively evaluated as a part of the piloting. One teacher submitted this reflection on the program:

This is just how professional development should be—focused and guided but with freedom to individualize the experience.

I discovered new ways to incorporate science activities into my Pre K curriculum—I never really thought about teaching anything related to water conservation and the Great Lakes besides a quick lesson or two around Earth Day.

To learn more about this program and Shedd’s other digital learning efforts, please visit their site here.

We hope you can join us June 25 for the Chicago Digital Learning Symposium. RSVP here.