Reward With a Badge!

If you’re looking for the tutorial on how to post a badge on Kloodle, you’ll find that here.

Walkden High School have a fantastic system for rewarding pupils. They call it STARS and STRIPES. These are acronyms for behaviours they want to encourage. For example, STARS stands for: –

Sensible
Thoughtful
Ambitious
Respectful
Supportive

The program was the brainchild of Josh Mangas. Josh is Walkden’s Senior Leader for Pupil Personal Development. The school has won praise from OFSTED for the work they do with careers and employability. Josh’s work is a primary reason for this. He wouldn’t admit that, but it is.

Rewarding students gets them to play ball. We are all motivated by a reward. The reinforcement of expectation and behaviour is a key principal in behaviour management. Consistency in approach allows students to know where they stand, what the rules are, what the consequences are and exactly how they should behave. Keeping goalposts consistent ensure people know where they stand at all times. They behave accordingly.

Walkden’s STARS and STRIPES initiative provides this framework. It encourages the behaviours Walkden High School expects from its students. It discourages less desirable behaviour. It provides a framework for reward.

Josh is a natural affiliate of Kloodle’s. He believes, as do we, that students deserve opportunity based on their ability. He wants to reward students who are making things happen; students who are contributing to the school and the community. These types of students will contribute to the workplace when they leave education. Josh wants to encourage behaviours that will make Walkden students great employees.

Walkden High School uses Kloodle to record student achievement, employability skills and work experience. During our initial trials, Josh noted “wouldn’t it be great if I could award students badges for their achievements”. We agreed. Education has forever been motivated by objects of this ilk. I remember my certificate for “perfect attendance” like it was yesterday. It wasn’t yesterday. It was 15 years ago. Ouch.

Also, rewarding badges aligned itself naturally with what we’re trying to achieve at Kloodle. After all, to achieve a badge / certificate / house point you have to do something of note. Kloodle is all about recording the great things a student does, celebrating the journey of education and documenting students’ growth as people. Awarding badges for achievement is a natural progression.

We met with Josh to spec out what a reward system would look like. It would: –

1) Be easy to participate in
2) Be targeted
3) Be visual and have an impact on a student’s profile
4) Require evidence to be awarded
5) Be easy to implement

Once we had these constraints, we started to build. We feel the best way to implement a new feature is to start building. Planning features comes at the worst possible time; the time you have the least information regarding what you are trying to achieve. By building, you create first hand experiences of your ideas. You can then iterate, change and improve. Which is three ways of saying the same thing. I’m trying to reduce unnecessary words in my writing. I just violated my own rule. Never mind. I digress…..

We have now completed the Beta version of Kloodle Badges. Beta is just a cover up for if it breaks. If it doesn’t, we’ll accept the credit. If it does, it’s ‘cos it’s Beta. You get the gist.

We encourage you to try it out and feedback what you think. You can access a tutorial on how it works here. Our aim is to produce software that serves a purpose and enhances teaching and learning. With the best will in the world, we accept that sometimes what we build may be difficult to implement in reality. We encourage you to share your experiences so we can make something you’ll love and something that’ll make your lessons amazing.

We encourage you to share your experiences so we can make something you’ll love to use and which you wholeheartedly feel will inspire and scaffold the future experiences of your students.