Digital Badge Systems offers several policy recommendations for introducing digital badge programs to a greater number of school districts. The report also recommends safeguards at the state level to ensure competency-based learning does not lead to at-risk students falling behind their peers and widening of achievement gaps.
The Open Badges Infrastructure is a standard and a platform for issuing, storing, and sharing “micro-credentials,” recognition for skills and achievements that learners have completed.
This article highlights the potential for digital badges and teacher professional learning.
This initiative provides a competency-based approach to assessing teaching practices, uses expert and peer reviews to ensure a rigorous standard and creates a clearinghouse where teachers can share best practices.
K-12 schools around the globe are piloting e-portfolio programs that allow students to showcase work, apply real-world skills, and track learning outcomes as they prepare for college and a career. This guide focuses on student-owned e-portfolios in the K-12 setting however, the same principles can be applied to teacher portfolios. Its purpose is to provide an introduction to e-portfolios and to explore how e-portfolios can be used throughout K-12 education.
This web page provides a general overview of PLNs and multiple resources for educators related to PLNs.
This report provides an overview of professional learning and includes examples of formal and informal professional learning opportunities with some research regarding the effectiveness of self-directed learning opportunities.
This article discusses lesson-sharing sites, key sources for common-core related PD, and the issues with ownership. “Say you’re a teacher and you’ve created a bang-up lesson on how to teach fractions on the number line. Everyone in the faculty room loves it. Fellow teachers are begging for copies. Your principal suggests you post it online for others to use…”
This report examines how states are using school-wide, large-scale professional learning communities in their school improvement work.