Badges for accomplishments? Yes please!

Students love badges, too!

Professionals love to earn badges. Think @Flipgrid, @EdPuzzle, @Google, @DiscoverEd (and so many more). Students need encouragement. They need kind words. They need recognition. Badges. Printed colorful badges that showcase their names and talents... Why haven't I thought of this before?
As a former newspaper editor, I wrote articles and designed pages that recognized accomplishments and news events. I manipulated fonts, graphics and words. I really love fonts, graphics and design!
So, this year, my brain finally pushed this idea to the forefront and I began creating simple badges for the Shelf Managers, which just said Shelf Star. The students liked that. Other badges were also simple: #FixedIt (for fixing something), #NewBooks (for helping process new books), #BookCart (for helping empty a full cart of books and putting them on the correct shelf), #BookTalker (for recording a book trailer on our Flip Grid). 
For #digitallearningday and #readacrossamerica, I created "Secret Badges" after Charlie (Shelf Manager, Media Committee member) suggested it. What a great idea, Charlie! The Shelf Managers designed some of them. To thank them, I created updated shelf labels with their name and a graphic of an animal reading a book. These are very small and go on the shelves they really want to showcase. I've got to make more of these! 
The Secret Badge Event continues through next week. They are in plain sight. Really. When found, the student signs the back of it, spins for a prize and I hide the badge again. There is a Secret Badge hidden in the Symbaloo @bravesread. There will be a good prize for this one! Students may earn @flipgrid badges when their project is approved for #flipgrid #newbooks #favbooks. I'm about to create a badge for #boxtops and offer prize spins for that, too. 
Badges provide an opportunity for me to recognize students and to tell them how much I appreciate them for using and learning about the resources in the media collection. I make the badges quickly in Word and print to the color printer. And now, these students know how to create a graphic in Word, too. I'll share steps, in a later post, about how to make badges with a program already on most computers.
Til next time...
GS