Technology Badges

This badge focuses on demonstrating skills and competence with various digital tools that are often found effective and needed in one’s daily life. These are tools that will allow you to showcase your work, reflectively review and discuss your work, and provide means to store your work.

This badge focuses on several types of tools that facilitate gathering, organizing, and reporting information. We are bombarded with information each day, these tools can be used to help you strategically brainstorm, select, prioritize, organize, map, highlight, store and later retrieve and report information in some predetermined manner that is useful.

Presentation tools are those technologies that facilitate the development and delivery of information and content to the audience/learners. Generally, the information is presented in some type of visual manner with an accompanying individual presenter and/or with embedded audio, images, videos, etc. To obtain this badge, you will demonstrate how to use tools to create standard presentations, adapted presentations that involve animations, and additional resources for your presentation in the form of infographics.

Adding audio elements to instructional materials can be a powerful way to impact learning and motivation. Audio editing software allows one to record, edit, convert, and listen to digital audio files. From very short audio files used to help identify key attributes in a discrimination task to extended podcasts of verbal information and storytelling, those designing instructional materials need the capability of editing audio to successfully impact learning.

Video production tools allow you to create and edit videos and then publish them to YouTube, Facebook, and other similar services. From an instructional viewpoint, your videos can include text, graphics/still images, background music, voice over narration, picture-in-picture, and other interactive features such as polls. To create effective and appealing videos, careful planning is necessary. Within this badge you will demonstrate your competency in designing a short instructional video and in selecting and using video editing tools to create, edit, and publish the finished video.

Website development tools allow you to create a collection of related web pages, identify them with a common domain name, and publish them on a web server. Websites can contain information in the form of written documentation, videos, links to other websites, etc. They can contain means to allow those accessing the site to interact by selecting specific pages to review, exploring different available links, or providing comments or additional information to the site.

This badge focuses on several types of tools that facilitate learner/user interaction with the information and learning materials that are being presented. For example, these tools allow for various types of questions, polls, and surveys to be presented, followed by required responses from the users. The tools can be used to collect information, as well as provide feedback based on the given responses.

This badge will require you to demonstrate your ability to utilize Articulate Storyline 360 and more importantly, how it integrates into the instructional design process to enhance teaching and learning. You will achieve this badge by producing a full, interactive, instructional Storyline module.

This badge offers you the opportunity to demonstrate your instructional design capabilities as you plan, design, and create the instructional module. It will require you to demonstrate your expertise in the use of various technologies to investigate, design, and deliver the module, as well as your ability to select and integrate the proper technologies to engage and assess the learning of your audience.

Information literacy refers to the ability to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use information from various sources. It involves a set of skills, competencies, and critical thinking abilities that enable individuals to navigate the vast amount of information available in today’s digital age. Students, teachers, and instructional designers need to be able to effectively access information, evaluate its quality and relevance, and then use it appropriately. Proper use includes knowing when, why, and how material can be used (i.e., copyright), the potential impact of Fair Use, as well as, how to properly attribute the intellectual property of others.

This badge focuses on demonstrating your competency in communicating and collaborating effectively with others in the digital world. By earning this badge, you will demonstrate how to be professional in the way you communicate online and how through that communication you are able to develop professional learning networks (PLNs). Finally, this badge also has you demonstrate your ability to collaborate and work with others in the online environment.

This badge focuses on the attitudes and behaviors one should have while using online environments for work, studying, or socializing. These attitudes and behaviors provide a road map towards a good digital footprint, online safety, and ethical behavior. We will explore your competency in identifying and safeguarding against any inappropriate, unethical, or illegal use of personal data, as well as any behaviors against other individuals in the online environment.

New technologies and applications appear almost daily. It can be challenging to know which technology would be worth the investment of money, time, and effort to acquire, learn, practice, and integrate within the work or classroom setting. Which technology can have the needed impact on you and your learners? This badge focuses on having you demonstrate how to find ways to identify and determine which emerging technologies would have the most value for you and those you train and how you can integrate those technologies which prove to be of most benefit.