 Alright, here we go. So we have a totally awesome understanding of how badges work, how the tech of it works, right? We have an understanding of the concept of badges and what the idea is behind it. Now all we want to do is we want to use them, right? And if you are an individual classroom teacher, there's no better place to start than your classroom. We generally have control over what happens in our classrooms. We can have some control over the tech in our classrooms. We don't need to ask anybody's permission. We just need to go for it, right? Okay, let's do that. I mean, badges are great. Why would you want to go for it? So, you need to brainstorm some ideas. Come up with some ways that you can use badges in the classroom. Again, here are some we use in Concordia. PE teachers use it for running the mile, for doing push-ups, for doing sit-ups, for reaching some sort of objective number. The Grade 8 team uses it. They do a lot of filming. And if somebody becomes an expert at camera angles, let's say, for example, they get a badge for that. The Grade 5 team uses badges to get kids motivated with typing. Pretty cool. They hit 40 words per minute, 25 words per minute, they get a badge. Fifth graders love this stuff. Also, if they work in a service organization or if they get 100% on their math facts or something like that, we created a badge for that. Great. The elementary school has a bunch of tech coaches. They have a professional development program going on. And if teachers, and I think you've seen these badges, pass some of the classes, finish classes, put in various efforts, whatever, they get a badge. It's funny to watch teachers. They really like badges. Kind of remind me of fifth graders. And that's okay. That's what we love about teaching. It's fun. We have a Mandarin program here. And so they award badges for kids to read certain numbers of books, achieve certain levels within tests, et cetera, know certain numbers of words, whatever. And the list can go on and on. The idea behind badges is issuing a badge is actually pretty simple. If you're making it all happen, that's a little more complex. Here's my suggestion. Start with one badge, something simple, something easy. It can even be member of my classroom, whatever you can think of. Or maybe something objective, again, like passing a certain number of daily or language tests or math tests or whatever you want to do. Something that kids can aim for and shoot for. If they have a clear understanding of how to earn the badge, it's much more likely they'll attain it. And you can encourage people along the way. Test the process. Maybe award a badge to two students in the beginning who can be your testers. Because when you first start any technological program, and you probably already know this, things fail all the time. That's just part of technology. And while the nerds of the world, we really enjoy that and figure out what it is, normal people, they'd rather go read a good book or talk to their friend than deal with all these tech issues. So rather than rolling it out for your entire classroom at one time, perhaps you'll want to test the process, test the badge with just a couple kids to work through it. And then once you're confident, you can move on from there. Then you can always add more badges later. Here's some more of the badges that we have at Concordia. You can see the ones from the PE department here, Sit and Reach. You can see the ones from the Mandarin department here. And these are the ones that we award to teachers. We have a lot more badges than this, I just threw some up. It's pretty easy to use badges, to create badges, to put badges up. It's hard to encourage people to award them, strangely, to make that part of their classroom. And that would be something you would do as an individual in your classroom. Here's some suggestions. You ready? Write this stuff down. Actually, don't because it's right here and you don't have to and you can always grab the keynote from my website, MichaelBowl.me. Don't forget about that. Everything's available there. First thing, and we talked about this already, badge awards are objective. If you're going to make them objective, then subjective. It's easier to say, if you show up on time to class 400 times or 20 times or what have you, you get a badge. It's harder to say, if you're good in class, you get a badge. That's difficult for kids to understand. Actually, it's even harder for adults to understand. Make it a valuable currency. So, you know, the dollar, or for example here, so I'm in China, let me pull out my wallet here. So, in China, we use something called the RMB, the RenminB, and this is it here. And if you think about it, it's just a piece of paper, same with the U.S. dollar. It's just a piece of paper. But we have faith that this currency, that this has some currency, that this has some value. So, since so many people have faith, I'm able to use this for transactions, right? It's the same thing with badges. You want badges to be a valuable currency. That getting the badge is a big deal. If you make it too easy for everybody to get every single badge, then it's not as valuable and people won't want to jump to get it. In high school, they give lettermen, letters like letterman jackets, right, for if you're on a varsity sport. It's not that easy to get one. And therefore, the people who get it, they wear that varsity or letterman jacket around and show off and say, look at me, look at these awards that I got. I am cool. And then everybody else looks at it and says, yeah, that person's cool. I do suggest making it easy to get the first one. It's sort of a gaming technique that everybody can get it pretty easily to get them excited and let them know that it is possible to get badges. But make sure it's harder to get future ones. And you'll want some also that are way at the top that very few kids can achieve. Those will be the ultimate ones for people to strive for. Those will be the ones everybody will want to show off. Think about the military. The Congressional Medal of Honor, number one badge, right? You have to do an incredible number of things to get there. Very few people get it. Most people get it posthumously after dying. So that sort of one, when it's given, is a big deal. It makes the news, et cetera. Same thing with your badges. If you have one or two that are really hard to get, in addition to easier ones, as kids level up, it'll make it that much more interesting for them. Ensure that the badges are easily displayed. So we've talked about that in some of the tech. But the kids have to be able to display their badges. You can then print up the certificate, the badge, whatever, so that they can display it directly in the classroom and also have it digitally. That's not like it's mutually exclusive. You have to have one or the other. But people need to be able to show off what they've earned. Otherwise, that currency area here isn't as valuable because you can't tell anybody about it. Introduce new badges. New badges on a regular basis to keep excitement up. Sometimes kids will feel like they can't achieve a badge and they just sort of give up. It's a great time to throw in some new badges that are achievable. Put your tech coach to work. If you need help with this sort of stuff, find your tech coach, your tech support person or whatever. Have them help you. Get them involved. Don't let them say no. That's not what tech coaches are supposed to do. They're supposed to say, yeah, let's do it. That's exciting. I'm so thrilled by it.