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Meet Us At the ACTFL Digital Badge Booth!

From the editor

The ACTFL 2013 Convention Network is growing — more than 450 attendees have signed up to earn a digital badge for engaging and sharing professional interests with the foreign language community. How can you join in? Go to the ACTFL Digital Badges site and click Become a Convention Networker to sign up. Then follow the steps to earning your ACTFL professional development badge, like these 21st century FL professionals:

Why Digital Badges?

COERLL partnered with ACTFL to bring you this badge-earning opportunity because we see the potential for digital badges as an alternative and effective method of credentialing and tracking professional development. In our Fall 2013 newsletter, Digital Badges for an Open World, we enlisted leaders in this movement to help us vision cast the future of digital badges.

In the newsletter, Evan Rubin, Director of Instructional Technology at LARC (our partners in FL digital badge initiatives) shares:

evan“I have very high expectations for badges in foreign languages. I imagine badges taking on gamified elements, where leaderboards will highlight high achievers. General statistics about any individual’s activity and performance could be accessed. I envision a community of practice in which participants will be proud to share their badges online, and where a sense of fun and friendly competition will motivate language professionals to create their own online personal learning networks (PLNs). …

Badges serve educators by allowing them to pursue a professional development agenda that is more customizable in every respect, without losing an ounce of rigor, but rather offering the possibility of a more interactive and more rigorous, continuing education.

Badges can serve administrators by providing the opportunity for faculty to design and deliver a professional development agenda, while still allowing them to vet and verify the status and standing of any current or prospective teacher on their staff. This goal will lead us into the future.”

You can join Evan and hundreds of other Convention Networkers who will be making meaningful connections at ACFTL 2013 and earning their very own digital badge. Go to actflbadges.org.

And when you arrive at the convention in Orlando, come see us at the Digital Badge booth. Find out more about how it works and meet other Convention Networkers f2f!

ACTFL-FloorPlan-booth-location

Also, please stop by the COERLL booth to find out about our open (free) educational resources and professional development for FL education:

ACTFL-COERLL-Booth

Make Professional Connections With Digital Badges

From the editor

Today, we’ll hear from Abby Dings, Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Spanish Language Program at Southwestern University, about digital badges for growing your professional network.

Dings“Digital badges are poised to play a central role in Continuing Professional Education for language educators. Digital badges allow educators to explore areas that interest them, and to join peer communities focused on similar topics. The opportunities for networking and sharing expertise and ideas are valuable aspects of many badge challenges.”

See COERLL’s Fall 2013 newsletter for the full text. Abby is co-developer of a badge system to work in conjunction with the Spanish Corpus Proficiency Level Training website.

ACTFL-digital-badge

Earn a Digital Badge at ACTFL 2013

The ACFTL 2013 Convention Networker badge is a great example of how digital badges increase your professional exposure and create interest-specific connections.

Connect with Abby Dings and other language professionals who have joined the Convention Network so far. Search for members with common professional interests or languages. Then click Become a Convention Networker to begin making meaningful and lasting connections with your ACTFL colleagues!