During the weeks of confinement, the teachers have had to climb in the skills in forced and self-taught to adapt to the digital education, conducting virtual classes and master the platform of national education. This accelerated training on the job is not supervised, or sanctioned by a diploma, many Academies have had the idea to develop these new learning with an “open badge”, a form of accreditation digital that valid competence, in addition to diplomas. But this initiative in good faith has caused the indignation of many teachers on the social networks. A campaign on Change.org is launched to lay claim to more resources and to recognize their commitment and their adaptation to the digital education.
What is an “Open Badge”?
Bénédicte Robert, Rector of the Academy of Poitiers, explains in a video that a badge is a digital object that allows to recognize, make visible, and a commitment to individual professional, an expertise, a skill.By making a reasoned request from their academy, the teachers who were able to continue their classes online can be rewarded with this badge. The teacher who has made it his request receives a link by email to access to a platform that allows you to store the badges.
For the Academy it is a way of encouraging teachers to continue to learn throughout their lives, as students, in a dynamic of continuous professional development.” However, it is, among other things, the fact of being treated as students, which has shocked some teachers, which include the initiative as the “infantilization” of the teacher.
Critics have accused the initiative of being a tool is fun, which undermines trust in the teacher
Infantilisation, technical marketing-managerial… The opponents of this initiative do not see the value of “open badges,” which would be, according to some, more appropriate for scouts or players of the Pokémon.
For Caesar P., professor of history geography in college, gamification of education does little to teachers, because by applying the principle of “playful” priority is given to the form to lose sight of the bottom décrédibilisant education.
The valuation of the business should go to follow the way of the recognition of the historical knowledge, hindsight, and the critical spirit, the capacity necessary to adapt education to the needs of today.
If the containment has actually been able to give ideas to think about problems to solve to develop an education more adapted to our time, badges, digital, are, on the contrary, a tool of entertainment that does not put forward the real challenges: pragmatism, the development of the scientific aspect of their profession and the development of knowledge and culture.
A petition for a premium computer for the teachers
Some teachers are particularly shocked by the initiative of “open badges”, even though they are many to ask for more technical and financial means to cope with the digital transformation of education.
A petition on Change.org demand concretely to the minister of national Education to create a premium computer for the teachers. Some teachers consider that the “open badges” are not relevant in view of the lack of means computer, necessary to obtain these badges, just. If a teacher has not been able to make visio conference for the containment, it may be that this is due to a lack of Internet connection, or a lack of means, because of the costs associated with telephone usage and digital most important. How to ensure educational continuity in this case? According to a testimony on the blog of a main national education, “today, every teacher who enters the profession is free to choose or not to equip a computer and an internet connection (at his expense) to prepare for classes.(…) The pedagogical continuity has held that because almost all of the teachers have compensated for the total lack of professional equipment put at their disposal” …
Teachers therefore see this campaign against the “open badges” the opportunity to ask for “massive support in order to enable all to improve and to offer finally conditions work is worthy of this great cause.”
Author(s): FranceSoir
