Tag Archives: motivation

Communication, Training

Leadership Training Bites: Motivation

Your job title is irrelevant in leadership; you can lead from any position. And as a library person, especially in many of our libraries where you are a solo worker, your motivational leadership can be important to all kinds of people!

CMLE is here to help you with all kinds of information and ideas!  This series provides weekly small bits of training on leadership, management, and supervision skills. We have heard from our members that this is an issue they would like to have more training to meet. And I have been a researcher and trainer for many years, focusing on library management, leadership, and administration.

Follow this series using our Leadership Training Bites tag; and if you want to talk about your own leadership development, or to set up some training in your library, we are here for you!

This week we talk about Motivation!

You have had “those” days. The ones where it is just hard to get going, to push yourself to do good things, or to encourage the people around you to do their best work.

Some days are hard.

But being a leader means keeping up your own motivation levels, and helping others to be successful! You want to be successful at work – otherwise, why bother showing up? Motivation is what lets you do that. Continue reading Leadership Training Bites: Motivation →

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Using Digital Badges in Education

Starring role...Remember earning gold stars as a child?  For many, they were (and are) great incentives to keep up good behavior.  Digital badges present a new way to give those gold stars digitally and publicly.  When earned, digital badges can be displayed publicly online, with linked information as to “who issued the badge, the specifics of what had to be done to earn the badge and a description of what was learned or accomplished,” Jacob DeDecker (Michigan State University Extentsion) reports.

Do you struggle to motivate students?  Maybe digital badges can help!  Michigan State University Extension had some very useful findings after a trial-run of using digital badges for the 4-H program.  After completing a project in which they were able to earn digital badges, the “youth participating . . . were asked a series of questions to learn their thoughts about digital badging.” Here are the results, as reported by Michigan State University Extension:

87% of students felt that receiving a digital badge validates the knowledge and skills gained at camp
92% of students reported that receiving a digital badge helps document all the knowledge gain; including which takes place outside of school
89% of participants are interested in earning more digital badges in the future

Those are some big numbers!  To learn more about digital badges, check out the pre-study post by DeDecker.  The article sets up the study that was done with 4-H students.  The second post in the series provides further detail into the study.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/kj964yv, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Recommended Resource: ClassBadges

Have you checked out ClassBadges yet? ClassBadges is a free online resource that allows educators to connect with their students and present them with awards, in the form of digital badges, badgesfor their successful work or completion of a project. The digital badges can be customized to your school, class, or the project your students are working on. For example, on their About Us page, they provide an example of badges utilized to track the progress of a research paper. If the student chooses, they can also share the badges they’ve received with friends or family – truly showing off their accomplishments! I love this idea, because it gives students a visual aid and provides a free extrinsic reward system – which definitely has impact on some students. Visit www.classbadges.com to learn more and get your class account set-up.