Mimic your edtech teaching by using it at Open House. At our last Open House I decorated with QR codes and had parents earn digital badges for using their QR readers, taking classroom selfies, and tweeting. A few teachers have asked for more details about this, so here is my personal experience.

1.  Decorate with QR Codes

I decorated my classroom with work samples of students, and a QR code for every student in the class that linked back to at least one piece of student work. I also set up stations around the classroom of the various work we have done throughout the school year.

Station 1 gave instructions for parents regarding both earning badges and their QR reader. The QR codes below link to students badges they have been earning in class.

See the 5/26/15 Blog on Showcasing work with QR Codes

2.  Prepare Your Parents

To prepare parents, an email was sent out a few days before explaining that this would be actively using their smart technology in our classroom. I described what digital badges were and gave them instructions to joining our parent badge group. I also prepped students telling them that their parent will have the opportunity to earn extra credit for them at Open House. Their assignment was to help their parent make a Badgelist account and to make sure their parent had a QR reader in their cell phone and the battery was charged and ready for Open House. Some parents came to Open House with a Badgelist account, most parents did not, but they could register for an account at Open House, so I had that base covered as well. Click here for further information about Badgelist.

3.  Digital Badges for Parents

I began digital badging using the platform of Badgelist this school year and our school plans to use this platform next year. I felt that the best way to introduce parents to badging is to have them earn badges themselves. The first step in this was creating a parent group:

http://www.badgelist.com/parents

There were 3 Activities to do/badges to earn. To have an incentive I gave up to 10 points of extra credit for earning badges. The first badge they earned was worth 6 points, each additional badge was worth 2 points each.  I chose this point structure to encourage them to at least earn one badge, but they were welcome & encouraged to earn all 3.

In case a a parent didn’t have a smart phone, I had a few computers in the classroom set up to create a Badgelist account and do the selfie activity by using the computer’s built in camera. Volunteer students worked 25 minute shifts to help parents as well. (The volunteers earned a badge for volunteering.)

Parent Badges

1. Open House Attendee: Parents took selfies/groupies with their student in a place that distinctly says that they are in my classroom.
2. Parents Tweeted about their OpenHouse experience
3. Parents reflected on the use of QR codes in the class for Open House

More Ideas

There are a lot more tools I could have easily used with my parents from Quiz games to reflections using Socrative and I might choose another method next year. Have you invited parents to use technology in a different way? Please share your ideas!

Categories: Badges, Milton