Rezzly/3DGameLab

EPIC Academy is built, primarily using Rezzly.  Rezzly is a platform that facilitates the gamification of instruction in a quest-based learning format.  Though not a requirement to implement your own program, it certainly makes management easier!  Rezzly automates the awarding of experience points (XP) and badges.  It also facilitates the arrangement of quest content.

You can use it with any tool you like which makes it great for digital learning.  We connect all quests with our learning management system, PowerSchool Learning.  This allows teachers to share their artifacts and reflections with the community, fostering networking and idea-sharing.

Badges

Upon completion of a series of quests and verification of their artifacts, teachers are automatically awarded a digital badge from Surry County Schools, via Rezzly, that certifies the skills necessary to earn the badge.  This digital badge can be exported to open badging platforms like Mozilla's Open Backpack.  
After our pilot program, we launched a physical badge program that has been incredibly popular with our educators.  Upon earning their first badge, a player is awarded their EPIC Educator banner.  This 2'x3' vinyl banner has spaces that can be filled up for the teacher to show off their badges.
Rezzly also supports other incentives such as rewards and achievements.  We use rewards (gold coins, bug squasher tokens, etc.) as tokens that can be accumulated.  At some point, the hope is that there will be functionality allowing these to form a sort of currency within the system unlocking new game-like modes of engagement.  Achievements are used to recognize player rank as well as for novelty.  For example, each year, there's an annual SnowSelfie achievement for members of the community share, via social media, a bit of fun in the snow.  The possibilities are endless.

XP and CEUs

Though badges are great ways to recognize personal accomplishment, they don't directly connect to teacher licensure.  To that end we award XP (experience points) for each quest completed in the system.  These experience points convert to CEUs based on an estimate of how much time would be required, on average, for a novice to complete the quest.  XP can then be converted to CEUs which can be applied to licensure.  Our system is based on a 100XP = 1 hour formula.  

EPIC Academy by http://epicacademy.info is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All quests designed by the teachers leaders of Surry County Schools, NC.