Badge Insert or VTK?

 

The basic steps for Girl Scout badges are freely available on Badge Explorer, but those short steps don't really tell you much about what GSUSA has in mind for the badge.  To dig more deeply, you have to go to VTK (Volunteer Toolkit) or you have to buy the badge inserts from GSUSA.  The bones of today's program came out when my college sophomore was a kindergarten Daisy.  However, a lot of parts have been added since then.  While there are a lot of copies of the Girls Guide to Girl Scouting and the badge inserts from it floating around, there are also a lot of badges and Journeys which have come out since then and are not part of the binder (unless the previous owner downloaded them and added them).  40/64 Brownie Awards are new since the GGGS came out.  That leads to the question:  "Do I buy the badge insert or do I just use VTK?  Is there a difference?"  This post will try to answer that question by looking at and comparing the badge insert for Brownie Art and Design with VTK.  You can read this post about VTK's plans. 

Communicating With Your Troop/Parents: Some Options

Once upon a time, Girl Scouts was every Tuesday after school in the art room, or every Wednesday at 4:30 at the Girl Scout Hut or something similar.  Once upon a time leaders at those meetings handed out permission slips for special events, which girls gave to their parents, and if they did not, the girls missed out  Once upon a time leaders were not expected to remind everyone of everything.  Today is not "once upon a time".

VTK As A Planner: What Do Leaders Think?

 This is the second post in my series about what Girl Scout leaders think of VTK, the online leader dashboard.  It is the result of a survey promulgated on Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders.  As I said in the first post, I think the people who responded tend to me more experienced than the average Girl Scout leader and more likely to go beyond the obvious when planning meetings.

What Do Girl Scout Leaders Think of VTK? (Part One)

 

Several years ago, GSUSA introduced its online leader's platform Volunteer Toolkit.  VTK, which is accessed by clicking on the "My GS" tab on your council's website, logging in, clicking "my account" and then "Volunteer Toolkit" is supposed to be sort of an online dashboard for leaders.  If you utilize it fully, you select an award to work in at a meeting, set a date for the meeting, choose activities for a meeting, read a script for the meeting, send meeting reminders, record attendance and submit reports to council.   There are also training materials and resources available in VTK.  However, it has been my impression that many Girl Scout leaders do not love VTK.  This post is the result of a survey of members of various Girl Scout leader Facebook Groups. 

VTK Has Changed--For the Better

Last year I wrote a post talking about VTK, using the Brownie First Aid badge as an example.  I found plenty of problems with it, but liked the badge activities that I found more practical than some in the badge inserts.  While I could see that scripts could be helpful for new leaders, I found the plans overly wordy and I found it difficult to correlate some of the activities with the badge requirements.

I've been planning meetings for this year and I have gotten the feeling that VTK has changed some, and tonight when I looked at the Brownie First Aid Badge I realized that there had been significant changes to at least this badge plan, and my feeling is, to others as well.  

I wrote extensively about the Snacks Badge last year, including a post comparing the badge insert with VTK. I found that the VTK plans were more focused on teaching nutrition than on teaching cooking, and in fact, had the girls doing very little cooking and seemed to me to carry activities that were more likely to result in trash than in snacks.  I just looked at it, and it too has undergone a significant revision.  

Using Resources Wisely: VTK Really Can Be Your Friend

If you read this blog regularly (or go poking through past posts now) you'll find that I'm no faithful unthinking robot cheering GSUSA and its programming choices.  For an organization that is pushing STEM STEM and more STEM, I think they have picked horrible technology and/or implemented it badly.  However, the Girl Scout Law says we are to use resources wisely and VTK is a resource provided to leaders that will answer many of the questions I see posted on multiple facebook groups. No, there is nothing wrong with asking other leaders what they have done or whether activities have worked for them but so many people seem to have tried VTK briefly, found it wanting, and abandoned it.  While I have posted about my complaints (and compliments) about VTK, I encourage you to give it another try, but first, understand what types of programming are offered on it:

Resources for Meeting Planning

Girl Scout leaders are always looking for help with meeting planning. This page is an attempt to create a one-stop list of handy resources, with some editorializing about the type and quality of help given.

GSUSA and Council Resources

Volunteer Toolkit (VTK)

 VTK is GSUSA's online leader's manual.  Most if not all councils give their leaders access via the "My GS" tab on the council website.  Yes, VTK can be clunky but it does seem to have improved since it was first implemented.

To use VTK you first have to create a year plan.  I recommend choosing the create your own option, and then adding the meetings for a handful of badges that interest you.  Honestly, I don't think it works well as a planner so I don't use it for that, but as a resource, I think it has some good ideas.

Making Games Badge: Comparing the GGGS, VTK and River Valleys Plans

Okay, I'll admit it.  I'm old school (and old). I've always seen badge requirements as, well, requirements.  When the badge insert said pick one of these three, well, I picked one.  While I might have tweaked it slightly, like playing softball instead of baseball because I had a softball, I didn't figure that tennis is a game with a ball, so playing tennis is like baseball.  When I joined some online Girl Scout groups and found that many people were "adapting" the badges much more in the manner of substituting tennis for baseball rather than substituting softball for baseball, I raised my eyebrows, but as someone else said, "there are no badge police", so I pretty much kept my mouth shut.  Still, what happens to program integrity when "everyone" is "adapting" things too much?

For the record, I think much of today's Girl Scout program is overly idealistic and aimed more at grant writers than at girls.  I've made my opinions about Journeys and TAPs well-known on this blog, so I won't mention them here, but I will say that it seems to me, based on things I've read and the badge requirements themselves, that one of the goals of the program writers was to get girls out of their meeting rooms and into the community, or, at the least, to get leaders to bring the community to the meeting.  Many of today's badges, in the badge packet requirements, ask the girls to visit someplace, or to speak with an expert on something.  

Review of the Daisy Flower Garden Journey

I can say without a doubt that the worst GSUSA programming I ever tried to do "by the book" was the Daisy Welcome to the Flower Garden Journey. While I had led my older daughter's troop through Brownies and Juniors, I had never been a Daisy leader.  While I had a lot of non-Girl Scout experience with 7-9 year olds, I had never worked with kindergartners.  When my younger daughter became a Daisy, it was the first year of the two year Daisy program and I knew I had to do more than the petals over those two years, so when the nice lady at our council shop told me to buy the new program, I took it.

I no longer have those books (good riddance) but I remember reading through them and thinking that the stories were too long, too convoluted and had too many similar characters.  I wasn't real impressed with the activities, but figured maybe that was because I wasn't used to dealing with kids who were that young.  

At each meeting, according to the plan given in the leader's manual, you would read part of this story to the girls.  You would then do some activities, none of which particularly impressed me.  Finally you would do a project, and three options were given:  raise ladybugs, raise worms or plant a garden.  The kicker was that the project was supposed to be done for someone or some organization and was supposed to be sustainable--in other words you were supposed to find someone to keep it up after you were done. 

Brownie Cybersecurity Badges

GSUSA recently introduced three cybersecurity badges at each level.  While you can find the requirements on the publicly accessible Badge Explorer, the suggested activities are on Volunteer Tool Kit.  While there is a badge packet for sale that covers all three badges, it contains background information.  It does not provide the choice of three activities per requirement. It is also freely accessible compliments of Girl Scouts Farthest North.  Click here to see it.  

Volunteer Toolkit provides two complete lesson plans for each badge--in other words, if you do it their way, it will take you two meetings per badge.  The plans give you word-for-word scripts to follow as well as any handouts or coloring sheets you will need.  They are great for beginning leaders but many people find them difficult to skim through to pick out the activities so as to decide whether to use them or not.

This post is an attempt to summarize all the Brownie Cybersecurity badges in one easy to follow place.

VTK: Yea or Nay?

It is my opinion, absolutely unconfirmed by GSUSA or anyone with any inside information, that we have seen the last Girl Scout Handbooks.  GSUSA started its move to digital with a few badges and Try-Its in the old prgram, and pretty much went in head-first a couple of years ago with Volunteer Tool Kit, which is their online leaders' manual.  GSUSA has made several improvments to the system based on member feedback, though honestly I don't know what those improvements are.