Some of the most meaningful student learning is recognized in the moment, but rarely recorded. Badge Sender is a tool I built to make it easier to capture and carry forward recognition that does not always fit neatly into grades or reports. It can be used to acknowledge technical skills, social skills, habits, or other achievements that matter in classrooms but are often informal or undocumented. The goal is not to replace verbal feedback, but to make those moments visible, portable, and easy to revisit when needed. If you already live in Google Sheets and want a lightweight way to document and celebrate these moments without extra systems or logins, you might find this useful.
How do we recognize learning that matters when it does not neatly align with a grade, rubric, or reporting cycle? In many classrooms, students demonstrate meaningful skills, habits, and forms of understanding that are noticed in the moment, but rarely documented or carried forward. These moments often sit between assessments, across subjects, or outside formal tasks, making them easy to notice and just as easy to lose.
Badge Sender began as a practical attempt to bridge that gap. Built directly inside Google Sheets, it allows educators to award digital badges for specific skills, tools, or competencies at the point they are observed. Badges are sent by email, stored digitally, and can be shared, printed, made into stickers, buttons, or pins, making recognition flexible, immediate, and independent of traditional assessment structures.
A Concrete Example from MYP Design
This system grew out of a very practical problem in our MYP Design department. My colleagues and I were looking for a way to recognize technical skills and tool use that were important to our subject, but difficult to capture through traditional assessment tasks. Skills like safe soldering, intermediate use of Adobe Illustrator, block-based coding proficiency in Scratch, or successfully building and testing basic electronic circuits often appear while students are working on larger projects, rather than as the explicit focus of an assessment.
We wanted a way to acknowledge those moments without turning each skill into a separate graded assignment or checklist. A student might demonstrate solid soldering technique during one project and not touch a soldering iron again for months. Another might show clear competence in Illustrator while designing packaging, even if that was not the primary focus of the task. These skills matter, but they are difficult to capture in a way that is consistent, lightweight, and easy to maintain over time.
With badges inside a shared Google Sheet, teachers can award a badge when they observe a student meeting an agreed-upon standard, regardless of the specific unit or timing. The badge does not replace assessment, but it gives us a simple way to say, “Yes, this student has demonstrated this skill,” and to make that recognition visible beyond a single lesson or class.
YouTube Demo
What is Possible for Classrooms, Departments, and Schools
A lightweight badge system opens up forms of recognition that are difficult to manage with traditional tools. Because badges can be awarded independently of grades, units, or courses, they enable the recognition of learning that unfolds over time or across various contexts. This allows us to make Approaches to Learning (ATL) visible. Students earn badges for “Independent Research,” “Safe Workshop Practice,” or “Advanced Prototyping,” etc.
At a classroom level, this allows teachers to recognize mastery in the moment, without creating additional assessment artifacts or workflows.
At a department level, shared badge sets can establish common expectations around skills and competencies, helping align teaching practices across classes or grade levels.
At a school level, badges can function as a portable record of learning, something students can carry with them across years, teachers, or programs.
Because Badge Sender is built on Google Sheets, it fits naturally into existing school workflows. There are no new platforms for students to learn, no accounts to manage, and no additional systems to maintain. The goal is not to replace grades or reports, but to make visible the kinds of learning that often remain informal, implicit, or undocumented.
Want to try it?
Step-by-step to get started
1. Copy the Template
Click to make your own copy.
You will need to click “Allow access” for the sending script to work.
2. Initialize
Click Badge Tools > Open Sidebar.
3. Authorize
Google will display a security warning the first time you open the sidebar. This is normal for private scripts. To proceed:
- Click Advanced (small text, bottom left).
- Click Go to Badge Sender (unsafe).
- Click Allow.
No data leaves your Drive; this stays entirely within your school account.
4. Enable badge sending
The first time you use the tool, you will need to enable badge sending. This creates the trigger to send badges as soon as you click a checkbox.
5. Create Your Badge Library
Create your digital badge images (PNG or JPG) and upload them to a new Google Drive folder.
6. Copy the Folder ID
Open your badge folder. In the URL, copy the string of characters between the last slash / and the question mark ? (if there is one). This is your Folder ID.
Your folder ID is everything after the last forward slash in your badges folder link.
7. Paste the Folder ID and award a badge
Paste the Folder ID into the sidebar and click Load. Now, you are ready to award a badge. Check a box, send a badge. That’s it. Test with your own email first.
How this project works
Google Sheets was the obvious home. Everyone already had access. Everyone knew how to use it. And it already functioned as our shared record space.
The initial idea was intentionally simple:
- Student emails in column A
- Student names in column B
- Grade or cohort information in column C
- Badges starting in column D
Each badge would be represented visually in the header row, using an image stored in Google Drive. Under each badge, teachers would check a box when a student earned that skill.
That single interaction (checking a box) would do one thing and one thing only:
Send a short congratulatory email to the student.
No dashboards. No accounts. No logins. No portals.
Why a checkbox matters
The decision to use checkboxes was deliberate.
- Teachers are already comfortable with them.
- They communicate intent clearly.
- They map directly to a moment of human judgment: “I’ve seen this student demonstrate this skill.”
I decided early on that:
- Each check sends one email
- Unchecking does nothing
- Rechecking sends another email
- There is no auto-uncheck
The spreadsheet is not trying to be clever. It is trying to be trustworthy. If a badge is checked, that record stays.
How the system works at a high level
At its core, Badge Sender treats a Google Sheet as a lightweight awarding system rather than a database or platform.
Everything happens in one place: the spreadsheet you already use to track students.
1. Badges live as images, not accounts
Badges are simply image files stored in a Google Drive folder. When you load that folder into the Sheet, each badge becomes a column with its image and name at the top.
There are no student accounts, logins, or external systems. The badge image itself is the artifact.
2. Students live in rows
Each row represents a student. Columns to the left store basic information like name and email. Badge columns to the right contain simple checkboxes.
Checking a box means one thing: this student has earned this badge.
3. A background listener watches for badge awards
Once the sheet is set up, a background trigger listens for edits. When a checkbox is checked, the system notices that specific action.
From there, it does one of two things:
- Sends the badge immediately by email, or
- Holds the badge as “pending” if confirmation is required
4. Confirmation is optional but intentional
If confirmation is enabled, checking a badge does not send anything right away. Instead, the system stores that single action as the current pending award.
The sidebar then shows exactly who the badge is for and which badge is about to be sent. The gold Send Badge button becomes active only when there is something real to send.
This design keeps the system predictable and prevents accidental sends.
5. Emails are generated automatically
When a badge is sent, the system generates a short email that includes:
- The badge image
- The badge name
- The awarding institution or department
- An optional teacher signature
The badge image is attached and embedded so students can save it, print it, or keep it digitally.
Why this is not a Google Workspace add-on
I originally planned to publish Badge Sender as a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on. In practice, this path requires requesting broad Google Drive permissions, including access to user folders, which triggers a significantly more rigorous review and security process.
Rather than add friction, delays, or external dependencies, I chose to release this as a script-enabled template. The result is simpler: everything runs inside your own copy of the spreadsheet, with full transparency and no additional services involved.
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