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I just recently finished my last weekend of Wood Badge and my patrol's project was information regarding non-advancement awards. As a joke one of my patrol-mates said I should do a website for the project...so I did. Now that Wood Badge is over, I wanted to put the site here to see what people think of it and so others can know about the different awards that they may not even know exist. Any feedback is welcome.

 

Here is the website: wb2016eagleproject.webs.com

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I have seen this also. One of our guys at district has 4 rows of knots.   I actually have to uniform shirts-one I wear for everyday meetings and activities and one I wear on "formal occasions". Form

I prefer encouraging words over coddling. IMO, the latter just produces kids who grow to feel entitled and work the system.   Awards should be earned. There are enough Special Snowflake Awards out t

Are we limiting to official BSA non-rank awards? For example, there are tons of historic trail awards you can get that are not official BSA awards.

First of all, all Cub Scout, what people often call "rank" is really an award.  Lion, Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos, and AOL.  I thought it rather strange that AOL was under Boy Scouts and not Cub Scouts.  Keep it in mind, the site is non-advancement awards, Lion, Tiger, etc. are indicators of age only, not any effort on the part of the individual scout.  During 2nd grade one is a Wolf Scout regardless of whether he has earned the award or not.  It could be a great opportunity to educate people with the site as well.  ALL bling in Cub Scouts is non-advancement awards because they advance by age only.  :)

 

After a cursory glance through the awards without really thinking about them, it is also interesting to note that there is listed interpreter strip and Morse Code interpreter strip.  If it is because Morse Code is a code and reads in any language, maybe signing should be added as well.

 

There is also a glaring omission of Sea Scouts on the website.  They have both rank and awards as well.

 

Hope this helps.

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First of all, all Cub Scout, what people often call "rank" is really an award.  Lion, Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos, and AOL.  I thought it rather strange that AOL was under Boy Scouts and not Cub Scouts.  Keep it in mind, the site is non-advancement awards, Lion, Tiger, etc. are indicators of age only, not any effort on the part of the individual scout.  During 2nd grade one is a Wolf Scout regardless of whether he has earned the award or not.  It could be a great opportunity to educate people with the site as well.  ALL bling in Cub Scouts is non-advancement awards because they advance by age only.  :)

Well we consider the "ranks" as ranks, which is why they were excluded from this project. There was actually another patrol who did advancement awards and they included the rank adventures for the Scouts.

 

After a cursory glance through the awards without really thinking about them, it is also interesting to note that there is listed interpreter strip and Morse Code interpreter strip.  If it is because Morse Code is a code and reads in any language, maybe signing should be added as well.

The Morse Code strip was on its own because it is a separate thing from the Interpreter Strip. American Sign Language is actually a part of the Interpreter Strip languages.

 

There is also a glaring omission of Sea Scouts on the website.  They have both rank and awards as well.

We thought about doing the Sea Scouts, but were told to just do Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity, and Venturing.

 

Hope this helps.

It did thank you, I thought about adding to the website and keep it up to date as best as I can. I will probably add Sea Scouts and even Adult awards....we will see if I get a chance to do it.

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Why did your instructors say to omit BSA's second oldest program?  Sorry, but any website that omits Sea Scouts is incomplete. Sea Scouts in the USA is 104 years old this year older than the OA.

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This was similar to one of my ticket goals.  As the troop committee advancement coordinator my goals were all related to advancement.  One was to provide the scouts with material explaining the various awards and achievements outside of the trail to Eagle.  Since it wasn't a project, only a ticket goal, it was focused only on boy scouts, and unit awards didn't occur to me.  A couple of the scouts have shown interest in the Nova awards, and one is considering working on the Hornaday award because environmental causes are kind of his thing.

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:)  Just had an out-of-box experience.... Why are WB instructors telling WB participants what their projects are to be?   Have patrol projects been dictated by the instructors?  Is this something new or just something I missed?  I also noticed the "we" in the conversation, I don't remember the "we" part of training.  When the course was over, we as a patrol did not receive the beads, individually we all needed to finish the ticket.

 

WB is a learning process, it might be good to learn the correct processes for awards and ranks in Scouting rather than creating any confusing re-definitions, and use WB as an opportunity to teach it correctly.  Just my bias, I guess.

 

And there are different sign languages for the different languages, too.  The strip says Signing, not American Sign Language.  Learning the sign alphabet will get you into French, German, Italian, Spanish, but is going to be a problem with Greek and Russian and it all goes out the window with Chinese and Japanese.  Scouting is a world-wide movement.  A scout is going to look pretty foolish at a World Jamboree with "Signing" on his shirt.  That's an area of the uniform that everyone is going to look first.

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I guess I would have titled it "Unusual Awards and Recognition."

 

Most awards are a form of advancement, even if they don't confer rank.

 

That said, it's a handy list. Thanks for the effort.

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Why did your instructors say to omit BSA's second oldest program?  Sorry, but any website that omits Sea Scouts is incomplete. Sea Scouts in the USA is 104 years old this year older than the OA.

I believe it is because our council does not have Sea Scouts, so they did it for what we had in our area. Not really sure though.

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:)  Just had an out-of-box experience.... Why are WB instructors telling WB participants what their projects are to be?   Have patrol projects been dictated by the instructors?  Is this something new or just something I missed?  I also noticed the "we" in the conversation, I don't remember the "we" part of training.  When the course was over, we as a patrol did not receive the beads, individually we all needed to finish the ticket.

They really only told us to do for our council organizations; Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity, and Venturing. After that it was just on our own and how we decided to do it. We just had to make sure we didn't do the same thing as another patrol. The we part was the patrol for the patrol project due on the second weekend. This was not for our tickets.

 

WB is a learning process, it might be good to learn the correct processes for awards and ranks in Scouting rather than creating any confusing re-definitions, and use WB as an opportunity to teach it correctly.  Just my bias, I guess.

I have only ever heard the Tiger, Wolf, Bear, and Webelos as ranks. They are also sold as "rank badge". Where is it that they are not ranks? Just because a Scout is a Wolf Scout does not mean they automatically get the Wolf rank badge. They have to earn the rank.

 

And there are different sign languages for the different languages, too.  The strip says Signing, not American Sign Language.  Learning the sign alphabet will get you into French, German, Italian, Spanish, but is going to be a problem with Greek and Russian and it all goes out the window with Chinese and Japanese.  Scouting is a world-wide movement.  A scout is going to look pretty foolish at a World Jamboree with "Signing" on his shirt.  That's an area of the uniform that everyone is going to look first.

It actually does say American Sign Language...http://www.scoutstuff.org/interpreter-strips.html

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I guess I would have titled it "Unusual Awards and Recognition."

 

Most awards are a form of advancement, even if they don't confer rank.

 

That said, it's a handy list. Thanks for the effort.

It is true that a good majority of awards can be used for rank in the Boy Scouts and above, but at the Cub Scout level, it does not. The rank requirements to lend themselves to being apart of the non-advancement awards, but they do not help the Scout earn the rank they are working on.

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Sorry, I am not seeing the value in another website. IMO, most scouts/scouters search for awards by topic not by credit/advancement or they "just do it" without asking for an award.

 

I award you one no-prize with apologies to Stan Lee.

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Serious question from a non-WBer:  

 

What was the point of the assigned project?   Though I appreciate the hard work that went into the research and page building, frankly it seems like a big homework drill.  

 

The criteria for all these awards can be found in current BSA literature.   A search engine can find them quickly. 

Edited by desertrat77
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