Reflections on the past month:

It was nice to get a refresher course on the different learning philosophies and the people behind them. As a teacher, I like to feel more informed and academic in my pedagogical choices and brushing up on behaviorism, cognitivism, multiple intelligences, and constructivism was time well-spent. I value research and different approaches to learning.

This teacher, Michael Pershan, has taken a look at Cognitive Load Theory and wrote a 34 page essay on the approach and how it applies to the classroom. I think more teachers need to take an interest in research and what works. He has inspired me to take a look at my practices and see if I can match them up with research. That will be a future project.

I really, really, have enjoyed this past week looking at classroom layout. I’ve already written-up some Donors Choose grants to push my project along. This will happen this year. It might take some baby-steps before the big leaps come, but I’m going to share this information with my admin and parents for my upcoming class and see if I can’t spark some help to go along with my enthusiasm.

 

Google+:

Not surprisingly, my biggest contribution to the Google+ community has been around classroom design. Had a great conversation with Jennifer Diaz, Jamie O’Hara, and Evelyn Andrade about the benefits of displaying student-work and what is more useful for the student-finished work (traditionally seen in classrooms) or a whiteboard style work in progress model.

Also shared with the Google+ community was a questing find following the #ITSE2016 hashtag:

And a great Makerspace idea by Doug Robertson: The Cardboard Arcade that I totally want to try this upcoming year.

 

 

Project Status: 

I have created the Kings County Educator Collective. The goal is get the teachers in our county linked-up with some shared space including:

• Our Website
• Facebook Page
• Twitter

I’ve included a Google Form on all three spaces so teachers will input their information and then can be added to our shared database that teachers can access. I’ve also started a hashtag, #KCEdCollect for teachers to start posting cool ideas they are doing around the county.

I’m looking for all those other lone-nut teachers in the county doing cool things and then getting them to share their ideas.

Our Facebook group is up to 78 teachers in the county with zero advertising. Not so many have filled out the Google Form yet, but I don’t plan on pushing it much until August comes around for fear of scaring some educators off during the summer time. The infrastructure is set up though and ready to use.

I’ve played around with some sticker designs and a flyer for a meet-up in the future as well.

I plan on being the first educator, as the founder, to start sharing resources and ideas from my classroom. I will have to be mindful of “flooding” the followers so it doesn’t come off as spam and hope that some others will bravely share as-well. I think I’ll share some links to some upcoming PD here in the next week or so as my first post.

Elective Status:

Twitter for Educators is complete. I passed with an “A” grade and it is posted to my transcript. That was a fun class and I can’t wait to do some Twitter PD with my colleagues when we get back next month.

I enrolled in Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom, and I also purchased the required text. I have done nothing yet in this class, but plan to hit it hard when I return from my Maui Trip (July 8th-16th). My current focus right now is keeping up with the Innovative Pedagogies course.