Let me start off by saying that July has kicked my butt- well academically. I’m a stay at home daddy this summer with two kids under three, and I spent a week in Maui (I know no tears are being shed for me at this moment)- but this has caused me to fall behind in the course and I’ve played catch-up until this post here and now I should be all caught up.

Innovative Pedagogies covers a lot of amazing information. With each new thing I learn, I want to play and create for hours. I’ve worked with a lot of video this month, which has been awesome-I’ve done more on the creation side of YouTube this past month than I have in my entire life up to this point. I’ve been wanting to create a GAFE “How-To” series for my colleagues, as well as video lessons for my 5th grade class. Sandwiched in between my film creation was a week discussing Gamification ideas- I had to create some badges of course and ponder the ideas of levels in my class.

With my Twitter PLN training work and now the beginnings of a “How-To” series this is my first real step in helping out my colleagues in a more leadership role. The materials and programs I’m creating and working with during this cohort are going to be shared with the teachers at my school and my Kings County Educators Collective project- as well as any one who accesses it on the internet.

I’ve been a big proponent at my school site for standards-based learning and report cards. I’ve never made the connection with Gamification (which before this course I thought was simply adding games). It is so clear to me now. Gamification are a lot of great teaching practices that I believe in: “leveling” up through the standards, providing instant feedback to students, supporting failure and seeing it as a way to learn and grow from. AWESOME! I also want to incorporate badges into my class- I love earning badges. I want that Google Innovative Educator Badge someday, I can’t wait to post a CUE Innovative Educator badge on my website- they are meaningful to me and it gives others an idea of what I had to do to earn it. I’m still thinking about what will earn a badge- I don’t want to create a hundred of them, so they need to be meaningful to the students and everybody will have the ability to earn them (I’m going more for showing improvement over time and not “straight A” students).

Flip classroom- love this idea as well. I worry about equity and my students who do not have internet access at home so that has to be taken into consideration. I think I’m going to start with math flipping this year and build up a playlist of videos using my newly acquired Educreations Pro account. An added bonus of flipped lessons: I hate when students are absent- some weeks at a time, and are completely lost in math because they missed “that lesson”- it’s going to be awesome having that lesson available to them on video as well.

My Google+ participation has taken a hit the past few weeks as I was either gone or playing catch-up. I will look to increase participation going forward. I did share a gaming idea and had a nice back and forth with Chai, so all is not lost.

Project Status: The infrastructure for Kings County Ed Collective is there and ready to be utilized. I’ll be posting  some upcoming PD happening in our area to the Twitter/Facebook/Website and link my own videos on creating a functional classroom website.

Elective Status: I have not started my Web 2.0 elective yet, I am still in the process of fully catching up with Innovative Pedagogies before I look at it.