Month: December 2022

Genius hour or 20% projects encourage students to create their own learning path and product to display growth in certain skills. The idea is for students to pick their own topic, learn about that topic, design a product, and then share the product with a larger learning community. Throughout the process students will ideally gain a larger understanding of the topic while developing skills that will benefit them for a lifetime. These projects are really motivating for students because they are able to decide their own topic, pathway to learn about it, and the product they create. 

Three Benefits: 

Student Choice- Students are able to decide what topic they are researching and how they present the information through their product. We have learned in this class and others that the more students have choices when it comes to their learning, the more engaged and motivated they are to learn. With higher engagement and motivation comes the benefit of a deeper understanding of the content and further development of the intended life skills. 

Life Long Skills- A major benefit of a genius hour project is that students are intended to learn inquiry, research, and communication skills that will last them their lifetime. These skills usually transcend the usual skills covered in class and these activities allow for greater development of life long skills. Skills such as analysis, inquiry, communication, digital literacy skills, and many other 21st century skills are developed through genius hour projects. The benefits of learning these skills far outweigh the negatives of completing a genius hour project. 

Standard Based Learning- Lastly, these projects are standard based and could be added to your curriculum with relative ease. Obviously it will take time and effort on the teachers part to incorporate it, but the standards are already identified and therefore for teachers to use. Genius hour projects also incorporate cross curricular learning and help students see the connections between multiple areas of content. Lastly, students are able to connect their learning in your classroom to the real world and identify how your content impacts the world they live in.

Hurdles: 

Time- Teachers are constantly battling time in their classrooms. I am currently thinking about how I would add a genius hour project to my class right now and I can’t wrap my head around where I would get the time to do it. I struggle now to get through all of my curriculum and I am not sure exactly what I would cut to make it all work. To address this issue, I would probably try to link a project I already do and perhaps adapt it into a larger project that would work as a genius hour project. I can think of a few smaller projects that I do that take up time that I could skip in order to provide students with the opportunity to complete a genius hour project. The smaller projects do not have a lot of student choice and the benefits of the genius hour project would outweigh the benefits of those projects. It is also the time to plan the project itself for me as a teacher. Between coaching, my family, and other hobbies I have very little time to create brand new large scale projects for class. I would overcome this by setting aside some time over the summer to lay out the project and plan for the school year. 

Administrative and Parental Support- There is a possibility that administration and parents may not be on board with students completing a genius hour project. Parents may be concerned that this is not the best way to spend their child’s time in the classroom, or that their child may not benefit from the freedom that these projects provide. In addition, administrators may be worried that I would not be able to meet my curriculum requirements. I would overcome these hurdles by sending home a letter to parents explaining what a genius hour project is and how it would benefit their child. If parents still had concerns about the project I would offer a time to meet with them and hopefully ease their concerns. As for administration, I create a plan to present to them over the summer that displays the way I would complete the project and still meet my curriculum requirements for the year.

During the pandemic I utilized Zoom and Microsoft Teams to teach and communicate with students outside of the classroom. During the beginning of the pandemic, my district used Zoom to set up office hours for students to come and ask questions about assignments as needed. Then during the following school year, we used Microsoft Teams to run a hybrid model. I would have students in my classroom and the rest would be at home attending class through Teams. I would teach both groups of students at the same time and constantly be going back and forth between students in my classroom and students on my laptop or Ipad. Since we have returned to school, I have not really used Teams or Zoom besides some faculty or district wide meetings. I would assume if we ever went back into lockdown that my district would implement a similar learning model as to what we used during the pandemic. In that case, I would be using Teams or Zoom again to teach synchronously to my students. 

Benefits:

The major benefit that tools like Zoom and Teams brought to my classroom was a sense of community. Without these tools, students at home would have felt much more isolated and disconnected than they already did. With these tools, students were able to basically be sitting right inside my classroom with a shared screen and audio feed of myself talking. In addition, students were able to ask questions and self-advocate if they had an issue directly with me even though we weren’t in the same room. Secondly, I was able to use these presentation tools to create collaborative learning opportunities for my students even though we were not all in the same location. Students would be split up into breakout rooms and would complete collaborative assignments, projects, and discussions and then return to the main meeting and debrief what they had completed. I was even able to get students to work with other students outside of their own class time to complete assignments and build even larger connections between students. I also think that these tools allowed some students to open up and be more willing to share in the classroom. I had a few students a second time during the pandemic and they were willing to share now more than ever before because they were at home and not speaking directly in front of the class. One last benefit of these tools is the ability to still see students and connect with them through these applications. I did not always require my students to have their cameras on, but I would sometimes have them turn them on. This way, I was still able to look students in the eye and try to build connections with them just as if they were in my classroom. Again, most of the benefits mentioned above would not have been possible during the pandemic without these communication tools. 

Challenges and Overcoming: 

I always show a lot of short videos in my lectures and throughout my lessons. To display those videos to my synchronous students at home during the pandemic through a shared screen was usually difficult. Our WIFI and the presentation tool itself usually was not good enough to provide continuous videos to my students at home. The way I overcame this is by providing links and or titles to videos to students through Schoology. They would mute the meeting and view the videos on their own and then return to class once they were finished. Another challenge was the constant battles with the WIFI and internet connection in my building. I often would not be able to get into my meeting or would get removed during the class. I would be flexible and communicate with those students at home through Schoology updates and emails if necessary. These communication plans were communicated at the beginning of the school year and followed throughout the rest. Realizing that the WIFI was out of my control, I just tried to be as flexible as possible and make the best out of a bad situation. Next, the difficulty with monitoring student engagement in an online presentation tool was different. It was always hard to monitor students in class and at home at the same time. If I thought a student at home was struggling to engage, I would ask them to turn their camera on, but they could claim it wasn’t working and there was nothing I could do. I would ask students to periodically raise their hands or type something in the chat, but again it was difficult to gauge their full engagement with even those strategies. I overcame this challenge by creating various formative assessments throughout my lessons and if they were not completed by the students at home I knew who was engaged and who was not. Lastly, it took a lot of students time to get comfortable with Teams or Zoom as a method of learning and communicating. This learning curve was difficult for some and caused a lot of stress and frustration. I overcame these challenges with grace and patience with these students and encouraged them to communicate with me about their concerns. As time went on during the pandemic years, students became more comfortable with the technology and those stresses decreased with practice and understanding.

Twitter is a tool that I often use to keep up with current events, family members, and sports. It is a resource that if used correctly could be useful inside the classroom and can be useful for educators as well. Twitter is a great resource for teachers to use to connect with each other and share ideas and best practices. I have often used twitter to read about other teachers’ experiences and learn new strategies to use in my classroom. I have never participated in an educational chat on Twitter, but I have followed a few in the last couple of years and they are engaging and provide good ideas and resources for teachers to use. Another way that Twitter can be used to grow a teachers professional development is by letting teachers know when conferences are happening. I know a lot of in person conferences and professional development opportunities that use twitter to advertise for teachers to attend as well. By using social networking, professional development sessions can reach a wider range of teachers and really bring together a vast network of experience and knowledge. Finally, I think the best part of Twitter is just having the ability to connect with other teachers even on a person to person basis. This connection allows teachers to grow their own professional network and gain knowledge and strategies from that network. 

Pros:

1. You can access the latest news and information really quickly by using Twitter with a cell phone. Twitter automatically updates for various news organizations and outlets which allows people to get news fast and efficiently. 
2. Easy search function by searching by hashtags. People on Twitter are easily able to join a conversation or find news by searching through a hashtag. 
3. The ability to access a larger network of professionals in your field and sharing ideas and strategies with those professionals. 
4. Tweets are clear messages most of the time because of the character limit. People and news outlets cannot ramble about news or opinions and you are able to get a clear and concise message from posted content. 
5. Teachers can use twitter to share posts and photos with the community and share what is being done in their classroom. Likewise, schools can post pictures and posts to communicate with community members on what is going on at school. 

Cons: 

1. Anyone can sign up for Twitter and as a result there is cyberbullying, negative comments, and inappropriate content on Twitter. 
2. There is a limit to what can be posted in a single tweet because of the character limit of 280. This stops people from sometimes including the whole story or being as detailed as necessary. This can cause misunderstandings and arguments. 
3. There are a lot of fake accounts, bots, and scam accounts that share misinformation and scams across the platform. You have to spend time and energy to work around these bots and keep your information safe. 
4. Twitter can become a distraction if used in the classroom with students because it is very easy to get off task and find yourself down a rabbit hole. I often go on Twitter to find one specific thing and realize 20 minutes later that I am completely off task. If you are going to use Twitter in your classroom, strict expectations need to be made. 
5. The digital footprint is a negative as well. Once you post something it is hard to completely delete that post. Yes, you can delete it, but people can screenshot it before that happens. Whatever you post, can follow you forever which can become a problem if you are not careful when using social networking sites.