Week 17 -A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education. -Smiley Blanton, Pyschiatrist-

While we had the computers, I thought that it would be a good warm-up for my students to research something they're curious about to get their brains ready to work.  I made a quick and short Google Form where they had to input their name, period, question, answer and the URL of where they found their answer and made it bit.ly on www.bit.ly/dispatchdos.  What I thought would take 5 minutes ended up taking the whole period for some students.  They just delved deeper into whatever they were researching.

There were questions that ranged from, "Why do we have eye crust in the morning? to "How do they get cranes on top of skyscrapers?"  I learned a lot about what the students are interested in and when they found their answers, I learned a lot of new knowledge.

This was an excellent diversion for many students, especially to those that don't do a lot of work in class typically.  Some students couldn't think of something they wondered about so I began to just show things that make me curious on the Internet through some of the cool things I follow on Google+.

I showed them a street performer that was a Trasnformer that went from a Hummer to a robot.  I showed them a gif of Alaska when they have 24 hours of sunlight.  I showed them the Aurora Borealis in Iceland.  I googled, "Are there Spanish tongue twisters" and proceeded to try to say them.

All-in-all I think that this was a good exercise, because a lot of my students aren't curious about things and they don't wonder why something the way it is.  I'll need to do this more.

Meanwhile, on the project front, students are working and blogging away, although not all students are keeping up with this part.  I'm not sure if it's because they're not working on their projects, or they are finding it difficult to blog.  I'll have to look into that a bit more as well.

Until next time.

20 Percent Project Continues -- Week 1 of the New Semester and Year

With the start of the new semester and with district benchmarks and finals, I got lost in the shuffle a bit and have not been able to blog until now.  Since I got some new students at the semester, I decided to review what the 20 Percent Project was again to all of my students.  I actually encouraged many students to change their project if they hadn't done much work on it, or they weren't that interested in their old project.

Students that are changing their project from the first semester are going to fill out a reflective form  (Change of Project Form)  to explain why they are switching projects, because even in their failure or not completing their project, I'd like them to reflect on why the project didn't take off.

One of the things that I've found about the project is that students truly need to choose something they are interested in actually doing and not something they think will be something they will want to do.

Some students thought it would be great to volunteer with different organizations and write about their experiences.  Although their altruism was to be commended, they went to a couple of things on the weekends and found that this is too time consuming and not really their passion.  The two girls that started with this project, changed their project to making a YouTube channel about how to apply makeup.

Although the project is not as philanthropic as volunteering, this new project allows them to pursue they are passionate in.  I also encouraged new students to choose a project that is already somewhat part of their lives.

I re-showed this video below that captures a second of each day of the film-maker's life for a year.  Many of the students have changed their projects to something related to photography or videos.  This video inspired a lot of students

I'm wondering if this 20 Percent Project should really be two separate semester long projects rather than one year long project.  We'll see how they turn out as we get closer to the presentation dates, which will be May 29-30.

Thanks for reading.  Would appreciate any feedback or suggestions that have worked for you.

Cheers.

Resources: Change of Project Form