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

Week 16 - Blowing the conch

I've been getting the sense that not all the students during our 20 percent time have been spending their time wisely.  Some students have been diligent bloggers and working on their projects, but some need a bit more structure.  I decided to blow the conch to gather the civil and savage alike.  I introduced a mini-lesson on creating Powerpoints/Presentations that engage the audience.

Each week students will learn a skill that they'll be needing in order to complete the project, such as creating presentations, speaking in public, and the use of technology.  I showed the students the slide I made below to get us started.

I took about 5 minutes to show students how to add an image as a background, insert text boxes, change the fill and text color.  One thing the students utilized was the rotating of the text boxes.  I also quickly shared how graphic design usually takes advantage of 2-3 colors.  Once students created their presentations, named their document Period X-First Last, Presentation Slides and then shared, I peeked into each student's slide.  If anyone is using Google Docs to create and share items, I'd highly recommend using a naming convention like I have.  You can just hit the period and the name of the assignment and you'll have a list of all the students that shared.

I thought that students would take a few minutes and finish quickly so they can move onto their 20 Percent Projects, but many students used the whole class period to perfect their slides.

Most of the pointers that I was giving them were based on my preferences for design, but I was inspired by Slideshare.  I get a weekly digest of the best slides of the week and when I have time I'll peruse them to get ideas for class.

The thing that I was emphasizing was having an engaging image with minimal text.  I was really pleased with the work that the students did.  Some students finished their slides and wrote on their blogs about their slide.

My intent wasn't for this mini-lesson to take the whole period, but the students were very zealous about creating good slides.  I even had students that normally don't do anything turn in some very nice work.

Week 15 - An absolute rose?

After a week off from blogging, I had students return to their projects and blog about what they have been working on.  I've been going through a series of quick little lessons on what smart people do.  So far I've said that smart people reflect, read, and think flexibly.

As I was reading some of my students' older blog posts, I read a student's that had great potential.  She is a part of the Peer Assistance Leadership team at our school and she blogged about going to a workshop at a nearby community college.  Perhaps to her, her blog is like when Daisy Buchanan says Nick reminds her of "an absolute rose."

This is untrue.  I think she is bit off in adding real purpose and valuable content to her blog.

At the workshop she attended three sessions: one dealing with gun violence, another highlighting how everyone is valuable, and lastly a session on seeing signs of abusive relationships.  She merely summarized the topics of those sessions a instead of reflecting on what she took away from them.  They seemed like pretty powerful presentations, but merely summary.

The purpose of my blogs has been to use it as a reflective tool as well as sharing with others.  I think that even in my blogging, that my writing has leaned more towards what I have done rather than what I've been thinking.

I think I'll need to address this idea of some deeper self-reflection as they continue to work on their projects and blogging.  This is sort of new genre of writing for myself and my students.

Next week I'll present on how to add a bit more reflection to their blogs and why that matters.

Week 14 - We search with research

This week I gave students a break from blogging to focus on research.  I wanted the students to learn more about whatever it is that they are working on.  In my last class of the day, a student asked, "I don't need to do any research for my project."  Questions like this, where students don't really think about what they are asking make a bit upset, especially at the end of the day.

When I found out that she was doing her project on movie reviews,  she totally opened up the gates for a teachable moment.  I suggested that she read professional reviews of movies that she has reviewed.  I suggested she look up how other reviewers leave their stamps on their reviews, be it a thumbs up, stars, rotten tomatoes, etc.  I said, are you including the names of the actors, directors, producers, what movies the actors have been in previously.  She began to see that she needed to do a little digging before moving on with her reviews.

It had never occurred to the student that she could learn from looking at other people's work.  This is precisely why I had students spend today's class period doing that.  Of course I want to keep kids accountable for the time spent in class, so I made a Google Form where they had to reflect on what their goal was and whether or not they accomplished their research goal.

Knowing a few of the projects and how they needed some more information, I also posited that they could search how to take better pictures and videos, find recipes, how to get more traffic on their blogs and websites.  Ultimately, it was open ended and they just needed to research something related to their project that will improve the work they are doing.  Below area couple of students' summary of what they found from the research.

I hope that today was time well spent.  What they did today will hopefully make for good blogging material for the students as well.  I hope that they will periodically do some research on their own and make it a process they internalize so they can apply it to other situations.  I guess that is the whole point of a project like this right?

Week 13 - Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

I felt a bit like Mercutio when Romeo said, "Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much."  Today I had my students share about their progress so far, about 10 weeks into the project.  I was anticipating that today was going to rough.  Students ill prepared.  Students having done no work.  Students just skating by doing the minimum.  On the most part, I was actually really encouraged by the effort and the types of things my students are doing.

 Each group had to create a Google Presentation to share with the class.  For me the genesis of this project came from Kevin Brookhouser's session on 20 Percent Time at the CA GAFE Summit.  From his hour session I was sold and decided to implement the project this school year.

There have been some difficult times and I've questioned myself about whether or not this time we are spending, is time well spent.  Last night I browsed how some other people have implemented the project and I read over Kate Petty's Google Presentation that she shared at the same conference (Kate Petty's 20 Time in Education).  Although there are some common themes between the two presenters and how they ran the project, Ms. Petty incorporates the notion of "Genius Hour" for the first quarter of her class.  Students use this time to brainstorm, explore, and present their findings on topics that they always had questions about.

I gave my students a couple of weeks to figure out a project that they wanted to do, but I never really gave them time to research the projects that they were taking on.  I wanted students to just jump into the project, but in my haste, I didn't build in time for them to become experts or even somewhat versed in the area they are toiling in to prepare themselves.  I think that the really good students did this instinctively, but I know that some have only scratched the surface of research.

After Thanksgiving break, we will spend some time on research and figuring out how to make our projects better.  Students that are doing reviews on restaurants and movies could surely benefit from looking at reviews on Yelp or Rotten Tomatoes.  Students creating videos could learn from watching Youtube videos on editing, shooting, adding effects.

Ms. Petty also dedicates a quarter to becoming a "Presentation Ninja."  This is a thorough exercise in studying what makes someone a good presenter.

I give a two-minute lesson on not reading from the projector screen, but instead address the audience.  I tell them to not have your body all clammed up and look awkward.  I tell them to not write giant paragraphs on their slides, but instead use bullets.

I suppose speaking is one of the four parts of the common core and language in general and after seeing some poor presentations, this will be something that I'm going to address as we move forward not only during our 20 Percent Time.  I think it will be well worth the time, because being able to speak well and communicate verbally, with your body movements, and gestures will open the doors to a lot of things.

Returning to the students' presentations, I was mostly impressed.  The 11th graders did a far better job presenting.  One year of experience in high school is like 5 regular years.  They are so much more mature and responsible than my 10th graders.

One group is creating a Role Playing Game.  When the student presented, she talked about learning to code so that she can create the game to become a computer game.  What???  I had no idea some students were going to these lengths to work on their projects.  I've included their presentation below.
Making an RPG

Finally, this blog has been so helpful for me to reflect on not only what my students are doing for this project, but what I'm doing.

Hope you're finding this helpful.  Thanks for reading.

Week 12 - You don't burn out from going too fast, but being bored going so slow

You don't burn out from going too fast. You burn out from going too slow and getting bored.
Cliff Burton 

So in searching quotes about fast and slow, feeling like that is how my students are working on the project I found the quote above.  I think it captures the essence of how the students approach the project.

The students that are passionate about their project work, collaborate, discuss, and create.  The students not working are the ones that are bored with their project, not fired up, or just plain apathetic.  The funny thing about it though is that they chose their own projects.

One group launched their letter writing campaign by delivering letters to teachers asking them to share with their students to write a Christmas letter to soldiers abroad.  They are teaming up with a group called A Million Thanks.  

Another group created a Google Form and asked me to have my classes fill out the survey so they can have some data about the students and their health here at Savanna.

The projects got me thinking about where students should be in relation to other students.  One student is working on restoring an antique rifle.  That is a project that is going to take sometime, the finished product being the restored rifle.  Some groups have taken on projects where they review, music, food, and movies.  This is an on-going project.  So I'm wondering what the end products will be when groups are doing such disparate things.

Perhaps next week's presentations on their progress will uncover the answers that I'm seeking.

One housekeeping note, I walked all of my students using Blogger to choose "No" in "Show word verification."  I've commented on every blog this year at least once I've had to put in those cryptic codes to prove I'm not a robot.  I'm pretty sure I'm not a robot.  This will save me a lot of time and will keep what little patience I have in tact.

Thanks for reading.  Until next time.