there's a movement happening right now
in classrooms all over the country that
encourages students to explore their own
passions and creativity students at all
grade levels will be engaged like never
before
I present to you genius hour this is
where student passions come to life
genius hour has many roots but is based
on a business practice that Google uses
with their development team they allow
their developers to spend 20% of their
time at work on projects that interest
them provided that it has the potential
to advance the company the idea is
simple allow employees to focus on their
own passion projects and productivity
will go up there are many commercial
projects that have been developed by
these 20% projects including Gmail
Google Talk and Google News fortunately
for students educators have grasped onto
the idea and coined the term genius hour
this is where teachers allow students to
work on whatever project they want
during their own learning time we have
all had students in our class that
aren't motivated by the traditional
school environment the beauty of genius
hour is that it provides a path to
intrinsic motivation when students have
a say in their learning they become much
more engaged their confidence is boosted
an entire learning process becomes you
guessed it fun I have three rules for
genius our projects the first rule is
there must be a driving question the
student needs to be able to communicate
what they want to learn about if we can
go out and find the answer on Google
with a quick search then the question is
going to need some tweaking secondly the
project must involve research student
wants to build a model rocket that goes
200 feet in the air and they need to
provide the resource they use for that
project the last part is that the
project must be shared ideally the
project needs to be shared not only with
a class but shared with the entire world
some example projects that I had on my
sixth grade classroom that turned into
really great projects were to students
that learn to code at code Academy comm
one girl developed her drawing skills by
creating a sketch book all about wolves
and yet another student brought
awareness to the dangers of smoking by
creating a website genius our is one of
the most impactful things that I've done
in my classroom and the students love it
it also makes for a great after-school
program or activity period project if
you'd like to learn more about genius
hour please visit the website genius our
comm I've posted many articles about
topics that you'll likely have questions
about including where do I find the time
for it how do I propose the idea to my
administration as well as a few video
interviews with other genius our
teachers unleash your students
creativity give them genius our
you