Genius Nuggets Round 1 Wrap Up: Part 2. (Good Stuff)

I recently wrapped up "Genius Nuggets" in my upper elementary computer classes, dedicating a month to students creating projects of their choice and presenting them to their classes.  While the students did good work overall, I did write a reflective blog post talking about things I learned through the process and how to make it better.  Now, I want to turn around and look at the good things that came out of the process. This will be a lot happier.

Good Stuff 1:  Parents learned alongside the kids.  This was not an intended aspect of the project, but it happened. It's the nature of the beast. If kids are doing schoolwork at home, Mom or Dad are watching over what happens... and in this case some learning happened with the adults. My personal favorite was with one young lady who thought she sent me her video. Turns out that she didn't.  Mom had to figure out how to publish it to YouTube to get it to me.  It worked. 

Good Stuff 2: Student passions really came out.  I was impressed with some of the topics that came up, not the trendy fare you may expect from preteens.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Haitian Earthquake of 2010
• How the Internet Works
• Behind the Scenes at the Zoo
• How to Do a Bunny Hop (I needed clarification on this one. It's a bike move.)
• How to Fly a Remote Control Plane
• Learning 10 Words in French

There were a lot of good ideas, but the great thing is that students were motivated because they learned about topics that interested them.

Good Stuff 3:  We got to listen to some excellent presentations and see some good learning.  Here are a handful of the impressive ones.  

• Lego Web Site 
• Waterfall Braid Stop Motion
• Farm Life PowerPoint
• Butterfly Video
• Brickfilm

As the dust settles on this round of projects, I'm already looking forward to the next set of projects coming up in January. I'm so excited to build on this foundation and see students create some truly incredible projects.