The end of the school year is quickly approaching, but we took one more leap at Innovation Projects this spring. The last time we did these projects, I was extremely frustrated by Microsoft's Teacher Notebook, as I tried to force it to do something it wasn't created to do. This time around, I used OneNote Class Notebook and was much happier. Everything was much better organized and I could check work more efficiently and with much less hassle. If you are in a OneDrive school, I highly suggest this tool for your Genius Hour projects. I'd be happy to walk through the specifics with you. I also introduced my sixth graders to Sway (a newer piece of the Office Suite) and you'll see some Sway presentations in action below. As it is, I wanted to get right to the student projects -- the true highlight reel. Here are the best of the best. Enjoy! Learn how to cook an over easy egg from this sixth grader.
Here is a Sway presentation about American Sign Language. Two fifth grade girls teamed up to create this video about the Civil War.
This sixth grade girl created a quiz about dogs on Emaze. I never heard of Emaze before these projects, but I really like what I've seen from this tool! This fifth grade girl taught her class about sign language on her video.
Here is a 6th grade boy who wanted to hack an iPhone charger.
This fifth grader taught us how to make a birdhouse.
I had never heard of EOS life hacks before this sixth grader suggested it for her project.
Click the link to see a Google slide show about how computers work created by a fifth grade boy.
It was a great year working with these innovators, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them grow, learn, and create this year. I'm so glad I started Genius Hour projects in my elementary computer classes and look forward to keeping this tradition alive in future years!
Last week, I wrote a post about my upper elementary Genius Hour projects. In that post I mentioned that I still had a number of presentations to watch. Now that the dust has settled and nearly all students have presented, I have a few more things to show off for you.
This fourth grade girl learned how to make exploding fish (a new recipe for me) and demonstrated at home via video.
This sixth grader would like to be a triathlete one day. so she created this Haiku Deck about how to train for a triathlon.
Here is a fifth grade girl who asked her dad to teach her how to play guitar. The result is this video.
This sixth grade boy created a stop motion video about Jesus walking on the water. I love the waves in the video!
Who will win the Rodent Race? This sixth grader pitted two family pets against each other in a maze. Find out who will win!
Here is a great stop motion video teaching us how to make an origami star.
Thanks for watching! What have you been doing with Genius Hour in your class?
As an elementary computer teacher, I see my students for about 50 minutes a week. While I love the idea of Genius Hour in my classes, I find it hard to implement a "traditional" Genius Hour model with my students, so I developed a "Genius Nugget" concept. This is the second time this year we have dedicated roughly four weeks of classes to student innovations. Read below as I interview myself about the process.
You already did these projects in the fall. Did you make any changes in the project for the winter?
Yes, I made a few changes based on the outcomes of the fall projects. I recognized that most of our projects before were fact-based and not truly innovations. So for this round, they had to learn a new skill or build something new. Likewise, I realized that far too many students created a PowerPoint and didn't try to stretch themselves with their presentations. That made me ban all PowerPoints, forcing a lot of videos. We also so a number of Haiku Decks, Educreations videos, and a couple web sites.
I also made some organizational changes, but I don't really want to talk about those.
What were those changes? It's OK to share.
Well, with 61 students doing these projects at one time, I wanted one central place to collect, assess, and return student work. Microsoft has a great tool called Teacher Dashboard that does this. I love Teacher Dashboard for most assignments. As long as the assignment doesn't need to come back to the teacher a second time, TD works like a charm. However, I quickly came to realize that this is a horrible tool for Genius Hour. I essentially wanted students to use the same document to communicate with me each week. I thought TD would help us cycle back and forth between student and me, over and over. Nope. It was a hopeless mess and wasted countless hours on my part. In the end, I was collecting work in any possible means, negating my original goal of having a super organized workflow.
In the end, this was a great way to remind my students that failure is a part of innovating. You learn from your mistakes and move on, improving all the time.
Let me add that the folks at Microsoft are wonderful. I had two separate people listen to my problems and tried to help me salvage the mess. I was really impressed with how much they were willing to help me out. Microsoft has come a long way in listening to teacher needs.
What were some of your more interesting project ideas?
I must say that "learn a new skill" was not an easy concept for some students to understand. One boy wanted to talk about how many touchdowns a particular NFL player scored, then bopped to another similar idea, and so on. I found myself saying, "What new skill will you learn?" quite often. It was hard for some students to nail down a good idea.
What I didn't want was to create a lot of work for parents. However, I had one family that learned to ski. Another (6th grade) girl decided she wanted to learn how to drive. After her driving lesson, she switched gears and went with using a green screen. We had a few cooking demonstrations. We had students teaching themselves French, Japanese, and German. Overall, it was a great experience for most of them.
How did parents react to this project?
Surprisingly, I got absolutely ZERO negative reaction to the projects this time around. Due to our technical difficulties, I had a lot of parent interaction, and everything was very positive. This is a unique project idea, and I think students and parents alike appreciate the ability to pursue something of interest to the student. It's a lot of work, but it's work the student enjoys doing... and we trick them into learning too.
And, tell me what teacher wouldn't want an email like this?
And thank you! He really enjoyed it and worked on it passionately because he had fun doing it. As he practiced his presentation last night he said he was really glad he got to do projects like this. I know it is a lot of work for you, thank you for making the investment.
What did you learn through this process?
I learned quite a bit, actually.
Obviously, I've already mentioned my Teacher Dashboard issues and learning that that OneNote Class Notebook is a better tool for this job.
I learned (or maybe re-learned) I need to be more proactive when looking over the shoulder of studying students. Some kids can work independently and come up with an amazing product. Others need more guidance, and I can't rely on them to come to me for help. I had a student who restarted his project two times before his parents had to intervene with just days left before the due date. It's easy to get swept up in the work that goes with 60+ projects, but it does me no good if I can't sit down next to a student to give him a hand.
Another issue a lot of families had was getting a video off of their phone or iPad and to me. Those files are too big to email, so we had to brainstorm some alternatives. When I'm done with this interview, I'm going to make a list of ways to transfer video from phone to teacher. I'll make this part of the standard "paperwork" I give to students at the start of a project.
I also learned how hard students can work. Once the project got rolling, I was amazed at how well the students settled in. There were no disciplinary problems, because students were into the project. I realized once again, that Genius Hour is such a great way for students to grow academically while also chasing down passions they have in their lives.
Are there any projects you would like to share with the readers?
I have quite a few of them I'd love to share. At this point, I still need to hear another 20 or so presentations, but here are the best of them so far.
This 6th grade student wanted to learn about archaeology as a potential career path and taught himself how to create a Prezi in the process.
This fourth grader explored iMovie by making a silent movie.
This fourth grade girl documented her journey learning competitive cheer this year by creating a video.
This fourth grader learned about stop motion on his iPad and used iMovie to add music. While the bulk of his video is a good anti-bullying video, I thoroughly enjoyed his dancing stickmen at the end.
This is the cutest French lesson you ever get, by a lively fourth grader.
Learn about great moments and great players in baseball history from this web site.
Here is a fifth grader who created a cardboard track in his living room and showed us how he tested in with his R/C car. Enjoy!
These three fifth grade girls worked together to learn how to make chocolate. Then, they each recorded their own videos in their own kitchens. Welcome to Food Network, ladies.
Wow! That is some great learning your kids did. Thank you for showing off their work!
Hey, you're welcome. I'm hoping to get another group of presentations ready to show off about this time next week. There are still some good things coming.
In preparation for next week's round table discussion about Genius Hour, I have curated some of our best Innovation Projects into this museum. Wander through the links and leave comments for the students.
Each student was given 3-5 minutes to talk about and show off their project. (The exception would be the group of three. They were given permission to go for 10 minutes.) Overall, I was impressed by what they could accomplish in a short amount of time.
Of course, I have reflections on the whole process.
I really wanted to focus on the inquiry model discussed in A More Beautiful Question. When I read about The 5 Whys and the Why-What If-How progression I knew I had a winning way to get students thinking on a different level. I'm still convinced of that. However, I think the way I went about it didn't spark a lot of higher level thinking or new innovations. I think I just created a need hoop for them to jump through on the way to the project. I need to reconsider how to make that work in the future.
I used OneNote Class Notebook to run this class. It was a gem. Everything was in one place. All I had to do was open the notebook, and everything I wanted and needed was there. I didn't have to hunt for emails or remember where the notes were. Everything was in one notebook. I will definitely use it again.
However, I will say that the notebook was easy to manage because I only had 7 students. I think it could feel more cumbersome if I had 20 or more students.
I need to be more proactive checking on student work. For instance, take the Destiny video made by the three guys. I originally declined the project because Destiny is a first person shooter game. They assured me it would be just characters and no weapons, so I approved it. Apparently, we didn't communicate properly. Their presentation included grenades and other weaponry. If I was spending more time looking over shoulders I would have seen that before the presentation.
Overall, it was a great week. There was a lot of learning that happened, and I loved their enthusiasm. Bring on the next project!
"I'm frustrated because I don't think my site will be done in time."
"Do I send my video to you?"
"What kind of motor are you using?"
"What is the level of noise I'm allowed to make? I have to try this out, and it might be loud."
I love this kind of talk! For three days they worked, researched, typed, drew, and kept their focus. You can tell that the projects are coming to a climax. These students are talking about it, sharing it, and I couldn't be happier.
That was such a non-creative post title. Sorry about that.
Today is Day 3 of our Innovation Projects. (You can read the nitty gritty of this project here.) I will say that this project started with a few twists and turns from our previous projects.
I'm used to seeing students work on their projects for one class period on Friday. This has been more intense, with two and a half hours every day! What that means is as I type this (about an hour into Wednesday) we have a month and a half worth of work smashed into 2+ days.
Frankly, Monday and Tuesday were boring for me. The students were focused on their work with very little interaction. The only real conversation was from the group of three boys who are working on a project together. Even they were pretty quiet. However, the projects are starting to take shape and students are starting to share.
Take the boys in the picture below. (It's not the best picture, but I tried to be stealthy.) The two boys on our right -- Will and Lucas -- are working on similar projects, remote control cars/robots. They have been watching videos of other similar projects and comparing notes on their creations. The boy on our left is Nathan. He is creating his own video game on YoYo Games. As Will and Lucas compared their notes, Nathan shoved his laptop in front of Will. Next thing you know, Will is playing Nathan's game. Pure Genius!
This is J-Term. We have students all over this school and our community doing really fun stuff. We have classes playing Ultimate Frisbee and basketball, cooking, doing service projects, volunteering at a cat shelter -- fun and not mentally taxing activities. Then, we have us. Slaving in front of computers, learning quietly, and creating. I almost feel guilty, but I remember these kids signed up for it... and it is the class of their choice. However, take this group of guys hanging out in the back of the room. They are working on creating a gaming video together. They. Assigned. Themselves. Homework.
This young lady has been in constant work mode all week, creating her own web site about Greek mythology. So, what did she do? Went out and got honest to goodness books (made out of paper, no less) to learn the mythology needed for her site.
I am excited about the learning going on in this room this week.
I'm also experimenting with OneNote Classroom Notebook, and I'm pleased with the results so far. I gave each student a section called "Workspace" which is exactly what it sounds like. I figured it would go largely untouched, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Nathan actually stash his ponderings there. I got to see the characters he created on Paint and some of the plans he had for for his plot. For some unknown reason he deleted his work after one day, but -- well -- it is his work.
In retrospect I wish I had included a rubric section for each student in their notebook. I could have made an Excel spreadsheet that kept them updated on their scores each day. I'll definitely include that in the future.
Overall, I'm pleased with the direction this round of projects is heading and can't wait to see the final products on Friday.
Yesterday was my last Tools for Tech class with my middle schoolers. Since this class won't be happening next year, it may be my last Innovation Project for a while. I was really proud of these projects. The kids put in a lot of hard work and turned in some awesome final products. Please check them out and let me know what you think. Connor showed us how to earn staffs in Black Ops 2.
Jacob and Cooper created their own MineCraft world and player versus player game. Watch their split screen video as they play against each other!
Daniel, Matthew, and Waite created a video story in which you decide the course of the story.
Kate continued her Revolutionary War Blog from last quarter.
Justin figured out how to fix his Empire State Building on MineCraft, but he didn't share his presentation with the world. Bummer! Dominic created a web site about Dominque Wilkins.
Drew and Sam created a castle in MineCraft that has a disco room! Sadly, they didn't make their presentation available to share.
The other day, my principal dropped this article about 20% time projects in my mailbox. The school mentioned is a mere half hour from where I sit right now, so it was interesting to hear about some "local talent" doing great things.
Then, something akin to jealousy crept into my spirit. "That could have been my class highlighted like that." Yes, I'm ashamed that I wanted a corner of the spotlight, but I guess that's my human nature waltzing around inside.
So, since a newspaper didn't come to write an article about us, I thought I'd have us write the article. If you are interested, you can see the instructions here. However, the real joy is reading some of the actual articles linked below.
As we enter the fourth quarter, my middle school students are embarking upon their next Innovation Project. This will be their second round of innovation, so they are familiar with the process. I gave them three options this time around.
Create a totally new project, based on what someone else did or another idea that popped into their heads.
Continue their previous project. They had to convince me they would learn a new skill along the way and dramatically increase the size of the previous project.
Work in groups on the same project. They had to convince me that the project would be large enough to constitute multiple students and they would have plans for conflict resolution.
Here are the projects will be working on this marking period.
Kate will continue her Revolutionary War blog, doubling her posts and adding video to the blog.
Cooper and Jacob will use MineCraft to create a PvP arena. (I gather that PvP = person vs person).
Connor will create a tutorial for playing Black Ops 2 Zombies, specifically talking about getting and using staffs. (I really feel out of touch with current gaming.)
Daniel, Waite, and Matthew will create an interactive video on YouTube. In theory, viewers will be able to select different videos to help create the plot of a story.
Dominic will create a website about basketball legend Dominique Wilkins.
My middle school technology wrapped up their latest Innovation Projects this past week. Since this is a semester course, it was their first round of innovating. Since I love to showcase student work on this blog, please click the links as you are interested!
Waite used his Lego skills to create a Star Wars stop motion video. He admitted to me in the proposal stage that he was familiar with stop motion, but he wanted to learn how to edit and insert sounds. Kate wanted to learn about the Revolutionary War and presented that knowledge in her first ever blog. She did a great job of including pictures, quotes, and her own narrative. Connor has taken my class before and his first Innovation Project was a web site displaying his graffiti art. This project was another web site about another hobby -- knife flipping. He included videos of his tricks plus lots of text about the tricks and the history of the knife brand he uses. Daniel started this project with the goal of creating his own video game using C++. It wasn't long into the project that he realized he was in over his head and we shifted the focus. He is now enjoying teaching himself Java and will eventually grow into the bigger stuff. He created a video to show off his newfound skills. Dom is sports monster. I would not be surprised if you hear his name in college and pro ranks down the road. He took his love of sports and created a highlight reel of our school's middle school football team. Drew has also taken this class. Last year, he created his own song on Garage Band. This year, he wanted to try his hand at MineCraft. Actually, he used an app called Eden that I'm not familiar with and recreated MetLife Stadium, where the New York Giants and Jets play football. Sam wanted to learn MineCraft and did so by creating a pyramid with a maze inside to hide the treasure. He ran into some troubles, mainly because he built the pyramid in the air. His final project include a few smaller pyramids around the main one, and I must say it looked great overall. Justin also wanted to learn MineCraft and attempted to build the Empire State Building. Sadly, he learned a lot about MineCraft crashing on him. He wound up with no final product to show us, but talked about the things he did accomplish and learn. I tried to encourage him that sometimes bad things happen and what counts is how we learn from them. Jacob has had some MineCraft experience but really wanted to branch out. He created his own working amusement park. (Keep in mind that I had a group of four students do this project last semester.) His final presentation was a video taking us through the amusement park. The video is awesome, and I'll link it here when I finally get it uploaded to YouTube. Cooper walked us through a video game called Killer Instinct. Obviously, with a name like this, I was concerned about promoting violent video games within the school context. We agreed on a T for Teen version and to keep the violence to a minimum. Cooper did not want his work posted online, but he talked us through the history of the game and some playing tips, then presented a video showing us how to play the game. Matthew did something similar playing a game called Skyrim. His final project was to talk to us about the history of the game, show some playing tips, and walk us through a video of how to play the game (keeping the violence to a minimum). Overall, I'm quite proud of these students for the hard work they put into these awesome projects. I hope you enjoy them. Feel free to drop them a note on their product, or send me a message, to tell them how awesome they were!
Justin has been working merrily on rebuilding the Empire State Building on MineCraft during his Innovation Project time. With one week before the due date, he came to me to tell me it's gone.
I know nothing about MineCraft, so I can't help him. I have questions. Can you help me with answers?
Is this typical?
How does this happen?
Is it possible to retrieve his project?
How do we fix it?
Thanks for your help! Justin thanks you for your help!
Daniel's original plan for his Innovation Project was to write a game using C++. If that sounds ambitious to you, I totally agree. I didn't want to squash his enthusiasm, so I let him run with it but gave him an out if he wanted it.
Eventually, his plan was to explore Java and it's just right for him. He is constantly sharing his new programs with me. AND his enthusiasm has never wavered. Here is his latest Innovation Update.
I wrote more programs! I learned how to get user input. I learned how to display that user input. And I learned a whole bunch of other stuff! I wrote a program that says hi to your name (ex. Hello Daniel.) I wrote a program that repeats what you say. I wrote one that gives you the amounts of stars you ask for and has a basic line wrapping function. I think my presentation may just be me showing off what I've done and how it works. I have a program that makes it really easy to do that. I'm nowhere near being able to create a game with it, so I'm glad I didn't stick with that.
I love it! How are your students showing enthusiasm for what they are learning?
Sam's Innovation Project is to create a pyramid with a maze to Pharaoh's loot inside the maze. He included two pictures in his update, and I'm really excited to see his final product.
However, there is a problem. Something about the roof of the world and floating in air. I'm quite MineCraft illiterate. Is there anyone out there who can help Sam solve his problem?
I ran into my biggest fear. I had made my pyramid in the sky so I could get a flat area. But the pyramid was to tall and hit the roof of the world. And it was right after I had finished the maze. I am stuck in deciding to start over or just make that a open top to look through for my presentation.
It's a new semester, which means a new round of middle school technology students... and new Innovation Projects.
We started simply with students spending Wednesday and Thursday thinking about project ideas. We talked about how much of school, students are forced to learn about things they are not interested in. While we hope students learn to care about such things... well... you know. I promised them one hour a week when they get to learn about what they want to learn about. I got excited as I talked about my passions of adoption, gardening, and writing, and wishing I had more time to devote to them. (Maybe I should write an iBook while they work.)
I had them read through this document and this one too to get their brains rolling. Then, we exchanged emails back and forth taking their ideas and crafting them into something they could feasibly accomplish and we could track measurable growth.
As I worked on contracts today, the students worked diligently. I did not have to get on them one time about behavior. Everyone was working on their project!
Once a student and I agreed on the project and the goals, I printed out two copies of a contract. We each signed the copies and kept them for future reference.
Here are the projects we'll see in action this quarter:
A website dedicated to basketball (including pics and videos).
A website dedicated to cats (including an informational page).
A video montage of sports clips, including original Dubstep music as the soundtrack.
A website dedicated to Balisong flipping. (Don't try this at home, kids!)
My middle school Tools for Tech class decided that their 2nd quarter Innovation Project would be a MineCraft version of an amusement park. They originally decided to recreate Kings Island (a major amusement park north of Cincinnati) but then changed their mind to create their own rides.Somewhere along the line they switched from MineCraft to Tekkit, which they tell me is a version of MineCraft.
Overall, the project seemed to go really well. They spent Fridays huddled around a laptop, planning and getting things done. They logged on to the project at the same time at home and used Skype to communicate to each other. A virus attacked their park toward the end and they worked together to fix the problems and recover the rides that were destroyed.
We agreed that their presentation would take me on a tour of their amusement park and put me on the rides. I also asked them to share it with me in a way that I can share it with you. If you have 10 minutes or so, click the video below and enjoy the rides.
I think this was a great project for a few reasons.
1. They did something they are interested in. MineCraft and amusement parks? What teenager these days doesn't love these?
2. They created. That's the point of this project to give them room and time to create something really cool.
3. They worked together. Face-to-face interaction, working online, and talking on Skype. They had to learn to cooperate and deal with different work ethics and schedules.
School is a place where students learn. They walk through the front doors needing a few more skills and a bit more information, and we go about our day finding ways to impart these things to them. Regardless of our philosophy of education and the models and methods we use, I think we can all agree to this.
I find it amazing that I expect my students to figure things out so quickly and easily. I'm OK with them being befuddled for a while. Confusion means learning will take place. I'm just afraid I expect students to pick it up faster than they may be ready and retain it longer than is feasible.
I read this article about the US government's Obamacare* web site debacle, and it made sense. When techies build a new tech tool, we expect there to be bugs in the system. How many people waited a few days to update to iOS7 for that reason? It would be nice if everything worked seamlessly when a new site goes live, but is that a reasonable request? I suppose we could argue that these are professionals, paid lots of money to build something, so it should work. But is it safe to say that it takes many live users to see a new tools real capabilities?
Part of learning is making mistakes. Sometimes you have to try something to see if it works. When it doesn't, you learn from that mistake, tweak things and try again. Schools don't always give students that opportunity. We are constantly moving from one objective to the next at breakneck speed to cover the book/standards/goals for the year. And that makes it hard for students to acquire skills they missed along the way.
When I learned how to play basketball, I had to miss a lot of shots before I learned how to put the ball in the hoop. I had to let a lot of guys score on me before I learned how to play defense. Certainly, no one would expect a third grader to get out there and play on an NBA skill level**.
That's why I love my Innovation Projects and Genius Hour in general. Students have time try new things. It's OK to fail, if only to learn from that mistake and move on. The goal is growth, not perfection. I just love this post about a high school student who is trying to learn guitar genres; this guy got the idea.
Sadly, school isn't always Genius Hour and Innovation Day. As teachers, the trick is finding ways for students to explore and experience failure on the way to learning.
The more I think about my school's foray into Accelerated Math, I'm thrilled with the prospects.This may not be "teaching above the line" of the SAMR model, but students will have a real chance of reviewing mastered skills and relearning missed skills. As students' math skills improve we hope to see an increase in the success levels of higher math and better logical thinking.
The question every teacher needs to ask is how do we help students recover from failure to turn it into a success? I'd love to hear your stories.
*Rare Political Aside: I don't normally engage in political conversations, but I do feel the need to mention that I am completely against Obamacare. As a person who has spent much too much time in hospitals lately, health care is too expensive. I just don't see how the new plan is going to help my bank account. However, that's not the point of this post. **Not So Rare Self-Slam: The only way I was ever even close to consideration to play in the NBA was in my dreams... and such sweet dreams they were.
Yesterday, we ended one Innovation Project and today we started a new one. The guys (I have only 4 students in my class, and they are all boys) have been asking me about doing a group project. So, today I gave them the chance to discuss it.
We started off with a class discussion. They were all interested in the possibility, but there were concerns about group dynamics and such a large percentage of the grade being a group project. (20% of class time = 20% of the grade) I loved how one student put it. "Working together would be more like real life." I could not have said it better myself!
Finally they asked to be able to talk about it without me, and I joyfully stepped aside.
They sat in a corner and brainstormed....
The conversation was all over the place.
Let's do a zombie MineCraft.
Let's make a horror movie!
Let's make Pop Tart guns. (Or maybe I didn't hear that one right.)
Let's not do a group project.
Let's break into two groups.
No, there's not enough technology in that project.
Last year, someone made a...
I generally just sat in the back of the room and listened. Once in a while I'd throw out a thought and watched them deal with it.
The end product sounds really cool!
They are going to create a MineCraft version of Kings Island (our local amusement park). Keep in mind that Mine Craft is blocked at our school, so they knowingly committed to doing extra homework for me. They talked about Skyping each other from home to discuss things and I mentioned using Google Maps for a flyover view of the amusement park. Apparently, they are going to make the rides work, and they plan on taking me on a "rollercoaster" for the final presentation.
Now, I have no idea what the end product will actually look like, but this has potential to be my absolutely favorite Innovation Project so far!
My middle school Tools for Tech class wrapped up their Innovation Projects yesterday. Since this is a technology course, the only major stipulation is that there needed to be a tech angle to the project.
Overall, I liked their projects. I had two music creators (GarageBand and Dubstep), one pixel art drawer, and one web designer. Their final projects were good. Good music. Nice graphics. It was good for 7th and 8th grade work.
I loved that my GarageBand guy put together a Prezi for his presentation and included an Animoto video of his song. My pixel art student did a great job of combining web building with his artwork. There was some good work out there!
However, there is always room for improvement...
I was discouraged that two of my four students "turned in" edit versions of their projects, not something published. As you'll see on the links below, you'll have a hard time observing their work.
We signed contracts at the beginning, but I think they forgot to check the contracts before they finalized things.
You can find the projects below. I'd love any feedback you have for me!
It's a new school year, which means a new round of Innovation Projects. I teach a middle school course called Tools for Technology, which is where I implement my projects. This semester I have a total of four students, which is both sad and exciting. The good news is that I'll be able to give students more input and guidance along the way.
I have two goals this time around to make things better. One, I wanted to start things right by helping students select their projects more wisely. I want the focus to be on creating something to be proud of, not being entertained by something someone else made. Two, I want to be able to model excellence and help scaffold students along the way.
If you click here and here, you'll see the two documents I had students read and interact with to plan their projects. In the past, I merely asked students to think of a technical project they would like to do and write me a proposal paragraph. I accepted just about anything and maybe helped tweak the idea a bit.
This year, I've tried to get them to focus more on something they are passionate about. I also created a contract. I simply took their proposal paragraphs then added my own stipulations. For instance, one student is creating his own song. I added that he would have to write two songs, upload them to YouTube or some such site, then put the links on his blog. I printed out two copies of the contract. We each signed both and kept a copy. Hopefully the students will use their contracts to help guide their projects, and this will also serve as the standard by which I judge the quality and quantity of their work at the end.
Here are the projects we'll be seeing this time around:
Evan -- Creating eight or more pictures using pixel art and putting them on his site. Evan is a return student from last year, and I like that I'm seeing some more creativity on this project than others in the past.
Max -- Creating two songs using Dubstep. Like I stated above, he will upload these to YouTube or a similar music sharing site and put the links on his blog. I'm unfamiliar with Dubstep, so it will be interesting to see where this one goes.
Mason -- Creating his own web site, though I'm not quite sure of the platform or the content. I'm going to be watching over his shoulder to see what he comes up with.
Cole -- I'm not sure yet. You know how that goes.
The second goal I have for this semester's projects is to be a better source of help and encouragement during the projects. The vernacular for that is... I need to get up off my butt and get involved with the kids. I just need to make it a point to spend a couple minutes with each student every Friday to make sure he knows what he's doing rather than wait for someone to ask for help.
I'm excited for this set of Innovation Projects and love the fact that I'll be seeing some creative creations rather than creative consumption this time around.
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