Genius hour is when students spend time during the school day exploring their own interests. Students decide upon a project and work towards their end products in the provided amount of time. Depending on the setting and available time from the teacher, this could be one hour a day, an hour a week, or whenever it is able to fit in the schedule. They key benefit of genius hour is that students are in control. They decide upon the topic of interest, the method of research, and final presentation product. When students have this type of decision power, they are far more motivated to succeed. And because it is a topic they care about, they will be practicing proper research, citations, and other ELA aspects while doing something they want to do. To bring the project to an end, students will present their final project to an appropriate audience. This could be the class, where they then can benefit from the information others in the class researched. Students may also find more appropriate audiences based on their topic. If their project was on recycling in the community, city officials may be a more authentic audience.

Some potential setbacks that may arise while implementing genius hour could include the inability to select a project. Some students may not have a passion that they are drawn to immediately. A good way to address this is to have some topics that could be provided for those students to select from. Providing some examples of final work could also be a spark of inspiration. I have also addressed this setback by having small group talk time. This allows students to share their ideas and finalize their selection process. Another setback that could occur is that some students may take advantage of the class time provided and use it as social time or personal time. Teachers need to be direct about the requirements of the project and actively monitor during the work time. A general time frame should be established from the start to ensure that students are reaching at least the bare minimum each session.

From a student thinking mind, I would have loved the opportunity to complete a genius hour project. I have all sorts of ideas running through my head for the projects I could have completed. As a teacher, I can see the ability to get to know my students and their interests. Students are still practicing skills I need them to know, and they are enjoying the work they are doing. This bit of self-guided learning could greatly improve the productivity in the content driven learning.

I have used both google hangouts and skype to connect with educators over the years. During my undergrad experience, I would skype with my professor and education team from time to time to check in. I also have used skype for conferencing calls every Tuesday for a phone bible study I attend with some friends. The tool is very helpful but I prefer google hangouts. I use google hangouts every day to collaborate with my team members and other educators within my school. Zach and I also discussed how both of these tools could be used for a variety of ways within the classroom.

First, in an effort to add more validity to an assignment, we could utilize skype or google hangouts to bring in a professional to discuss some basic information or even to present their final project to for critique. Students could also use these tools to collaborate on group work outside of class. Both tools allow you to share documents, your screen, webcams or just talk. By using these technologies, I would hope to establish a great learning community where students can interact with and support each other. This is currently how my colleagues use google hangouts an it is invaluable. Students would greatly benefit from the same supports.

It would be hard to find a student who didn’t at least know what twitter was. The majority of this generation of students have a better handle on twitter than I ever will. Personally I have not used it twitter. After looking through the course material and researching twitter uses in the classroom, I can see a few ways in which it could be useful. First, the tool is already familiar to students. The familiarity with the tool will ease the assignment and make it feel more personal. I also like that parents can easily become involved or monitor the work being put out. Because it is a tool that students already use, accessibility is not an issue and it would not require a lot of instruction for how to utilize the tool for education. As with any tool, there are pros and cons. Students will have many distractions and information not related to the assignment that can pull them away from the task at hand. There is also a concern with the validity of the information that is being shared and utilized from others. From a parent’s perspective, Some students may not be allowed to use a social networking tool like twitter and would then create a need for an alternative assignment. As far as using twitter for teacher professional growth, I just this week have seen the benefit in this. I could not create a work on twitter in the classroom without finally making an account. I have colleagues who use the tool who I was able to follow and they also made many recommendations for who to follow. I was also able to connect with some of the instructors at the PBLworks conference I was at. This will allow me to gain professional development as I learn from their posts and share the information with my team. I do not see myself using twitter for personal reasons, but I do now see myself utilizing it for professional.

I find flickrs creative commons to be a great place to find photo resources and facts without the worry of copyright infringement. I have had a lesson plan being processed in my mind for a few weeks now on flight. Side note, my lesson plans do not usually take this long to hatch, there has just be very little time for me to solidify any plans.

ES. (2010, September 29). SDASM Archives. AC.Wrig.O.003 Orville Wright Retrieved from https://flic.kr/p/8F3Akp

I found this picture of the wright brother’s first flight. It made me think about not only early and modern day flight, but also the brother’s perseverance and ability to overcome the many obstacles in their way. I plan on using this photo at the start of the year with my project based learning course. In a class discussion, I would ask students to provide me some of the obstacles the Wright brothers had to overcome in order to achieve their goal of flight. We will talk about their failed attempts and prototypes as well. This would then lead into a discussion on their own work and the expectations of them to persevere and problem solve. I will encourage students to fail forward and not quit on themselves even when the tasks seem impossible.

The 10 Minute Teacher Podcast has so many great ideas for implementing project based learning into the classroom. I listened to several of the podcast on Project based learning and found all of them highly resourceful. Here is one called Unconventional Project Based Learning That Engages Students. During the podcast the speaker identifies processes, rationales, and methods for how she utilizes Building outside the Box projects along with how students responded to them. I would not use the podcast in a fashion that was shared with students, but more for professional development, motivation, and ideas. I am creating and implementing my first STEM Project Based Learning course. Listening to the speaker in this video helped me see some procedures that I could use and got me excited about trying new ideas for the benefit of student success.

Collaborative learning environments provide a wealth of ideas, aspects, and knowledge for all individuals. When students feel like they are in control of their learning they are more engaged. The different cultures, experiences, and philosophies are combined into one discussion where peers can learn from each other. For assignments, tasks can be split up where individuals can become specialists of one aspect and then teach their part to the whole. Students may share ideas that could change another’s thinking on the subject. Students benefit from the flexibility of their learning. Because they are more engaged, they are motivated to dive deeper into the material and truly learn, not just remember. They take ownership of their thoughts and build upon the collaboration skills that are needed in the work force. Teachers benefit from collaborative learning as well. The roll of handing out information and asking for it to be presented later is no longer there. Teachers become more of a facilitator. They listen, learn, and ask questions just like the students. They may need to step in from time to time and redirect the conversation, but students become in charge of their own learning and outcomes. As a teacher, this type of learning allows us to know our students more. We can find commonalities that enable better relationships. Students who trust and respect their teachers also want to perform well for them. A collaborative learning environment is welcoming, enriching, and motivating.

Here is a link to my lesson plan where I incorporate social bookmarking into weather prediction. I chose this lesson plan because it was one in which I knew students needed to find creditable resources if they wanted to have an accurate prediction. Students will be working in small groups and utilizing the same couple of resources will make communication and collaboration among the group more seamless which is a great advantage. Students could also share their bookmarking’s with me to allow me to check the credibility of their sources if needed.

A disadvantage of this could be that some students may choose not to contribute to the finding of resources. They could simply sit back and let the other students research and share the information with them. However, this is really a possibility with just about any group activity.   

I do not plan to use a RSS with my students. The learning platform that we utilize at my school has something similar built in. I could see myself using a RSS for personal growth. I enjoy reading and learning about new teaching practices, lessons, and activities. It always gets me excited about trying something new in my classroom. I have subscribed to several different STEM and Project Based learning blogs to look through for some ideas for my new course. The first blog I selected was titled Teachers Are Terrific! A STEM Blog. This blog shared loads of ideas for projects that could be utilized in my classroom. The author, Carol Davis, shared the lessons along with how things went in her class. This is just perfect for judging any changes that may need to take place. It’s like reading amazon reviews before making a purchase. The second and third blogs I subscribed to were Discovery Academy STEM and Discovery Education. These both also shared lesson ideas, but the primary focus was more general. There was information about different celebrations such as Pi Day and summer activities. The blogs both also dove into more of the science of teaching and resources more than just lessons which I enjoyed. One of the posts from May was titles making sense of Learning. I am looking forward to spending more time on these blogs. STEMx is a site that updates with recent and upcoming scientific events in which students can get involved in. It is not so much a blog, but I found it to be a good resource to keep up to date with. Students enjoy working with current material and challenges. Most recently the site is covering the next Mars rover. It would be a great resource for students to explore before designing a model of their own. The last two blog subscriptions were for TED blog and TED education blog. I really enjoy TED talks. I have learned so much from them on all sorts of topics. From simple concepts of how to construct the perfect PowerPoint or mission statement as well as how to developing grit in your students. Of all the resources I subscribed to, I see this being the one that will get the most use.

I found the info page from educator’s technology particularly interesting. There was not a lot of information on the initial page, but you were linked to a slides presentation from a user named seyfert6. The presentation addresses 21 ways in which Edmodo can be used in the classroom. The slides are packed with Ideas and information. The suggestions start off simple with blogs and flat Stanley projects. Students are able to create profiles for relevant figures. I thought this could be a cool way to get students to research some of the founding scientists. They could create a social media account for a historical figure and create posts that would be relevant to that individual. The presentation many numerous recommendations for class activities such as in-class movies, read aloud, enforcing complete sentence structures while removing bad text writing habits. Since Edmodo offers accounts to parents as well, teachers can use this web based tool for communication with both students and parents to send reminders, updates, and encouragement. It also creates a seamless method of contact for parents with questions or concerns. One aspect that I am curious about is connecting with other classrooms. This presentation stated this as an option. I would be curious to see how this worked. I could see utilizing this in a pen pal like setting or virtual field trips. I could also see a fun lesson with creating a scavenger hunt and splitting students into small groups. This hardly puts a dent in the amount of ideas this user has created. You can access the slides using this link, https://www.slideshare.net/seyfert6/20-ways-to-use-edmodo I am confident there will be many ideas sparked while flipping through the slides. https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/21-ways-to-use-edmodo-in-your-classroom.html S. (2013, May 05). 21 Ways to Use Edmodo in your Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/21-ways-to-use-edmodo-in-your-classroom.html

Jason Cunningham describes Edmodo as “Facebook for school” in his Education world article titled How to use Edmodo in the classroom. After a short introduction Cunningham describes in his article how different participants can utilize the tool. Beginning with teachers, he identifies the basic abilities of giving assignments, quizzes and polls to students. Teachers can also embed videos and learning resources. Teachers are also able to monitor rosters and student progress. When choosing a web tool, administrators use is not typically a factor in my selection process. This article dives into the uses that administrators and principals can take advantage of. They can use Edmodo to coordinate data and provide feedback to educators. Student use is crucial. Any tool that a teacher uses has to be easy to use for students. Edmodo is like a social media account that may already be familiar to students. Students can use Edmodo access and turn in assignments and quizzes, seek help from peers, read teacher feedback and also join groups for clubs and other activities. Edmodo is a collaborative environment that keeps students safe and engaged in their academics. The last portion of this article focused in on how parents can use Edmodo to keep up with their student’s assignments, performance, and communications. Parents have the option of creating an account as well without having to access the student’s personal Edmodo account. They can also use the web based tool to communicate with teachers and build upon their own digital citizenship skills. I really liked Cunningham ended his article review on Edmodo. He stated that Edmodo is the “swiss army knife” for educators. https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/how-educators-can-use-edmodo.shtml Cunningham, J. (n.d.). How to Use Edmodo in the Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/how-educators-can-use-edmodo.shtml