Student Reflection.

This student was chronically late every morning.  I was teaching Information Technology in the first period which meant a 8:00 start and a early morning bus ride.  Because of this the student was almost always late and sometimes not even bothering.   I was trying to motivate her to come early, trying to do a hook that would make her want to go through the extra effort of getting up early (and not for pay!!) and be awake enough to learn.  I tried Photoshop with personal pictures, web designing (absolute dismal failure with her) and along came Genius Hour (20%) every Friday.

The first challenge was to get her to come on a Friday (our Genius Hour Day), and when that didn't work, talking to her about Genius Hour when she did show up.  I kept explaining her options, discussing her interests, and what was possible for her to try that would be of interest to her as well as what I could support in my classroom as her mentor.  In the end she shows Audacity, a program that lets you edit music and has a manual on the website.  Once she saw what the program was capable of, once she had success right away in editing a song, that was it.  The power of SUCCESS, the look on her face when she realized she could accomplish something was priceless.

The power of Genius Hour transferred over from Genius Hour slow but steady successes to the rest of her work.  It was amazing to watch.  She not only started to do work in Photoshop, but she also was doing 110% in effort that was reflected in her work.  She wanted one on one help, but she paid attention, she listened, she came to class.  To assess her  learning I observed she teaching a friend who also was not highly motivated.  It was almost like the movie "Pass it on", students teaching students.

Most people talk about the motivation of choosing what you want to learn, or "Passion Learning" (http://www.passionforlearning.org explains their philosophy on this means of learning and I concur) .  But although I witnessed was the phenomena of "Passion for Learning",  mostly I believe it was the  success of knowing "I did that, I'm capable, I'm smart".

Realizing that you are capable of anything as long as you try is a lesson that is priceless.

Genius Hour:

To be honest when my teacher Mrs. P had brought up the idea of genius hour I was kind of like what the h*@l is she talking about this sounds so stupid, I don’t think I’ll be interested nor have any fun doing this. Eventually my partner and I had to pick an idea and I’ve always thought about how music is a big part of my life and I don’t go a day without listening to it, so I thought why not learn how to remix music myself because I usually listen to remixed music rather the original song anyways. So my teacher had downloaded audacity for us and I honestly had no idea what I was doing the first couple of days we had the chance to work on our project. I felt like it was way too confusing at one point, but there was a manual to help you and clips to teach you how to use audacity which made it a lot easier towards the end. I loved discovering new things about audacity, things I never thought I would even learn, for an example how to crop a certain part of a song, adding two or more songs and making it one remix, using effects and making it your own style. There was days where my partner and I would get frustrated because some things wouldn’t work out the way we wanted it too, so sometimes I did feel like giving up, but I felt the end result was great and we did remix two songs and made it our own. I would definitely do this project again. 

http://quotesnsmiles.com/life/images-16-socrates-picture-quotes-to-get-you-thinking/ 

What did you enjoy the Most in Genius Hour

“Genius hour is a time to explore and experiment with potential ideas. I discovered with genius hour that some of ideas started out huge and complicated and able to break it down into a simple and easier idea.”  

A great definition from a student of what genius hour is to students.  What did students enjoy most about genius Hour?  This is a summary of their responses.

18 students replied the thing they enjoyed the most about Genius Hour was being able to learn and do their own thing.  One student put it appropriately when he commented the following:

“The freedom to choose whatever I wanted. If I was given a project that I did not want to work on, I would not have done as good of a job, or worked as hard on it. Because Android Development was something that I wanted to do, I was truly interested in finding solutions to problems.”

The 2^nd most common thing mentioned by students was that they enjoyed working with their friends and discussing their learning with friends.

But there were a number of other comments that I found interesting, comments that showed incite into why Genius Hour is great for students.  Here they are below, in the exact words of the students:

• I enjoyed being able to learn and create something that including more than one of my interests. I love computers and working with them but this also gave me a chance to include my skill with music and being able to create something I can call my own.
• Finding resources on a certain information that is needed.
• I enjoyed the learning aspect of this Genius Hour because it was a great learning opportunity for me. It allowed me to pick a project which I wanted to do, rather than being told what to do (Freedom of choice on what you want to learn). Choosing what you want to do ensures that you can work at your own pace to suit your learning. From this Genius Hour, I gained experience of what I can expect in the future in University; learning on your own.
• Working on the video, and getting out of class to take picture, and going around the school taking photos. Overall I did enjoy the time that we were given for Genius Hour.
• Finding out what was wrong and then trying to fix it.
• I liked the change of scenery genius hour brought to the regular in class work. It allowed us to take a break from our everyday activities which ended up being a good experience.
• the fact that I could get marks for trying out something new, something I chose and enjoyed doing :)
• In my opinion on it is that it was boring but not soo boring that i didnt want to do it , i still wanted to learn so i did the work not because i had to because i wanted to
• I enjoyed working on writing articles making me feel like a hockey analysis
• That we got to learn by ourselves and whatever problem that we ran into, we had to figure our way out by ourselves.
• How we had the option to pursue our own goals and ideas during class to promote learning on our own time, which I found inspiring.
• What I enjoyed most about genius hour was we could learn and do something that we wanted to do. Also that we could work with partners. That made it so much more enjoyable.

In summary I would like to quote a student once more.  The student’s comment made all the effort

worth it, from setting up this section of my Information Technology Course, to the “Celebration of Learning” we had from 7:00 – 8:30 where students presented and showed their work, to all the reading and feedback of their blog entries.  Here is a moment to remember in my career:

“I created something I never would have imagined and never thought about. I had never expected that I could do this. It never crossed my mind that I could be able to create something just from scratch to then branching it out and expanding it to create something that could be useful for certain people to use in the future if it was really useful. I got my idea after a few days of thinking hard and getting opinions from people which then created my genius hour project. Thanks to genius hour I never would have thought about this and created it. But if I were to do genius hour again I would have decided to do it on something else, but since this was a quick idea that came to my head I didn't get to expand much on it. But then again I had no idea what I was going to do until I got opinions from others.”

What my Students learned in Genius Hour

I've gone through the survey of the students' assessment of Genius Hour (last blog entry).  Here is a list of what the students themselves say they have learned.  Here is your test.  Tell me which are Grade 9/10 students and which are from my Grade 11/12 students.  The list of which # is in which grade is listed below:

Here is a short summary of what I learned and/or created at genius hour.

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1. We created a minecraft server for this genius hour and because of some limitations at school we had to resort to working at our home to make all this work.
2. With the project I worked on music composition which is creating different forms of music with looping and notes. I learned lots of information about different types whether classical or techno, it became a learning curve every step of the way. What I created was a song that has almost every type of music genre within the program i used, Mixcraft.
3. What we learned was too find out ways too fix the red ring of death for xbox 360.
4. I learned that fundraising is no joke.  To fund raise, there are a lot of preparation to do.  I can't imagine how much time and effort it'll take to fund raise thousands of dollars.
5. For Android Development, I ran into the issue of a certain section of code not working, despite the tutorial on developer.android showing the exact same thing I had. I didn't realize that after eclipse makes all the associations to other files it changes the section of code to make it work.
6. I started out with just an idea about science, but I had no idea about what I was going to do next. After thinking for a few days I got a few ideas from a classmate about how I was going to elaborate on the topic science, she suggested why don't you try putting it online or something. Then I asked the teacher about what I could try doing with my idea after explaining about it to her. She suggested me some websites, but for some of them there was only a free trial and for the whole thing you had to pay. So I told the teacher that and she gave me some other websites to try, plus she showed me some of her work on her websites that she created. And that helped me more about my own genius hour. Then I went to some of the websites that she suggested, and I particularly liked one of the website so I started using it and I collected more ideas to put into the main idea. That was after she taught me how to use the website, but the only problem that I had was how I was going to present my work. But now I asked the teacher again and she told me to answer the questions on her website and just show my work on the website I went on, and then explain why.
7. In Genius Hour I created an umbrella that was meant to be handsfree and sturdy enough to withstand wind and relatively comfortable for everyone to use but turned out to be something a bit different. For the umbrella I managed to make the umbrella sturdy enough but it really made the umbrella uncomfortable to wear or use.
8. I've learned how to use Premier Pro.   I've learned how to make my own slideshows, cut unwanted parts of the video, make my own mix tape videos.
9. I learned many things from Genius Hour this year from the problems, challenges, and the mistakes I made. I learned more about how the Surrey Servers work since my software would not function properly using the server. The program would work on the administrator account but not any other accounts such as library and the student account. From this, we realized that using the flash drive would be a type of loop whole that would allow us to avoid the problems of the Android Development Tool not working. Furthermore, after finally beginning my programming on Android using Eclipse, I learned that using downloading the Software Development Kit would not work through Library, you had to use either the Administrator account or your student Account. From this, I realized that Library has the least permission on the computer, followed by the student account, then finally (at the top) the administrator account. Followed by this, I learned how Android coding varies from Java coding (which I had experience in). It is definitely more difficult to memorize the code in Android compared to Java. The codes are very different, but the principle of programming stays the same.
10. We made a short video of the school, however we weren't able to finish, but we were able to see what we did wrong, like knowing when to take the picture, taking all the picture at once, being able to take time and made edits in the video, and still being able to finish the picture.
11. What I learn in Genius Hour is that how to use time wisely and how to use After Effects. My group created a stop animation video of a tour of our school. But, we didn't plan out correctly and we need to get it done soon. After all this we also learned to plan out to talk to teacher for when they are free or when we can use their rooms at a certain time.
12. During the course of genius hour we learned that more time and effort needs to be put into the planning of the video because we ended up not having time to finish due to the lack of planning. If we had planned better we would have known that there was going to be Christmas decorations in the hallway which would prevent us from taking the pictures needed for the movie.
13. I created many things on prezi, i learned that you need teamwork and need to cooperate with each other.
14. I learned how to create a new website using new tools and working on different websites.
15. I learned about the basic features of creating a video in flash. I created a fighting scene with two guys by use of motion, meaning I had to go to Photoshop and create copies of various several body parts of the guys so I could move them. From there, I just created a fight scene with swords, magic, and even summons.
16. I learned how electricity is created, how 3-d printers work, I learned about different minerals and what they do, And I made prizes on them.
17. I learn about how to use the program Scratch from MIT.  One of the things I learned was how the tools work . An example in order to make a ball bounce.   I would have to get the right tools and combine them together.
18. At Genius Hour I created multiple photo shop documents and got advice and lessons from a teacher that does photoshop everyday, using the feedback I learnt and used that and made more docs.
19. I Learnt the basics of flash gaming, we made a game but we never got the time to get started on adding  the scripts
20. I learned how to manage a website like tsn.ca and nhl.com, how they update there site every day and how it really just takes one long day to set up the site then after that its easy. I also learned how to graph on excel and use it for articles on our website
21. In genius hour i learned how to program for making an app and some of the things i learned that you have to be very precise to accomplish programming  or else you will keep running into obstacles.
22. Photoshop, Sony Vegas , Adobe After effects
23. Not much...
24. In genius hour I learned a bit of stuff about programming. It takes a lot of effort and hard work to program an app. If your work is not accurate enough you will run into problems throughout your project.
25. We created a hockey website which would show all the basic need to knows about whats happening in the hockey world. We did something different then all the others tho. We stated a free to play hockey fantasy pool. I learned how to manage the website. use sniping tools, and how to use Photoshop at an advance level.
26. I did a lot of different things during Genius Hour. For the most part I worked with music but it took a bit of time to get there. Originally I tried my luck at apps and such but it did not work out too well.
27. I have learned much about photo shop, from all the tools, to how each picture ever taken has potential to become something better. I have edited and tried to create a wide array of pictures, trying to create different effects and feelings for each picture.
28. I have created a background for a game in Flash. I learned how use the basic tools in flash.
29. To make an app which we did not complete we had to link the programming with the ball and the platform etc. It did not work though because in the programming we wrote the name of the image that it was supposed to be, but i forgot to rename the image. So we started again using the name of the image that we had used.
30. I learned how to use flash and how to import stuff on to it. I also learned how to make a hand move and how to make the head move and dance. Another thing I learned it how to get music playing in the back.
31. Me and my group created an app, but we were not able to complete, because we were busy in winter break so we didn't have time to do the programming, but we did learn how to create an app.
32. I learned how to work with a new website program that I have never used before,  I learned how to put in videos and pictures,  I learned how to add new tabs and learned how to add pictures into your main page.
33. I learned how to add bass to songs together and i also learned how to fade music in and out
34. At first I tried to make a game with a group of people then not everyone was working so we decided to split up and then I tried making a game on a separate website however that seemed to easy so currently I am working on finishing making some flash games such as pong.
35. I learned to put one song into another. Mixing many songs and making them combined into one
36. What I learned is that even if two Xbox 360's have three red rings, it does not mean they both have the same problem. I found this out when one of our Xbox's was fixed but we couldn't fix the other using the same method.
37. I learned how to use different skills to build this product and I also ordered parts from a different country to cut cost and save money. I also learned how to be self motivated and work hard all on my own.
38. I had fun and I worked hard
39. I learned that xbox's are weird and hard to fix and almost every one that is broken has something different that is wrong with it

Who's who:

Grade 11/12:  1 – 12, 29, 36 - 39

Grade 9/10:  13 – 28, 30 – 35,