I'm so excited, today we're having 20% time and students will create and turn in their project proposals. There are already many students who are well on their way with this project. Starting today, my goal during class time will be to individually conference with as many students as possible in each class.
Individual conferencing is definitely the way to go. Students were asking really great questions and it was awesome for me to have the opportunity to get to see them taking control of their own projects.
Katherine is creating an amazing art portfolio and we talked about ways to measure her success and progress this year.
Get your G.E.E.K. on and learn some computer skills with Junior.
Learn about trains with Paul!
My post-conferencing to-do list:
- Find someone to help with ukelele lessons
- Bring ukelele to school
- Bring computer programming - HTML 5 and CSS books to school
- Talk to our technology specialist about downloading animation software
- Check on how to get resources for building a computer from scratch
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Monday, November 10, 2014
Monday Friday
Today is a Monday Friday. That means it's Monday, but its also like a Friday since we don't have school tomorrow. Since this week is a little crazy with Veterans' Day on a Tuesday (causing our Monday Friday), I decided to flip our week around and start with 20% time today so we'll have 3 working days all in a row (W-F) later this week. Despite our switcheroo, these students were ready to go with a Monday 20% time today.
Friday got me pumped up about these projects. Signing up for our blogs went smoothly for the most part, but WHYYYY Google, WHYYY do you keep popping up error messages for Caleb, Eunseo, and Morgyn when they try to create a new blog? Anyone have ideas? I've tried Googling answers, switched browsers and restarted computers.Please leave a comment if you have any amazing knowledge that will help fix our problem!
While some of us are still trying to figure out just what might be worth 20% of our valuable time this year, others have already hit the ground running.
Check out Caroline's cooking blog.
Justin will probably be coding our entire website by the end of the year.
Give yourself some chills listening to Annes sing.
Can't wait to see what else is in store once I get all the blogs linked up. Check out other projects by clicking on student names on the left side of this blog. :)
Friday got me pumped up about these projects. Signing up for our blogs went smoothly for the most part, but WHYYYY Google, WHYYY do you keep popping up error messages for Caleb, Eunseo, and Morgyn when they try to create a new blog? Anyone have ideas? I've tried Googling answers, switched browsers and restarted computers.Please leave a comment if you have any amazing knowledge that will help fix our problem!
While some of us are still trying to figure out just what might be worth 20% of our valuable time this year, others have already hit the ground running.
Check out Caroline's cooking blog.
Justin will probably be coding our entire website by the end of the year.
Give yourself some chills listening to Annes sing.
Can't wait to see what else is in store once I get all the blogs linked up. Check out other projects by clicking on student names on the left side of this blog. :)
Friday, November 7, 2014
Once upon a time there was... an idea
The story of my 20% time class project starts with an inspirational colleague - Mrs. Caroline Raville (who was, in turn, inspired by other inspirational folks who also love inspirational things).
As a first-year teacher last year, I was learning a lot about the amazing things that happen within the walls of the classrooms here at AJHS. One of the coolest things I saw was Mrs. Raville's students' 20% time projects. I was so impressed with the idea that students could and would take learning into their own hands and follow their passions so thoroughly and in such unique ways. After talking extensively with Mrs. Raville, hearing the project updates, and attending her students' final presentations, I knew that 20% time was something I must add to my plan for this year.
The concept of 20% time starts long ago, in 1948, with 3M, a company that started encouraging their employees to spend 15% of their work time following a passion project. Out of this workplace environment, Post-It Notes were invented. Since then, innovative companies like Google have also adopted the practice. Gmail and Google AdSense were both born out of Google's 20% time. Former president of 3M, William L. McKnight sums up the philosophy best: "We believe freedom to explore is critical to developing new ideas and solving problems that will make a difference for everyone."
With McKnight's words to guide us, we've kicked off our 20% time with a little inspiration from Kid President (can't go wrong there), conducted a bad idea factory (I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but whoa, trust me, it really works wonders in getting the lame ideas out of the way, and actually leads to an understanding of how open this time can be), and created Google accounts so we can start blogging.
Can't wait to see what this group comes up with. I'm already hearing some amazing ideas!
As a first-year teacher last year, I was learning a lot about the amazing things that happen within the walls of the classrooms here at AJHS. One of the coolest things I saw was Mrs. Raville's students' 20% time projects. I was so impressed with the idea that students could and would take learning into their own hands and follow their passions so thoroughly and in such unique ways. After talking extensively with Mrs. Raville, hearing the project updates, and attending her students' final presentations, I knew that 20% time was something I must add to my plan for this year.
The concept of 20% time starts long ago, in 1948, with 3M, a company that started encouraging their employees to spend 15% of their work time following a passion project. Out of this workplace environment, Post-It Notes were invented. Since then, innovative companies like Google have also adopted the practice. Gmail and Google AdSense were both born out of Google's 20% time. Former president of 3M, William L. McKnight sums up the philosophy best: "We believe freedom to explore is critical to developing new ideas and solving problems that will make a difference for everyone."
With McKnight's words to guide us, we've kicked off our 20% time with a little inspiration from Kid President (can't go wrong there), conducted a bad idea factory (I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but whoa, trust me, it really works wonders in getting the lame ideas out of the way, and actually leads to an understanding of how open this time can be), and created Google accounts so we can start blogging.
Can't wait to see what this group comes up with. I'm already hearing some amazing ideas!
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