When I began to plan Genius Hour this year I knew I wanted to try something different in the way that my students shared their information with me and others. While I was taking a course this summer we had a guest speaker that talked about her unit on student blogging and I had one of those "Light Bulb" moments! Student blogging seemed like such an amazing idea and a great way to begin teaching my students about 21st century communication and technology skills. As I set about my journey I came across Kidblog which is an amazing platform! First off, Kidblog is a completely secure online blogging platform created for classrooms. This platform offers a simple and user friendly design and allows students to exercise their authentic voice. For me this was a way to get my students sharing their ideas, research, and get them interacting to each other and their genius hour topics. Kidblog is also a great way to share the classroom experiences with parents and other learners. One thing that I have come to find invaluable to our process is that this website offers a completely secure environment that the teacher has control over. I can keep my students information and ideas safe and can choose to share them when I want and with who I want. With this platform a teacher can also control student posts and comments by having to approve posts before they are visible to the entire class. So now lets get to it and I will give you an overview of how I have been using Kidblog in my Genius Hour this year. The above picture is of the home screen that students see when they log on. All settings and images are customizable for your classroom or theme. Kidblog does a great job of visually organizing information so it is easy for students to find. Each student can create a new post and customize their images, font and colours to make their blog unique. Above is one of my students profiles. Nash has worked very hard on his blog this year and has done an amazing job of collecting information on his very interesting topic...TANKS! Here I am showing only posts that he wrote. As you can see each one is titles and he has added his own touches with different images. Kidblog allows for a great interactive experience. As students do research I ask them to do daily tasks, the image above shows my request for a website that they had been using that day to learn about their topics. The great thing about using a platform like this is that research now is mainly done on the internet and students can insert videos, images and links to the resources they have found. This helps all of us keep track of their sources and be able to go back to favourite or helpful websites in the future. Kidblog allows interaction between students, teachers and parents by having comment sections. Each blog post has a comments section where I or their peers can comment. Above we see Nash responding to a blog post about crash to pass. Within the comments section students engage with their peers to make personal connections and to ask questions. I have found the comments to be one of the most challenging and most valuable aspects of kidblog. During the first weeks of our blogging we had to stop and have several discussions about constructive commenting but overall students have been amazing at asking each other questions and really driving their learning forward by giving their peers other ideas to research. A teacher can also invite parents and other educators to their blog which can greatly expand the learning community.
Student blogging is a very valuable activity and has given my students the opportunity to learn more about how to interact with an online community. I feel that this is so valuable especially with the push to teach 21st century skills. Blogging with my students has sure been an adventure but the students now ask daily to blog and are so excited to interact with their peers online. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our blogging adventure. Please check out the Kidblog platform and I would love to hear about your student blogging experiences! Cheers, Brianna
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Have you ever thought of trying Genius Hour in the primary grades?
Bill Selak wrote this amazing blog post about how he pursued Genius Hour in his second grade classroom. In this blog post you can find links to where he found basic information about GH. Throughout the post we are given the big picture perspective on how he implemented this initiative in a primary classroom. I think that pairing students up in this situation is a perfect way to accomplish many outcomes. Through this blog Selak give his readers a true portrayal of GH and it is truly a great read full of tips, tricks, and great ideas. Happy Reading, Brianna To help my classroom run more smoothy during this exciting learning time I created Genius Hour jobs for students to help focus them and to help give me more time to conference and interact with my learners. After we had learned a bit more about what Genius Hour was and talked about what it should look like my students helped me come up with the following jobs and also assigned a number of people to each job. The jobs we came up with are as follows: Technology Specialist - In our school we have a mobile laptop cart (AKA the COW - Computers on Wheels). Each day during Genius Hour students receive a laptop. In our class 2 people are assigned to be the technology specialists, one for the beginning and one for the end. At the beginning of GH one specialist hands out the laptops and makes sure everyone gets the technology they need. At the end of the class the other specialist takes all the laptops and makes sure they are in the correct spot and plugged in. Supervisor - The supervisor for the day is my second set of eyes and ears within our classroom during this period. They help to make sure that everyone is on task while I am having conferences with students. This student also helps control the noise level of the class, as students can get chatty during this passionate learning time. Back Up - The Back Up is the student that takes the place of anyone who might be sick that day or is there to step in if one of the other job positions needs help. Smartie - This student is the person people go to to ask questions about whatever they need during GH. Many students have lots of questions during this period and instead of coming straight to me the Smartie helps students by seeing if they can answer the question first. Book Worm - The Book Worm is responsible for the handing out of any materials and our duo-tangs during this period. Some students are using books and these resources are also included in this position. Clean Up - This person is responsible for overall classroom cleanliness at the end of each GH period. As students are working on many different projects that include building and paper this position was created so that our classroom would be clean. This person makes sure that each student has cleaned up their spot and will double check the classroom before the break. These jobs help to make our classroom function smoothly during GH and by implementing this system I have had more time to conference and help students with their projects. As you can see in the above picture the jobs and student names are clearly displayed in our classroom and are changed every week. To help acknowledge these positions and their importance I created name tags with lanyards that students wear during this period. This helps students to know who is doing what job and makes the people in these positions feel important. The creation of this system has revolutionized my Genius Hour time and has helped make our classroom a more friendly and cooperative place. I feel that by promoting and assigning jobs during this time I am also promoting21st century skills where students learn time management and responsibility.
I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented GH jobs in their classroom! Cheers, Brianna Today I wanted to take the time to feature Denise Krebs, a junior high teacher who has implemented the Genius Hour initiative in her class. Denise believes that Genius Hour is a way to empower our students. She is an amazing educator and has taken the time to create several blogs and wikis dedicated to Genius Hour and its amazing products. See the links below to check out some of Denise's work!
When I started Genius Hour (GH) one of the biggest hurdles (and also the one that I thought would be the easiest) was igniting my students passions and helping them choose a topic that would be right for their GH project. I struggled to control the excitement of choosing a topic and the realm of topics got out of hand quickly. This was when I realized I needed to choose the right organizer and learning process for my class and I turned to the magic of the internet for help. At the bottom of this post you can view some of the resources I used to channel excitement. For us the process of choosing topics went something like this:
- mind map to brainstorm some of the things we like/are passionate about - narrow down topics to our top 3 - do a KWL chart for each topic to see which one we knew least about - After choosing our least known topic we then created a list of 5 questions about the topic to guide our research During this time I worked closely with students and had individual conferences with each student to ask them questions and clarify so that I would know what path each of my students chose. By engaging students in this process many of them realized that they had more prior knowledge about certain subjects than they realized. This process worked for a majority of my students and have led them to have many successes in their learning. For others I had to adapt my plan and use the research that I did with the websites/resources below to make a program that was more suited to individualized learning. Overall I had great success with this process and I hope that it helps you in igniting passions in your students. Happy Geniusing and Cheers, Brianna Some resources that I have found helpful for exploring and focusing student passions are: Over the past several days I have been searching the internet for blogs and posts about Genius Hour and other self-guided inquiry learning initiatives. Then I stumbled upon "My Own Genius Hour" Blog by Joy Kirr.
Joy has been experimenting with Genius Hour initiatives in her teaching practice since 2012 and has some amazing experiences and ideas to share. I encourage you all to have a look at this amazing collection of information and experiences! Cheers, Brianna Many of you may be wondering what Genius Hour is.... Genius Hour is a self-guided inquiry project where students learn about their interests and passions. In this inquiry based learning model students learn key 21st century skills that they need in order to succeed in society today. Within the Genius Hour model students quickly gain these skills by being in charge of their own learning. Genius Hour happens during a set time during the week, usually one hour. During this time students work individually or with others to explore their passions. This can be done using computers, creating something, reading, or exploring the world around them to learn more about their topic. During these times educators can teach various skills and introduce students to new forms of technology which might help them during their projects. Genius Hour provides a place in education for teachers and learners to spread their wings and fly, for passions to be fueled, and for learning to connect to the world. In the coming weeks I will be exploring many aspects of Genius Hour routines and teaching. Cheers, Brianna |
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