Genius Hour Project

As the culmination of my technology course, my classmates and I were introduced to Genius Hour: a work style that Google employees created where 20% of their work day (20% of class time for this project) was dedicated towards a passion of theirs. In my case, this was genealogy. Coming from a very hidden familial background, tracing back my lineage has always interested me. For my final project, I had to take a passion of mine, create a lesson around that passion using 3 of the technology tools we had studied in class, and make a lesson plan relating back to school that incorporates my passion and the tools I used. Although we had not studied animation in class, I dedicated my time towards learning how to animate my Bitmoji to create a virtual lecture. I then uploaded it to Nearpod (similar to Quizizz) to create a formative assessment, as well as an infographic detailing the basics of genealogy. Essentially, I want to apply the Modern Classrooms Project model to my classroom, where I record my lectures ahead of time for students to watch during class while taking notes. They would then move on to creating their own family trees while I walk around the classroom facilitating their learning, as well as holding conferences with my students to check in and see how they are doing with the workload. After creating their family trees, they would need to create a way to demonstrate their knowledge of their familial history and connect it back to key moments in history. For example, they could make a Google Slides presentation relating their great-grandfather back to World War II. You can access all of these by scrolling down, as well as by clicking the "classwork" button in my Google Classroom shell linked below with the Google Classroom logo.

Reflection Journal: Genius Hour is an idea created by Google, where its employees each dedicated 20% of their work week towards building a new technological tool. Genius Hour in this class means diving deep into one of our passions and centering a lesson around it while spending 20% of our class time towards this passion project. Genius Hour is so important because it allows people to explore their passions in a productive manner, while also thinking outside of the box to create new ways to represent old information. This lesson integrates Resnick's 4 P's through a final project I created (students would demonstrate their knowledge of genealogy through a project), peers (students are able to collaborate and work together to help each other find the best tools to succeed), passion (students are learning about themselves and are able to create a final project in whatever way they are passionate about), and play (students are able to explore new ideas and history that they may have not explored before). It took a lot to perfect my lesson- I had no clue how to animate before completing this project. It definitely took a lot more than 20% of my school week, but I chose animation to challenge myself, so I knew what I was signing up for. This lesson will teach students to think critically about their own history so that they can be more culturally engaged members of society. This interest could even spark them to learn a new language, or travel to a different country to explore their heritage. I really think I did well on the animation. It really took a lot of work and I'm really proud of how it came out. However, I also felt like I was short on time because I had been trying for days to make her walk, but to no avail. I think that if I spent more time learning the different aspects of making her walk and learning to body track, I really could've turned my lecture into a next-level presentation. I would absolutely recommend the use of Genius Hour. I was really able to explore new technology (another passion of mine) and think outside of the box of how to make my project stand out and be something I would be proud to show to employers. It was really fun to work on the entire project, and I feel more technologically literate after completing my Genius Hour project. My biggest advice to fellow educators would be to encourage students to explore ideas that they may not know how to do. It can seem stressful and overwhelming, but the reward is worth the risk.