Genius Hour- Where Passion and Standards Meet

This work incorporated the following Common Core Standards: 

RI 8.4, RI 8.7, RI 8.10, W8.2, W8.4, W8.6, W8.7, W8.9, SL8.4, SL8.5

Like everything I try in my classroom- I usually try it small-scale to see how it goes and build from there. The goals I had for trying out Genius Hour included a desire for student-led learning, making sure the CCS (Common Core Standards) were being addressed, and doing something for our community- thus the passion project was born.

Student goals included the following:

·         Select and research a local non-profit/charity- they had to find out about the charity and the issue with which the charity is involved. For example- Northern KY Hates Heroin- the non-profit and the issue of Heroin abuse in Kentucky.

·         Create a speech with a visual – The speech had to explain the non-profit and the health/societal issue as well as their service learning plan.

·         Proper citations for a minimum of two sources/1 visual had to be included.

·         Practice presentation skills and the integration of a visual

·         Present the speech

·         Blog about your process and progress.  (We used Kidblog)

My goal was to have classes vote for the service learning project they wanted to do; however, snow days and administrative restrictions made it impossible for us to pursue the projects we wanted to do. What we decided to do instead was to create informational mini-webpages about the issue and non-profit and we used HSTRY to do that. Our goal would be to tweet and share the links to these presentations to share what we learned and to possibly assist these non-profits in getting more support.

I’ll present a pictorial view of our process below as well as some of the student blog posts and HSTRY links to their projects- but I did learn some things along the way myself.

1.  Start early and get approval for whatever you THINK kids might want to do ( no easy task when my students planned everything from a dance, to a car wash to a penny war). But I’m hoping that if I put in for at least 2 fund-raising events for charitable purposes and leave it open with explanation, it will be approved in advance.
2.  As noted above, some projects were… well, a bit much. Putting restrictions on what students could or could not propose for their service learning plan probably would have eased some of my stress.

What surprised me? I thought since I was putting parameters around their project- it had to be a local non-profit or charity- that students wouldn’t be motivated, but I was wrong. The passion and work they put in equaled any project we’d done all year and in some cases, surpassed it. I saw students crying during their presentation about Alzheimer’s only to reveal their grandpa had it. I never would’ve known otherwise. Another student- her mother had diabetes and suffered from it terribly- she was so passionate she convinced the whole class, hands down, to support her project plan. Yet another young lady shared within her speech presentation for Northern KY Hates Heroin, how a family member had died from a Heroin overdose- none of us knew.

 Consistently, students would call me over to tell me over and over facts they learned preceded by “I didn’t know that….”  They worked before and after state testing when our school was one of the last in KY to be released. When their project plans were shot down by admin. I thought- Great, now what? There’s no way they’ll want to work on their HSTRY project this late in the game- but, again, I was very wrong. They spent hours in class not just creating but sharing their projects with one another.

In the end, we created our HSTRY timelines to share to the world but we also gathered items for Operation Christmas Child and canned food for our school district’s food pantry. One hundred and thirty  eighth graders were interacting with the world, sharing what they learned, and helping others all at the same time- most importantly, they became much more aware of the issues our state faces and grew closer as a class when they learned that many of their peers had family members who suffered from such issues as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and even addiction to drugs/heroin.

Students had to create a project plan before they were permitted to research or begin their speech. 

Below- Student Speech Presentations- just a small sampling of the non-profits students chose to learn about and to share. 

          Below- Some Blog posts (kidblog.com) as students created their speeches and following speech presentations: 

(If you click on the image- it will open to a  larger size) 

Below are some of our HSTRY project Timelines: 

Big Brothers Big Sisters

ASPCA 

Northern KY Hates Heroin 

The Dragonfly Foundation 

Henry Hosea House 

Queen City Greyhounds 

I should note that you will likely have to create an account with HSTRY to view these- it is free to join. However 
below are snapshots from two different student project pages done on HSTRY

You can find the student  project 
plan and my HSTRY rubric HERE. 

What are your students passionate about? Give them set time to explore that passion and you’ll be amazed at what you learn about them. Whether it’s a project that involves something they love or one that involves service learning (or both), Genius Hour/Passion Projects can incorporate the CCS, motivate students and can make learning a collaborative rich experience. 

HyperText Writing CCS W3,6,7

With the ease of inserting hyperlinks within documents, students and teachers do not need to understand HTML in order to accomplish it. We consistently see hypertext documents in online media and it is a skill that students need to be able to perform. Learning how to hyperlink in a document can be a simple how-to assignment or as complex as creating a hyperlink paper.
To be clear, “Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse or keypress sequence. Hypertext, apart from running text, may contain tables, images and other representational devices.” (Source )


That got me to thinking how students might use hypertext in their writing to create something deeper than the actual writing itself - creating text with hyperlinks to provide additional detail, supporting detail, etc This hits multiple Common Core Writing Standards such as: 
W.8.7. Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration,  but particularly: 

W.9-10.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.


Research and Non-Fiction

First- students can learn about research, finding valid sources of information and how to create hypertext in one short project. If this is the only goal a teacher has in mind, it is a valid one. Teaching kids what sources are credible and which are not and why- is an important life lesson if nothing else. Add to that search skills and then how to create hypertext links,  and you have a lesson crammed full of college and career readiness.


Next, You can up the ante. Students can perform mini-research projects and create blog posts or webpages (PowerPoint or Prezis) and hyperlink additional information within the piece. I can see videos or images adding depth to the writing, but fear that students might rely too much on the links for additional information rather than their own ideas and writing. It is important then that the teacher set parameters for what is and is not acceptable in the hypertext links provided. You can see my example HERE . I copied a couple paragraphs of a student’s research paper and played around with adding hypertext links to add layers to the written work. Some of those links work (like the video at the start- while not the best video in the world (I think it’s too long) it does add a layer of understanding before reading begins. The student might opt to provide a video from a person who has been bullied, etc. Other links I added- just more reading and frankly somewhat repetitive.

 So you can see that there may be a right and wrong way to do this and you would need to be clear in instruction and modeling so students used hypertext links carefully and cleverly. In addition, providing time for reflection on why a particular source was used as support/how it was found, how does this source enhance your overall piece? etc. would add depth to the writing and process they took. I found this link from Georgetown College- directions on ways a hypertext paper could be written- very helpful in what I should think about if I were to have my students create a hypertext paper. 

Narrative-

W.8.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences

Another idea presented in the #CLMOOC online Make Chat was the idea of a narrative hypertext and it  could evolve into a more in-depth assignment.  Students would most certainly have to write before they planned what to hyperlink, which would eliminate the danger of relying on links to express what you have to say.  As the Georgetown site mentioned, “using links as complements rather than substitutes” in your writing is what we would want students to accomplish.  

 Think of a narrative where the author shares the main action of the event or story. We see the action unfold, but we don’t always see the underlying motivations, what was done in the past that prompted a decision, what thoughts are going on- in other words, the inside information.  One might create a story that provides hypertext links to that inside information that adds complexity to the writing See Example- Luminous Airplanes.  

 If you have a NOOK check out Bartimaeus- The Amulet of Samarkand – where the ancient djinni’s narration is interrupted by a number notation, that when clicked, takes you to the djinni’s asides of witty background history that occurred in his lifetime as well as sarcastic side-comments about his master. Providing these asides gave the narrator’s character depth and certainly added humor to the story.   Both the paper and the e-book version have these number notations, but obviously it is dynamic in e-book form.

Two Excerpts from Bartimaeus- first shows the number annotation and the second shows the narrator's  aside (inside information).  Displayed on Nook Reader.

Depending on how clever your writers are, they could add layers to the characters, the plot, setting or overall theme using hypertext links.  

You might also have students experiment with choose your own adventure type stories, where they provide two options to the reader, who clicks on one and the story continues from the option chosen.  This provides a chance to write short stories and to learn how to hypertext as well, not to mention it is fun for the students to create and read! 
Try Twine! Here's my choose your own adventure story used for the beginning of the year to introduce my students to ME and the value of a positive attitude: The Classroom

PowerPoint also offers dynamic hyperlinking too! You can listen to a short screencast of how to link PPT slides with buttons HERE.

If your students are younger, they might enhance a narrative they write, giving the reader insight into what they saw, heard, etc. by linking certain words in the text to ** pictures or videos. For non-fiction writing, try using pictures and have students create a ‘hypertext’ link from the ** picture to their own written information. This may seem overly simple, but careful thought would be needed to decide what pictures, sounds, etc. would enhance a reader’s experience of their work, and as stated earlier, giving them opportunity to learn how to create hypertext links is a valid skill to learn.

**Note: It is important that students either use creative commons videos and images and/or to be sure to fully cite where the picture/video came from. Creative Commons image Sources

While I cannot say for certain that I will attempt narrative hypertext, I will have students perform short research projects to create hypertext pieces. Maybe we can create our own “Wikipedia” about cyberbullying for example….  The task itself, learning to research, recognizing valid sources and creating hypertexts is certainly a college and career readiness activity regardless of how deep one might go with instruction. 

Another Fictional Hypertext Example- Living Will.