20% Time, Day 4: It Starts to Come Together

So day 4 of 20% time is done and projects are starting to come together. Students who had project ideas initially have had time to play with those ideas and shape them into something that fulfills the 20% time project requirements. The folks who didn’t have ideas - or said they didn’t have ideas - have realized that in fact they are interested in things. Which, you know, is good.

Teachers talked about doing their own 20% project in class as the kids worked on their projects. As the first three days of 20% time unfolded, things were chaotic. I spent every day running around answering questions for 50 minutes. Which was fine. But chaotic. I didn’t see how I was going to be able to spend any time in class working on a 20% project.

Well, this week I spent a lot less time answering questions. Kids are starting to know what direction their project is going in. Which is, you know, a GREAT thing. And as I had time to breathe for the first time on a 20% time day last Friday, I began to wonder if I too would have the time to do a 20% project with my kids. I know I want to. No idea what I’d do it on. But that’s part of the process!

I’ve given the go-ahead to about 10 projects to go and get started - these individuals or groups have written up their proposals and they are ready to go. And they’re excited.

I’ll leave the last word to the kids:

Student #1: I have never been more excited about a project in my life. I really hope I’m able to do this. I’ve always been interested in music, but this summer, I went to a concert at Stanford and these seven twenty year olds wrote and arranged original songs and they were the most beautiful things I’d ever heard. Everyone in the audience was straight up head bobbing and jamming and crying. But seriously, though - that’s the point of music, to take a feeling and convey it to the audience. I’d like to attempt to do that, especially when it’s for a good cause.

Student #2: I can’t even express to you how excited I am about my project. This is an issue that’s really close to my heart because I know a lot of people on a personal level who self harm and struggle to find the things that make life worthwhile. It’s exciting for me to even think about creating a product that could help them, and people like them. Because being sad sucks. Especially when you don’t know how to make the sadness go away. I want to do everything in my power to help lighten the sadness on personal levels (my music) and on a more technical level (the money donations). It’s also exciting because writing music about a certain focused topic will help me grow as a writer and a musician because it takes me out of my comfort zone.

History #flipclass Teachers Unite (Again)

It had been about a month. It was time for the batsignal. We needed a #flipclass history teachers hangout. Luckily, Kaelyn Bullock started asking good questions about what a flipped inquiry history class would look like. And just like that, the batsignal was sent. The conversation is embedded below.

North Bay CUE Conference Thoughts

I was lucky enough to get to attend the North Bay CUE’s annual event today. It was a good time! Like most conferences these days, it was awesome to get to catch up with Twitter friends in real life. People are the highlight. Does this mean that conferences aren’t worth it? Absolutely not. I take ideas back to my classroom that will make me a better teacher. But man, it’s cool to get to hang out with folks who are passionate about making education better!

I got to check out Amy Fadeji’s #twitterrocks in the first session of the day. Amy swore this was her first presentation on Twitter, but her session layout was excellent. I especially liked her use of a TodaysMeet backchannel as a non-Twitter way people could share concerns and questions they had. It was inspiring to be in a room learning about Twitter with multiple administrators and superintendents. Connected administrators - what a powerful thing!

I got to co-present with with Sarah Press about the Innovation Day we had at our school last spring. We spent a lot of time thinking about the structure of this presentation - neither of us wanted to stand up in front of people and talk AT them for 90 minutes. We settled on a nice structure that allowed us to share what Innovation Day was and have participants brainstorm issues they would have on their campus running Innovation Day as well as try to find solutions for these issues. The presentation is embedded below. All of our resources that we used to prep for Innovation Day are there - please steal away!

Catlin Tucker’s keynote was excellent. What really struck me was Catlin’s emphasis on failure in the classroom. It’s one thing for me to talk about failing forward with my students. It’s entirely another thing to have an author and keynote speaker tell a large group of teachers that is their job to go out and fail and then reflect and get better. What an awesome charge to go and do!

Catlin’s push to get teachers to blog was one I hadn’t thought about but is so totally on the money. By blogging, teachers are doing two really important things that often get skipped over for a lack of time: they are reflecting and sharing. What a great rationale for blogging!

I got to lead a session in the afternoon on better feedback with Google tools. First live demo presentation ever! And by the end of the session, everyone had created a Google form, gotten responses on it, and run Doctopus and Goobric on the results of their Google spreadsheet. Check out the step by step directions I created here. I ran out of time to have everyone walk through Kaizena, but I’m hopeful that my fast run through and the step by step notes (available here) that I made will have people feel comfortable using this powerful feedback tool.

Thanks to the NBCUE team for throwing an awesome event - great wifi, nice facility, good food. As always, hanging out with passionate educators is awesome!