My 20time Project

This year is my second year doing 20% time. I did a version of 20time two years ago, but I made so many mistakes we’re not going to count it…

Last year, I didn’t do a 20time project. This may or may not have been a mistake - I’m not sure. I was concerned with overseeing student what my students were working on and helping them when they needed it. However, this year I’m in.

Thanks to a great Voxer conversation, Ashley, Amy, and John helped spawn this idea.

It started with this tweet from John a couple weeks ago:

As I discussed asking my kids these questions and prepping a video of their responses, Ashley and Amy started talking about interviewing some of the students in their district as they prep a 1:1 rollout. And then it hit me: why am I not interviewing my students this year about various aspects of school and splicing them together?

As educators, we say we care about what our kids have to say. Well, how careful are we about making sure we know their opinions? I hope that by doing this project, and sharing it with teachers in my PLN, that we become more aware of what our kids want from and think about school.

The first video - which answered John’s questions - is done, and embedded below.

This leaves me here: what questions should I ask my students this year? Got ideas? Things you’d like to hear some ninth graders in the Bay Area talk about? Toss them in the comments!

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Tangentially related: Kevin Brookhouser's 20time book showed up in my mailbox yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading it. Check it out here.

Show Your Work: The Instagram Hashtag Edition

I just finished reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon on Sunday. As I was finishing the book, I stumbled across a great example of #showyourwork.

My buddy Kristina - one of the most positive, edcamp-y educators I’m lucky enough to call a friend - started posting pictures on Instagram on January 1 with the hashtag #kp365 on them. I saw that question and started wondering about what it was there for.

I assumed Kristina was doing some sort of photo a day thing, given the 365 on the hashtag. Her initials are KP. Why include them in the hashtag? Did she want an easy way to see all the posts she made for photo a day this year?

Ooh. Maybe she was running an IFTTT recipe that posted pictures she added to Instagram with the #kp365 hashtag to a website! (Totally stole this idea from Jeff Heil, who blew m mind with it at a GAFE Summit 1.5 years ago.)

Then I stopped.

I love mobile photography. Why wasn’t I doing that? That’s an easy IFTTT recipe to set up.

So I’m doing a photo a day this year. I’m posting all my pictures on Instagram with the hashtag #kls365. They are all ending up on a website (that I’ll build out more of at some point).

Best part about all this? I still have no idea why Kristina is using the #kp365 hashtag on her photos. But just by showing her work, she got my wheels turning and made me want to go out and create.

Thanks, Kristina!