Genius Hour: Consider Dedicating 20% of Class Time for Student-Choice Exploration

It's a new year! Classes are soon beginning in 2018. What will you do to empower your students to learn and make a difference in the world this year? I recently came across an inspirational video where students shared the projects they developed in Genius Hour. Not only did their projects motivate these students to research and share their learning, they made a difference in people's lives as they informed others about topics they felt strongly about. Take a look and see what you think!

                                           YouTube Credit #20Time projects in 4 minutes 

So how did these students accomplish so much using one hour of class time per week? It all began in the 1950's when 3M started a 15% Project. You may have heard the story of how Post-Its and masking tape evolved from this project. What initially looked like a failed experiment to create a very strong adhesive for the aerospace industry in 1968 turned out to be a very weak pressure-sensitive adhesive. It took multiple people experimenting with the adhesive over a period of nearly 10 years before 3M came up with the decision to market and sell the product in 1977.

To encourage and inspire innovation, Google asked employees to spend 20% of their time at work on a project of interest to them. Some of the products that have arisen from this effort include Gmail, AdSense, Google News, and Google Teacher Academy. "Using 20 Time in the workplace allows innovative ideas and projects to flourish and/or fail without the bureaucracy of committees and budgets." 20-Time in Education Inspire. Create. Innovate.

These business initiatives have now been applied to education to to a empower students to inspire, create, and innovate. MindShift offers some great suggestions to get you started with Genius Hour in your classroom this year. Sean Crevier has seen his students experience great success. He suggests breaking the project into three parts: the problem, the solution, and the product. Each student defines the problem he/she wants to investigate that can be completed within the allotted time frame (he uses 10 weeks). He meets with students individually and has them complete a diagram beginning with the due date and planning backwards to create their own timeline for the project. Students are responsible for keeping themselves on track using a Google Spreadsheet and reflecting after each period. He realizes that "it's all about the journey" and the problem-solving students do in the process. The product may not turn out as students initially thought (like the Post-Its) but it may be even more useful.

I encourage you to give this process a try! Genius Hour works in elementary schools too. Edutopia suggests setting it up providing Time, Reflection, Collaboration, and Sharing opportunities for students to work on topics important to their community. A great example of Genius Hour in action in middle schools can be found in Jen Schneider's work "How to Build Community Leaders of Today - and Tomorrow - Through Student Genius Hours." Challenge your students to innovate to better our world this year!