Category: Genius Students

Lifelong Kindergarten

Denise Krebs1 Comment

My new educational hero, Mitchel Resnick (@mres), is my latest inspiration for my #geniushour activities. Tomorrow will be our first ever #geniushour.

As I explain my hope for what school should and can be, I see sparks of wonder in the eyes of my students. They, who for now are a captive audience, are honestly beginning to dream of the day when they will want to come to school. They’ve asked for us to have #geniushour on Mondays, so they can have something to look forward to on the “longest, hardest day of the week” in their opinion.

Last weekend I watched this video about Lifelong Kindergarten from Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab. It’s an hour long, but well worth it. He makes the case for why all of school, actually all of life, should be like kindergarten (or what kindergarten used to be like!)

This week, we are commencing on a new day in my classroom. We have a long way to go, but we are definitely in a hopeful space.

One of my takeaway learnings from the video is shown in the graphic at the top of this post. I am readying my students to become a 1:1 junior high next year. It’s still on the school board agenda under Old Business, and no decisions have been made. Even if it doesn’t work out, none of this will be wasted because we still have great access to laptops and can use them almost every day.

One thing we are doing is learning to use the computers for not just clicking, browsing, chatting, and gaming. With genius hour, we make sure to move into DESIGNING, CREATING, INVENTING, BUILDING, and SHARING, which Mitch Resnick and his crew at Scratch would think is a good start in raising up the next generation of STEM leaders.

Geniuses Learning Outside the School Walls

Denise Krebs1 Comment

It’s coming! More and more learning outside the school walls. Tonight I was checking my email and sending announcements to my school secretary, when I received a chat message from a student.

“When do I need to take that science test?”

“I think you better do it by Wednesday.” (With a long holiday weekend coming up, who wants to study all weekend, I thought.)

“OK, but I forgot to bring home the study guide.”

“I’ll email it to you.”

“OK, thanks!”

About the same time I got this email from another student: “this is my scratch that I made i will show it to you when i get there” (It was just this afternoon that I showed him the program. He went home downloaded Scratch, figured out how to make and animate his giraffe, and ended up with a better animation than I’ve been able to create.)

I love it! He sent it so I could watch it, but he’ll also show it to me tomorrow. What enthusiasm!

We’re preparing for our first genius hour on Wednesday, so today we talked about the qualities of creativity, and the origins of the word genius. We said it really means creating and producing, not just the narrow definition of a person with such-and-such IQ number.

We tried to define nine characteristics of creativity, using some really big words. Seventh graders helped me make a rubric, which they will eventually use to grade themselves on how they are growing in creativity. Here are some of the qualities we thought of for each characteristic.

  1. Ambiguity – I’m OK with a little confusion. And I know there is always more than one way to do a job.
  2. Inquisitiveness – I ask questions and want answers. I look up things that interest me. I’m a lifelong learner.
  3. Generating Ideas (brainstorming) – I am able to quickly create a list of possibilities. I use my imagination.
  4. Originality of Ideas – I can think outside the box and I have a great imagination. I think of ideas that others never even thought of.
  5. Flexibility/ Adaptability – Like I gymnast, I can bend easily any which way and not break, only with my mind!
  6. Self-Reflection – I can look honestly at myself and evaluate my work.
  7. Intrinsic Motivation – I want to do it. I know the purpose for my work, and it pleases me.
  8. Risk Taking – I’m not afraid to try something difficult for fear of failure.
  9. Expertise – I am proud to know a lot about one or more subjects. I am an expert.

OK, back to those emails and school announcements I need to send! I got side tracked with my genius students and their 24/7 learning (and this blog post!)

Joining Our Students in the e Wild West

Denise Krebs1 Comment

My favorite quote by Angela Maiers

For the past year, Angela Maiers has been a transformative influence in my teaching. She is a passionate 21st century literacy education leader and visionary.

In one year, my teaching has experienced a thorough metamorphosis, starting with colleagues Mary and Brenda going to ITEC10 and telling me all about what they learned. A few months later I went to a conference led by Angela, and she has sealed the deal. I’ll never be the same.

I just read an article by Julia Steiny on the Standing with the Kids blog (Love her tagline: Education is intellectual parenting, or it should be.)

Anyway, in the article, “Most Kids Way Ahead of Us as Digital Learners, for Better and Worse,” the second in a series of interviews with Angela, Julia and Angela say so eloquently what I believe so passionately. Simply: adults need to be out in the digital Wild West with our children, learning with them and protecting them from dangers. (See the first article here.)

Bonus: My mentor Angela mentioned my genius students & me in her interview.

Thanks, Julia, for a great article.
Thanks, Angela! You matter in my life!

I Want to Do That

Denise Krebs4 Comments


When I showed my students the list of  “ten things to do with a laptop” that Gary Stager showed us, they were immediately engaged. More so than I thought they would be. (Watch Gary’s ten things keynote here.)

The next day, I overheard them talking. One boy said, “I want to build a killer robot.” Another, “I want to make a video game.”

Ten Things You Can Do on a Laptop by Gary Stager

OK, I owe it to them. I’m the one who showed them the list after I returned from ITEC11. We have laptops. What’s missing? Nothing. They need to be let loose to create.

So, we are having our first genius hour. Next week. Our first, but not our last.

Images by Denise Krebs edited on Polyvore, Big Huge Labs, and Photovisi, shared with CC 3.0 license.

Genius Hour

Denise Krebs18 Comments

I’ve been given a genius hour this morning. State testing is happening right now at my school, and only half of the staff is charged with testing different groups of students at any one time. The other half of the staff has an extra long “prep” period, or what today I am calling my “genius hour.”

Yesterday, I followed the excellent tweeters from the first day of authorspeak2011, a conference featuring 99 Solution Tree authors, currently underway for three days in Indianapolis.

One of my favorite tweeters, Angela Maiers (follow her at @angelamaiers), sent out a tweet about genius hour. I retweeted it, saying I wanted to hear more. Angela’s first tweet was inspired by Dan Pink as he talked about motivation. (I sit up and listen when I see tweets inspired by Dan Pink; I just wrote a blog post about his work last week.)

Well, I did want to hear more, so I did a search for genius hour on Google. The first hit was a link to Dan Pink’s post called “The Genius Hour: How 60 minutes a week can electrify your job.” I read the article this morning (the first step of my own genius hour–before I even realized I was calling it that!)

Of course, as I read it, my thoughts turned immediately to my genius students! How exciting!

I have a day already picked out for genius hour–the morning before Thanksgiving in America because I know I will have some extra time with them. It’s on the books–our first genius hour!

Here are my initial thoughts. (These are open to revisions, via your suggestions!)

  1. One full hour for 11 randomly-chosen teams of 3 to work together. They will be charged with communicating, collaborating, and creating. They will have freedom within their group, though, to work on more than one idea. They will have access to three computers, if needed.
  2. By the end of the hour, they will connect and contribute, reporting their genius work to the world on at least one blog post.
  3. We’ll have 35 minutes at the end to report back–three minutes for each group.
  4. Here are some guiding questions in case they need them:
      • What new idea do you have that you want time to develop?
      • What skill can you master?
      • What tool can you learn to help you work more efficiently?
      • What tool can you learn to do work more beautifully?
      • What tool can you learn to help us communicate better?

A great resource to start with: Cool Tools for Schools Wiki

That’s all I have so far.

Now, I have just finished my first genius hour! Actually, it’s been about 1.5 hours. I have never before been able to research, conceive, draft AND post on this blog during a school day. This morning, I have done all those things, as well as planned a potentially revolutionary lesson plan for 33 junior highers. Pretty productive morning, I’d say, thanks to the fact that I was given a “genius hour”!

I find it sad that my students are busy taking state-mandated tests while I get to have a genius hour.

What else should I add to our first student genius hour?
Have you done or will you do genius hour with your students?
Please report about it on Twitter with the hashtag #geniushour.

December Update: Genius Hour Blog Post Index

 

I Am So Proud of My Students!

Denise Krebs3 Comments

We are busy–up-to-our-eyeballs busy–getting ready to host a K-8 Relay Recess for the American Cancer Society. Junior high students come early to school, work during recess, and then some more at home–creating genius ideas, editing handouts, making gifts for survivors who will join us.

I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I am of them and the REAL-LIFE work that they are doing this month. We are all energized and excited. This is what school should be about! It’s been fun to see in action the principle: Never Work Harder Than Your Students. They are definitely working as hard as, or harder than, I am! I will share more next week after the Relay Recess, but today I have a picture of one of their fundraisers, The Tree of Hope, which is hanging in our entryway at school.

In addition, here are some of their blog posts about our fundraisers.