Genius Hour

I first heard about Genius Hour a few years ago at a conference in Boston and thought it sounded so interesting. I loved the idea of asking students what they were interested in and what they wanted to learn about.

My first thought was why only one hour a week? Why not all day everyday? Not practical you say? Probably not, but still, it sounds way better than rotating classes every 52 minutes and sitting and listening to teachers talk about individual subjects that seem unrelated and unapplicable to the real world. 

I decided to apply the the idea of genius hour with design thinking and challenge based learning. That's a lot of educational buzz words there, but it actually worked better than I expected. 

1. The first week of school, I ask my kids what they want to learn and do in my class.

2. I organize their requests into connected themes.

3. I ask them how we can improve society and what world problems exist today that they would like to propose and work towards a solution for.

4. I build my syllabus based on their ideas and figure out a way to tie my objectives into their ideas. 

Sounds simple right?

Yes and no...

Yes because they want to learn a lot of really interesting things, some of which I had to really learn along with them.  They have really interesting questions and ideas when there are no restraints. 

And no, because they of course didn't want to learn about some of the topics the state of Texas says they need to know....like how their kidneys work.  Not one single student asked me to provide a lesson experience involving kidney filtration. Shocking, right? Not one person wants to know how they make urine?!

This is when it got fun...frustrating and challenging, but also fun.  How can I stick with my plan of letting them guide the learning and study what interests them, yet cover all the objectives as required by my state? Oh and find a way for them to give back to society?

For me, the answer is to think differently and creatively about lesson design and to ask lots of questions from my Twitter PLN.  I am in year two of implementing this in my classroom and this year looks totally different than last year, which I love. 

For the kidney example....no one wanted to know about kidney function, but many wanted to learn about babies and pregnancy.  So we developed a case study where the students posed as new parents and learned the reproductive systems, fetal development, pregnancy diet and nutrition, etc.  Once their baby was "born" , they found out it had a kidney disorder that they had to figure out as if they were new parents in that situation. Finally, their culminating project to show me what they learned, they created a book (as a class) on a topic of their choice. Groups focused on how to have a healthy pregnancy, how to survive the first year as a new parent, and misconceptions regarding pregnancy. Each class selected a topic and each student decided what they could contribute based on what they were interested in or good at. 

This year several asked about a news story in our area regarding a student who overdosed on water at a college party.  Thanks to ideas shared by Tricia Shelton and Amanda Meyer, we are going to study water intoxication to learn about the kidneys.  I am looking forward to trying their lesson idea!

Too big of an idea for you to tackle the entire year? Maybe try just one unit asking them what they want to know about it.  We just started talking about vaccines and I asked a follow up "What do you really want to know?"  Students posted ideas to this Padlet wall and we are discussing some of their specific questions as we go through the unit.

























Next year I plan to start the year the same way...what do you want to learn and do in my class this year ?  I am looking forward to working with a team next year and possibly creating cross curricular lessons and experiences as well. 

Teaching the World

This is where it started...a simple question.  How can we help improve our world? 

Kids all over the world want to learn, yet some have no access to schools, technology, or teachers.  We are in a privileged society, with more technology than we often know what to do with.  How can we connect kids that want to learn with free educational resources and provide them with teachers and technology?

A team working together is the answer to that question.  Here are two of our inspirations and collaborating partners.

Oceans Project - A non-profit organization devoted to fundraising to put technology in schools in developing nations and raising awareness about the importance of science education in schools.

Kaya - A non-profit organization finding schools in developing areas and providing them with teachers.

So how can students at Coppell High School help?
We are creating educational materials for the iPads in those schools, or for anyone else who wants to download our work. We are collaborating with schools in New Zealand, Kentucky, and Minnesota to make the best possible products.  Students are working together to create resources to teach the world.

The Project:
A collaboration, involving around 200 students from four different locations, creating an interactive textbook using iBooks Author, inspired by the work of E. O. Wilson's Life on Earth, will inspire our young student audience to read, be healthy, and interact with peers around the world. Special thanks to Tricia, Geoff, and Amanda for connecting your classrooms with us and helping create this product!

The iBook will not only be published to the iBook Store, but will be linked in the iTunes U course that my students created last year, Health Without Borders.  This course currently has an audience of around 45,000 subscribers around the world.

Thank you Coppell Education Foundation for providing us with this awesome new iMac station to create our iBook on.  

Zombie Brains

Typically my class runs through a Challenge Based Learning approach and I allow my students to design the curriculum. Sometimes in order to guide them through experiences they design, I have to step outside of my comfort zone.
This is one of those times.

When I asked my students what they wanted to learn about the nervous system, many of them mentioned zombies.  As a scientist, the ridiculousness of pop culture zombie brains makes me laugh, but at their request, I researched "zombie lesson plans" and surprisingly found a LOT of information that was almost interesting!!

I "met" Amanda  and Tricia sometime over the last year via Twitter.  They are both fantastic anatomy teachers and we have talked about connecting our classes in Texas, Minnesota, and Kentucky in some way.  When Tricia mentioned a Zombie activity, I was super excited to connect my kids to her ideas!

All of the experiences in this lesson were things I have done in the past or ideas that Tricia or Amanda created or found.  This collaboration really showed me the power of connecting with other teachers to create unique learning experiences for learners.  They both really pushed me to think differently and try something in my classroom that was outside the norm for me.

Here is an overview of the project to answer the student question "Are Zombies possible?"

The complete details are located here in this Google Doc.  

This document also has links to all of the labs and assessment rubrics I used.

1. What are Zombies?
Identify characteristics unique to zombies and discuss what part of the brain might be responsible for that particular characteristic.  I showed a quick movie trailer I created to begin the discussion and then had students look at a few clips from the Walking Dead and other zombie movies to determine the characteristics.  We also looked at PET scans to see how different areas of the brain light up due to different types of stimuli.

2. Brain Dissection 
Students dissected and photographed sheep brains. They used the app Aviary to label the parts.  Labeled images were uploaded to ThingLink and then they added functions to their labels.

3.  Crash Course Video
We used this fantastic video by Hank Green to better understand how the brain works and took notes.

4. Senses Labs 
We did labs over all the different senses and discussed how zombie senses were different, or if we thought they were different.  We tested vision, dissected cow eyes, examined our hearing, and determined how smell connects with memories.  Students created a tutorial over one of the senses to explain to others how the brain interacts with its environment.

5. Reflexes Lab 
We tested our reflexes and our reaction time.

6. Neuron Physiology
We build neurons out of recycled materials and created a stop motion animation to show how a stimulus is received, how an action potential is generated, and how neurotransmitters are released in the synapse.

7. So what did they learn? 
For the summative assessment, students were asked to create a one minute digital story to answer the question "Could a virus infect the brain and cause zombie like characteristics"?

We did a class video competition for this final product, as an incentive for students to be creative and original.  Top videos received a special recognition and were published to our class portfolio.  My favorite part of this was the fact that many of my students would not let me see their story while they were working on it.  They wanted to keep their idea a secret since there was a "competition".

Our students will be providing feedback to their peers in Kentucky and Minnesota.  We are exchanging videos next week and I can't wait to see all of the final products coming in this weekend.

Sharing thoughts via video on FlipGrid

Here is the class portfolio that shows samples of student work throughout this entire project.  I will continue to add to this over the next few days as final products come in.

Portfolio created in BulbApp Portfolios. 

I also incorporated multiple formative assessments to measure where students were in their learning and to help them figure out what areas they still didn't understand.  After each major assignment, students had to write a reflection of their learning and connect back to the zombie question.

Overall, I feel like students learned this content on a much deeper level than in previous years, and it was fun.  If I were to repeat the experience, I would certainly allow more time and incorporate more workshops/scaffolding activities and formative assessments in to make sure they "got it" and felt confident in their knowledge before the final assessment.

Great Challenges

Thanks to inspiration from the TEDMED Great Challenges, my Anatomy class decided to tackle Making Prevention Possible by encouraging society to take steps to improve their personal wellness.

Over the course of last semester, we talked about digestion and nutrition, exercise physiology, and heart health.  Students then created educational materials to teach others based on what they had learned.

This course is designed as a six weeks challenge to improve your health.  Participants will be given one challenge each week, encouraging them to make lifestyle changes to prevent illness or injury over time.  Students are teaching our subscribers why they need to make these changes in their lifestyle.

You can JOIN NOW! 

Let us help you develop a healthier lifestyle, one week at a time.

Learn more from this video my class created!

In the spring, we will tackle another Great Challenge, The Impact of Poverty on Health.  We plan to address this problem by helping educate students in developing nations around the world and doing all we can to help the Oceans Project in the Great British Viking Quest.  I can't wait to talk more on this one, as I have multiple teachers involved in a cross curricular project!  More info coming soon!! :)

Student Blogs

This year students are creating blogs or portfolios to document their learning.  They are given a challenge that connects our current topic of study to the world around them.  They can choose any challenge they want and can do as many as they want.  Each challenge they take, they blog a reflection and discuss their thoughts on it.  It surprises me how many students choose to do additional challenges, not to improve their grade, but because they are "fun".

Here is a link to our six weeks challenges so far for this year.

Here are a few of my favorite blogs so far:

Ariel's Blog

Graces' Blog

Tuulia's Blog

Taylor's Blog

Lindsey's Blog

Inna's Blog

Students Teaching Students

Students have decided on how they want to share their knowledge this year and will be creating two iTunes U courses, Health EDU and Basics of Anatomy.  

The first course, Health EDU, will attempt to educate society on how to improve health habits.  Each week, participants will be given a challenge, such as altering their diet to exclude certain components like soda, HFCS, or artificial sweeteners. Some challenges will be more fitness based, such as try to add 10-15 minutes on your current walk or run, actually start exercising, or try a new type of workout. Other challenges will be focused on mental health and how to reduce stress. Each challenge will include student created educational material (iBooks, tutorial videos, etc.) that help convince the course subscribers and participants of the WHY behind the challenge.

The second course, the Basics of Anatomy, is being developed for the Oceans Project, and really anyone who wants to subscribe and learn about the body.  The Oceans Project foundation is raising money to give iPads to students in developing nations to improve global education.  My students will be creating a course to teach children in these developing nations exactly how their body works. So far, we have the following sections set up:  how things work, the limitations of the body, grossology, and try this at home.  We are still brainstorming ideas of components to add to this course.

With both courses, students are learning how to maintain personal health and then taking that information and sharing it with others to try to improve the overall wellness of our society.

Courses should be up and ready for release sometime in December...

We are still working on the course names and art...suggestions are appreciated! :)

Learning Stations

This post is really late!  I think we discussed this in the #scitlap chat one night and I promised to write a post about how I use stations in secondary science.

Since my classroom is blended, students are always learning at their own pace.  There are very few times that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.  The use of learning stations for labs really increases efficiency and allows the learners to not feel rushed to keep up with their peers.

I typically set up the week like this one, when we learned about the bones.

Link to the actual activity in full text

You can see a few of their final products in our class portfolio.

The following week, we start muscles and do stations for each of the posed questions:

Link to the actual activity in full text

The muscle section is more of a lab style assignment.  For each question posed at a station, they must figure out how to answer it using the materials provided.  Some stations incorporate Pasco probeware or force grips and others have them identifying muscles by determining how physical therapy devices are used.

After they finish both bones and muscles learning stations, they determine which project they want to complete for the six weeks.  The project overall goal is to create informational material to help society as they begin a healthy lifestyle.  Project choices take the knowledge they have gained from the stations above and determine what from that is necessary for the public to know in order to be safe working out, how to avoid injuries, or how to not listen to biased media claims. Some students will choose a project that requires them to develop a lab investigation, while others will choose a more research based project.  There is also the option to design your own project.  Project options can be viewed in my iTunes U course under Exercise Physiology.

As a class, students are currently building their own course in iTunes U to challenge society to make better lifestyle choices regarding health and wellness.  So ultimately, whichever project option they choose, the product they create is to inform and educate our course subscribers.  All learner created products could potentially be published in this course, which will be released later this semester.  

Ebola Infographics

After 2 days of non-stop questions on Ebola, I decided to stop talking about bones and muscles and instead, focus on the current issues in Dallas.  Texas Presbyterian Hospital is less than 20 minutes away from our school, so our students are very concerned.

We started today by answering these questions as a class:
What is Ebola?
Where did it come from?
How did it get here?

We reviewed the facts that we know and the most current information we had, which actually changed throughout the day as they announced they were moving the nurse to the NIH.

I had the students compare the protocols from the CDC and the WHO and we watched Dr. Sanjay Gupta show us how easy it can be to contaminate when removing PPE.

I then did a basic Q and A and we looked up answers to the questions we did not know or were unsure of.  I hope that I helped clear up a lot of misconceptions and fears during this time....no, a Texas town has not been quarantined, and no there is no such thing as an Ebola zombie.

Next we decided to take the Open IDEO challenge of "How might we rapidly equip and empower the care community to fight Ebola?"  We reviewed some of the posted research and tried to come up with ideas on how we can help.  Our ideas will be posted in the next few days, after we review and edit them.  One of my students (who is super awesome), already posted his idea.  Give him an applaud or comment!

We are doing some initial brainstorming on this Google Moderator to define our ideas before posting to the Open IDEO.  Feel free to add to the moderator, vote for your favorites, or have your kids comment on any posts.   You will need a Google account to comment and please put your location so we know where you are from.

Our next step is to discuss how we can decrease the stress that is occurring in our community.  My suggestion will be to create researched based infographics to help the general public understand the facts regarding Ebola.  I will recommend the use of Canva to create the infographic, but will leave it up to the student on how they want to inform the public.

If you students want to take this challenge with us, we would love to collaborate with you.  I will publish the best of student work into our class portfolio and link it into our iTunes U class to provide a large authentic audience.

Here is the rubric I am working on now -- feel free to give me some feedback on it!

Assessment Challenge

If you have read anything on this blog, you would know that I am not a huge fan of standardized or traditional testing.  I typically like the "show me what you know in any format you choose", but sometimes I just want to know where they all are content wise.

Here is one way I assess student learning:  the "Test"

My test today is 22 questions - multiple choice, free response, and identification of structure and function of the digestive system.  It is set up in Blackboard, our LMS.

The first 15 minutes, students take the test traditional style - by themselves, no notes, no Google.  The purpose of this 15 minutes - for them to test themselves. What do they know?  What do they feel confident about? What are they unsure about?  What do they have no ideas on?

After 15 minutes, the test is open resource - Google, notes, iTunes U, Life on Earth book, and a partner.  This is the cool part --- they analyze every question and discuss why they answered the way they did. They defend why they answered the way they did.  They try to determine which person is more confident in the answer and consult with Google.  Here are some comments I heard today:

"I am confused about the insulin and resistin question, what did you have in your notes on that?"

"Wait, that website you are on is a blog, lets check a more credible site to make sure we are right."

"Oh that makes so much more sense."

What I observed:
Kids were having conversations about science and explaining things to each other. They were 100% focused for the entire 50 minute class period and the test took the entire period.  They were listening to each other and processing information in a way they would never do with a scantron test by themselves.

If they took this test alone the traditional way, they would have been done in 20 minutes, guessing at the ones they didn't know and forgetting about it as soon as they left the room.

I also discovered that they have a misunderstanding of one of the questions and the majority of them will probably miss it - and I know why.  I will toss that question out. Without their conversations, I would have known a lot missed that one, but wouldn't have understood how they interpreted the question differently than I intended.

The questions on the test are not memorization style questions.  They are all application types that really can't be directly Googled. They can Google a lot of information, but if they truly do not comprehend the content, they can't answer the questions.

What are they learning:
Collaboration, proper research skills, and other "working together" type of things.  More importantly, they are learning to really learn and how to problem solve.

The Challenge!
I challenge you to assign one assessment this way and see what you think.  Let me know how it goes. :)

Online Anatomy?

Harvard X started a new course today...AnatomyX.

This course is covering the musculoskeletal system by using a case study approach.  You will have 5 patients to diagnose and treat while learning about muscles and bones.  The course is geared towards the general public and is free--are you curious enough to check it out?

Here is the challenge for my students:
Take the course.
I will use your progress average at the end of the six weeks and count it for our second six weeks assessment, assuming you want to use the grade. They are covering what we are covering, and "they" are Harvard. If you can pass a Harvard course on the muscles and bones, you certainly don't need to take a test in my class! 

Even if you don't like the course or want to continue after you start, you have nothing to lose. Check out online learning from one of the best schools in the country.  

PS, I am taking it too - bonus points for getting a better grade than I do :)

Image from edx.org 

Create Your Own Project

Day 1 - What do you want to learn?
Day 2 - What do you want to do with what you learn?
Day 3 - Today...

Today was awesome. Kids have amazing ideas on how to improve our world.  I really wish more educators would let them create their own pathway and learning objectives.  Or maybe I wish more politicians or decision makers would let us determine what is best for our kids in our classrooms.

Today we looked a the project last years students created, Health Without Borders in iTunes U.  We determined the pros and cons of creating an online course in iTunes U.  We discussed designing and creating things that have not been created yet and what the needs of society really are. We tweeted with TEDMED about how we imagine a healthier world.  FOUR students were added to the TEDMED Imagine Mural!!

See the full tagboard of tweets here!

We looked at ways to improve the health of our community and tried to come up with ideas of how we can tie in what we are doing in class to global health issues.  We thought of ways to help kids in developing nations break the cycle of poverty and hunger.

These are a few of the ideas from my classes today in our brainstorming.  We will revisit all the ideas tomorrow and students will decide which project they feel most strongly about and create an implementation plan and timeline.

Science Transformations

This summer I worked with the fabulous Casey Helmick and TASA to create courses in iTunes U for science educators across the nation.

Our purpose:  To create free, transformative teaching resources for science educators.  All content is aligned to our TEKS, or state standards.  I worked on 6th, 7th, and 8th grade science, Anatomy and Physiology, and Principals of Health Science. Last year we created the Biology course, which was updated this summer.

Download the courses to get some new ideas for teaching science this year! 

PBL Planning

Day 2 of design your own syllabus continues...

I started with the question, "Which do you think is more of a global health concern, starvation or obesity?"  They overwhelmingly chose starvation.

Next, we revisited the questions they posed on the first day that revolved around diet and nutrition. They had some pretty awesome questions and things they wanted to learn. These are all student generated questions to the question "What do you want to learn in Anatomy?"

Next, I asked them to come up with some project ideas on one of these topics.  I find it interesting that the majority of their ideas are focused on decreasing the obesity epidemic, while over 70% of them felt starvation was a bigger concern globally.  Do they think starvation is a bigger problem, but obesity is easier to solve?  I have a guest speaker coming in next week, someone who did a TED talk on malnutrition and obesity issues so we will see what information he provides to give them more knowledge on the subject.

Here is our padlet wall of project ideas...

We will revisit these after our guest speaker and start putting ideas together on how we can impact society with our knowledge.  Once we have a few big ideas, we are going to talk to Sarah Weldon of the Oceans Project to hear what she is doing to help improve society on a global level and see if she can inspire and challenge us to think bigger.

Created with Padlet

Educator Evaluation

Our district has completely redone how educators are evaluated and its quite awesome. I love that it encourages growth for ALL teachers, no matter where they are right now and really aligns with our district vision of transforming education.

One way in which educators in CISD are being evaluated this year has to do with the learning environment.  One domain mentions "displaying learner work", which struck up a lot of conversation this morning at the meeting.  I know that I don't hang kids work on the wall anymore-- and haven't really in a long time.  Most of what my kids create is digital, although we do create models and such occasionally, most is online.

For the last year, I have created an online portfolio for me to share class creations.  My portfolio is used to showcase their work so I can share it on twitter, with their parents, or at professional conferences. While they have their own online portfolio to reflect and share their work through the year, being published in our class portfolio gives them another way to have an authentic audience. I do not always share the best work, I showcase good work, accurate information, creative thinking, innovative ideas, etc. Everyone has a chance of being published.

Giving kids an audience for their work should be something we all strive to do. Authentic audiences = more learner engagement = more learning.

Two more awesome science educators are implementing this idea this year and have just set up their class portfolios as well to be added to this school year.

Angela Barnes --  ESS, Astronomy, and APES Portfolio

Monica Ortigoza -- IB Chemistry and GT Chemistry  

Check out their outstanding work and think about creating your own space to showcase learner creations.  

**We used bulb portfolios due to the ease of use and the ability to create and access from an iPad...and its free. :)

TOY Reflections....

Today I have to get on a stage in front of my entire district and talk ...about myself. Those of you that know me, know that I am horrified at the very thought of this.

When trying to decide what to talk about, all I could think about was how thankful I am for what everyone else does.  So as my speech makes an odd twist away from talking about me to talking about you, know that it was very intentional.  I could have made it a Grammy/Oscar speech and thanked specific people (who are listed below…), but I know that a few I wanted to thank aren't in the district anymore and I didn't want people to actually fall asleep while I was talking. 

Being TOY has given me a lot of attention, which I am not great at receiving.  I am never sure exactly how to respond or I fear that I come off ungrateful, when really its just my introverted personality.  I appreciate everything and could not be more excited to represent Coppell ISD and Region 10.  I am also kind of excited about being on the sidelines of the National Championship game in January too :)

One thing I was not prepared for when receiving TOY was the negative attention I would receive. While many people were complimentary and truly happy for me, others somehow decided I have created more work for them.  What does this mean for me?  Thicker skin?  Developing the ability to let things roll off of me without getting my feelings hurt?  Probably so -- but more so, it motivates me to really try to improve the culture of my school and the attitudes of those I work with.  Acknowledge everyones strengths and be happy for what they contribute - because everyone contributes something.

But last night and this morning, I was reminded by so many people one reason why I love my job. Getting texts, tweets, DM's, and emails from people I haven't talked to in awhile...all with happy thoughts and wishes for me as I get on the stage.  I could not ask for a better community in which to work and teach.  Thank you all so much for supporting me and knowing me so well.

So here is my convocation video.  I wish I could have included all of the videos that were sent to me by students, but I had a time limit. Some had sound issues, others were grainy, and several had just minor technical difficulties in sending them.  All videos will be delivered to the teacher they thanked over the next week.  

Here is the link if the video does not show up.

My Thank You List:

Dr. Turner - How could I have been willing to try new things and challenge the traditional educational system without his support and encouragement?  Knowing your superintendent believes in you is more powerful than anything.  I have so much respect for him and what he is doing to improve education in our state and beyond.

Tabitha Branum - This woman intimidated me more than I knew possible, but with that, she challenged me to step up and try harder. Her encouragement allowed me to present at conferences and speak with confidence.  I admire how amazing she is at leading people and how well spoken she always is.

Laura Springer - What could I possibly say about Springer that everyone doesn't already know?  Her legacy in this community is like nothing I have ever seen.  When I asked kids to speak in this video, almost every last one of them wanted to thank Springer, and so do I.  Her presence in the room makes the room a happier place and I can not tell her enough how her positive attitude inspires me.

Linda Cook - Her work ethic is unmatched.  She finds the best in all people and I truly admire her for that.  She had helped me see the big picture and helped me reflect along this journey.  I cannot imagine anyone better suited for her position of leading and transforming educators.

There are so many more people that I want to thank -- so I stuck with the ones that were here from the beginning (or almost the beginning)...I appreciate each and everyone of you that contribute to making Coppell ISD a transformative school district.