Adventures in EdTech

  It’s so important to stay active, right? Every day we see commercials or ads on our favorite social media app touting the latest workout equipment, fitness channel, or the most comfortable pair of shoes to lace up for your next marathon (it’s literally like running on air!) If we go too long without hitting the treadmill, yoga mat, or even just a walk through our neighborhood, we can start to feel the effects in a number of different ways. Staying active helps maintain our overall health, both physically and mentally. In a similar fashion, staying active in learning can have major benefits for our students. Active learning is a method of teaching and learning that, as the name suggests, asks students to take a more active role in their education. This is not about lecture and recitation. Instead, students are tasked with actually grappling with concepts and materials, taking a lead role in the classroom, while their teacher focuses on facilitating learning with consistent, targe...

 A few years ago (I think it was before my third year of teaching), my district brought in a presenter who kicked off a PD day by talking about project-based learning and Genius Hour. It has stuck in my mind as one of (sadly) the few PD presentations that I actually felt applied in my classroom, and that year, after a few emails back and forth with the presenter, I took the leap into trying a Genius Hour unit with my students. On the end-of-year reflection form that I asked all of my classes to compete, Genius Hour was almost universally declared as the highlight of students' time in my class. From that point on, I made Genius Hour a consistent part of my curriculum plans, and it continued to be the most well-remembered part of students' years.  In simplest terms, Genius Hour comes originally out of a practice at Google, where developers were allowed to spend 20% of their time working on 'passion projects' (I've also heard Genius H)our referred to as '20-time...