Blog Completion

Hi Everyone!

This week we were asked to reflect on our experience creating our Genius Hour project website and blog. This was my first experience creating a project that was completely open-ended which definitely means starting with a level of comfortability. I think one important take-away from setting up this project is the need to still convey some expectations to students, because otherwise it can be a little anxiety inducing. In this course I think that would've meant emphasizing that the topic size should be manageable, but is completely open and that the key expectation is the incorporation of tech tools into the project to improve our comfortability in using them. The inquiry learning that I remember from high school usually involved some sort of project, but at the same time there were usually limits to the scope and topic of our project. 

Two concerns for setting up an inquiry based project in your classroom are the need for providing early feedback and instructor expertise in project topics. Providing early feedback is needed to help guide the project, but is a concern, because it is a significant work commitment from the instructor right at the start of the project. As the project progresses, constant feedback becomes less crucial. In terms of instructor expertise, the concern is that if a project is too open-ended then there are likely more and more topics that could be pursued on which the educator lacks knowledge. In this course, that concern was mitigated by the focus on technology as opposed to a significant focus on the actual material. There was also advice to provide very thorough breakdowns of terms if a topic targeted a very specialized area as was the case in my goalkeeper training project. This means that in a subject area that is less broadly applied than technology, expectations have to be included so that the goals of the project are still targeted which will sometimes require increasing the topic restrictions.

Technology focused projects can be of significant value in a classroom as I developed skills in using a wide range of tech tools. This included iMovie for my Trailer and Ted Talk, Google Sites for my product, Google blogger, and hyperlinking and embedding content. These are all important skills for students to learn. This course really showed me how many tech tools exist, especially within the google umbrella, of which I was completely unaware.

The only real regret I have was the large scope of my project. I think if I'd reduced it from the beginning then I would have been less committed to what I'd started and would have been able to prioritize trying new tech tools developing my skills using them.

I'll leave you with this video explaining the benefits of inquiry based learning, especially highlighting the importance of unleashing student curiousity.