C4T #1 and #2

I commented on two different teachers blogs. The first was on Denise Krebs’ blog. Denise is a passionate educator, who is currently teaching middle school in Iowa. She has been teaching for 17 years. The second was on Ewan McIntosh’s blog. He is a former French and German teacher, and is now Scotland’s first National Advisor on Learning and Technology Futures.

Denise’s post was actually in response to Ewan’s, so I thought it would be interesting to include both of them, as it really was essential for Denise’s post. The topic of their disagreement is on “Genius Hour.”

Genius Hour is an idea that has been and is being implemented around the US that encourages students to learn on their own. Essentially, students are given an hour of free time to work on individual projects. The basis is similar to a process used by Google with their employees. The Google idea expresses that even though there may only be brief moments of genius, those moments could become the company’s next core product. For students, however, this becomes a little more complicated.

Our Expectations of Creative Genius -Denise Krebs
Denise argues for Genius Hour. She claims that it has been very helpful for her students. However, she doesn’t believe it is all about the ending genius project, but rather improving the imagination and creativity. She also argues many points that were specifically brought up by Ewan.

20% Time and Schools: not the best bedfellows -Ewan McIntosh
Ewan argues that Genius Hour isn’t suited for the school system. Essentially he believes that there isn’t enough structure for it to develop correctly, and it is difficult to measure the students’ actual learning and achievement. He also seems to believe that student’s miss the mark when there isn’t enough structure. He cautions about the implementation that he sees occurring.

My comments were specific to each individual. But, they did have a common theme. Overall, I agree with Denise that Genius Hour is a good idea for improving the imagination. It should begin in elementary school, so that students understand and develop its’ structure as they progress through school. I agree that there needs to be some structure, but not quite as much as Ewan believed. I also understand the fear that Ewan has, and would not want to see it instantly implemented on a high school without having a more formulaic structure. This, however, defeats the purpose of it for younger students. So, it is definitely not something to take lightly.

My comments were quite long, so I hope that you click the links and read them in full. Genius Hour will probably come up for us as educators in the near future, so it is worth looking into.