20% Project: "I want to build a foundry."

During The Bad Idea Factory one of my students enthusiastically announced that he wanted to build a foundry. Cue visions of 19th Century Manchester with large crucibles pouring extremely orange glowing metal into a form shooting sparks everywhere. You know, this.

"That sounds dangerous ... and fun," I replied. "Do you know anything about molding metal?"

"No."

"Do you know anyone who knows anything about molding metal?"

"No."

"OK, well if you're going to take this on, we're going to need to find someone who can help."

"Can't we just figure it out from the internet?"

"Maybe, but I think we're going to need some guidance."

From my experience last year, I decided that a mentorship element would definitely help my students find more success in their 20% projects, so I'm now making it a requirement. The mentor's role wouldn't be a huge time commitment. They would perhaps have a short meeting to go over the proposal and then offer guidance through email, and I'm hoping the mentors would keep up with and comment on their 20% blogs.

Then I remembered that I was in fact friends with a couple who designed their own foundry. Paxton and Marne Mobley of Paxton Fine Buckles & Jewelry Design make some of the most beautiful silver buckles money can buy. I sent Pax an email asking if he'd be willing to mentor these students, and he immediately agreed to give them a tour of the foundry they built in their garage and to mentor them throughout the year. Thank you, Paxton and Marne!

20% Project: The Bad Idea Factory

"Today your job is to come up with good ideas. And bad ideas. Really bad ideas."

This is how I framed the first 20% Project day in my English class where we create what I'm calling The Bad Idea Factory. The idea came from a workshop I attended while in Bahrain a couple years ago led by Ewan McIntosh. From his blog:

When you ask a room of professionals to come up with their “best” solutions to a problem you often tend to get great ideas, but not always the best ones. They can be contrived and almost always involve some self-censorship from the team: people don’t offer anything up unless they feel, explicitly or subconsciously, that it will get buy-in from the rest of the team or committee. 

Ask people for their “worst” solutions to a problem and people tend not to hold back at all – laughs are had and the terrible ideas flow. And while the initial suggestions might feel stupid, pointless or ridiculous to the originating team members, these awful ideas can take on a spectacular new lease of life in the hands of another, unrelated group.

So I gave my students a half-hour to work in small groups to come up with as many 20% Project ideas as they could. Great ideas are welcome, but so are the really bad ones. During this brainstorming phase of the project, no ideas were rejected. What did we get? Some really bad ideas including

• Eat only Taco Bell for two weeks
• Create a new language using only feet signals
• Breed a new animal
• Watch TV for 72 straight hours (and document the effects)

From these ideas came good ideas

• Create a news show for our school
• Write reviews of the 100 best movies from a teenager's perspective
• Create a video that teaches evolution to children
• Make a documentary about what it would be like to be blind for an entire day
• Build a homemade foundry 

Then there were bad ideas that might actually be good ideas

• Create a movie that shows grass growing
• Contact someone who lives in North Korea
• Experience what it's like to be homeless for one day and make a documentary about it
• Watch TV for 72 straight hours (and document the effects)

Next week students are going to start forming their teams and committing to an idea that was inspired by the Bad Idea Factory. I'm expecting lots of good ones.

Assignment #1: Introduce Yourself

As I mentioned in my previous post, the first thing I do in class is have my students write and deliver two minute introductions. Obviously it gives me a sense of their writing and presentation skills, but more importantly it allows me to know who they are. Here's the prompt I give them:

Your first formal assignment is to compose and present a short introduction so I may better get to know you. I'm only looking for a two minute introduction. I would like you to type it out and then read it to the class. Make sure you save your work somewhere because I'm going to ask you to post it in your portfolio (more on that later). I'd like to get a sense of who you are and what your voice is. Not sure what to write? No problem ... here are some ideas to help get you started:

• What are you passionate about?
• What are some of your goals for the year? For your life?
• What is the most important physical object in your life? (take a photo of it and bring it to class)
• What is your greatest fear?
• When have you been embarrassed?
• When have you worked on a project and completely lost track of time?
• What is your favorite flavor of Jello?
• How do you remain upbeat while reading the news?
• When have you witnessed injustice?
• Why can't cows walk backwards down stairs?
• What is your guilty pleasure?
• What has been occupying your mind most recently?
• What did you regret posting on Facebook?
• If the plural of ox is oxen shouldn't the plural of paradox be paradoxen?

You're welcome to answer any / all / none of these questions in your introduction.

Some of these sample questions are serious, and some are just weird. I wanted them to feel open to go wherever they wanted with these. 

If you're an English teacher, you have to read this response I got from one of my students:

My name is Nina, and don’t feel bad if you pronounce it wrong because everybody does. I have a younger sister Dawn who is my best friend and my favorite person. I am usually pretty quiet unless I’m around people I know really well or I’m ranting about something that I know a lot about. If I had to describe my interests in one word, that one word would be eclectic, and honestly, that's the only word that describes all of them. Keep in mind that this is a shortened list: chocolate, wombats, reading, the Beatles, saxophone, mythology, ancient languages, art and crafts, Japan, Homestuck, and etymology. Speaking of which, I will now address the paradoxen issue (I’ll try to keep it short because I could just go on and on).

English comes from mostly Germanic, French, and Latin because England was conquered by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the French Normans. The ruling class were French noblemen, the peasants were Anglo-Saxon, and the religious people, such as monks and priests, spoke Latin. The peasants were simple people, and their language had simple words, like house, farm, pig, bread, ox. The nobles had much more fancy complex words like cuisine, dormitory, facetious, language, paradox. Germanic words have much less structure than Latin and French words, and many Germanic plurals seem to make no sense (goose and geese, sheep and sheep, mouse and mice, ox and oxen). And Germanic verbs? (think and thought, see and saw, go and went, grow and grew). The point is, the reason why oxen is the plural of ox and paradoxes (which actually comes from Greek before Latin) is the plural of paradox is because ox is a Germanic word.

Amazing.

Use your projector as a teleprompter

Now that we got through a great first week of school, I'm ready for summer.

I really do love this time of year. My students have so much energy, optimism, and new goals.

Each year I begin my class with an assignment where students write a two minute introduction in Google Docs and read it in front of the class. This year I had my students present from what is often considered the back of the classroom.

My classroom is configured in five pods, each made of two trapezoid tables with virco swivel chairs. Moving attention from one wall to the other is simple. If you have more traditional school desks, you could just have your students rotate their desks 180 degrees.

This is usually the "front" of the classroom. During some presentations, it's the back.

I project the introduction on the screen so the presenter can read it like a teleprompter, maintaining eye contact with the audience without burying her head in a piece of paper. Some of my students quickly mastered the process, and it looked like they were giving an impromptu speech rather than reading off the projector. This gives new meaning to flipping the classroom.

A letter to my students and parents about the 20% Project

Dear Students and Parents of the York School 10th Grade Class,

I hope you all had an adventurous and energizing summer. I wanted to write to introduce myself and let you know a little bit about one of the unusual projects we’ll be taking on this year in English III.

In 2011 we began The 20% Project in English III. This is a major project-based-learning assignment that spans the entire school year and encourages students to pursue a creative interest they would otherwise not experience in our academic program at York.

Before I get into the details of the project, I want to explain why we’re asking students to participate in this activity. For over 20 years a trend in education has been gaining momentum that suggests the role of the teacher ought to shift away from an industrial model where the teacher stands in the front of the classroom to dispense knowledge through lectures, and the students sit to consume the information. Rather than being the “sage on the stage” as some pedagogical experts maintain, teachers increasingly ought to play the role of the “guide on the side.” In this role, the students play a much more active role in how the content and knowledge is acquired. In this model, teachers provide resources, ask questions, and suggest projects for students to explore their content. While I will play the “sage on the stage” role in much of this English class, the 20% project is one place where I will be the “guide on the side.” Put simply, this is a student-centered project rather than a teacher-centered project.

Another crucial element in designing this project is the book

Drive: The Surprising Truth About what Motivates Us

by Daniel Pink

. I can’t recommend this book enough. You can get a taste of it by watching this twenty minute video in which he argues for providing employees more autonomy in business. The book explains why the same principles apply to education.

How does the 20% Project Work?

Brainstorming

At the beginning of the year, students will begin brainstorming ideas for a project proposal. Students may work alone, but I encourage them to work in small teams, no larger than four students. While brainstorming, I will encourage students to make the project “Product Focused.” At the end of the year I want them to have made something that is a completed product. It could be a physical product like a graphic novel or a balloon that takes photos from the stratosphere. It could be an organization such as the tutoring pool Josh Pompan started for his 20% project. It could also be a digital project like a short film or video game. My point here is that I want to quickly move from the idea phase of this project to the producing phase.

Proposal

Once the team has an idea of what project they want to pursue, they begin writing the proposal. This is how the team will “pitch” the project to me and the rest of the class. In this proposal, students will answer the following questions.

• What is your project?
• Who will work with you on this project?
• Who is the audience / user base / client base for this project?
• Why is this project worthwhile?
• What do you expect to learn from this project?
• What PRODUCT will you have to show at the end of the year?
• What sort of expenses will be involved in your project and how will you cover them?
• What sort of equipment will you need and where will you get it?
• What is your timeline for completing (or launching) your project?

The Blog

Each cycle every member of every team is required to write a public blog post where students discuss their progress. They write about what happened over the past cycle, what they learned, what challenges they faced, and what they anticipate in the future. Each blog post must be at least 150 words written in Standard American English and contain a related image that is posted without infringing on anyone's copyright. Students will fill out a simple form that links to their post.

Mentors

I would like to see each team find an adult mentor who can help guide and inspire it. I hope parents will play a role in finding an appropriate mentor for this project. The mentor will serve to offer advice, provide informal leadership, and follow the progress blogs.

20% Days

Throughout the school year, students will have one day a cycle to work on their projects. If students need to be off-campus to work on their projects, they are welcome to do that on weekends or afternoons and use the scheduled 20% time as a productive tutorial period, meeting period, or writing period.

The Final Presentation

At the end of the year, each team will give a five-minute presentation to students, teachers, and community members where they will show off their work. This will be carefully written, choreographed, and rehearsed to produce the best presentation they’ve ever given. These TED-style presentations will be delivered and recorded in the Theater. Here is a two minute video of highlights from last year’s presentations.  

Assessment

Many students and parents understandably ask me about how I’m going to grade the 20% project. I try to de-emphasize the grade because extrinsic motivators like grades tend to discourage the innovation and creativity I’m looking for in this project. Read

Drive

for more on this. I want them to be inspired by the project itself, not by the grade they’re going to get on it.

That said, I am going to assess students on the algorithmic (objective) elements of the project. A significant portion of their English grade will be dependent on the following elements with rubrics.

• The Proposal (Is the proposal on-time, and does it address the required questions appropriately?)
• The Blog (Does the post meet the required length, address the required topic, and submitted to the form on-time? Do you post regularly?)
• The Product (Did you successfully move from idea phase to production phase, and do you have something to show at the end of the year?)
• Productivity (Are you spending your 20% time by actively and passionately working on your project? If not, we need to quickly adjust the project so you are working on something that is intrinsically motivating. This is less objective, but if I see students not being productive, I will intervene.)
• Final Presentation (Does your presentation meet all of the required elements?)

What if my project is a failure?

In this class there is a place for perfection. Vocab quizzes and sentence mechanics come to mind. The 20% Project is no such place.

The world’s best entrepreneurs embrace failure.

Read Wired Magazine’s issue on the topic of “failure.”

The only truly failed project is the one that doesn’t get done. I want students to strive to show off a successful product at the end of the year, but I don’t want the quest for perfection to lead to an incomplete project. I want students to follow the advice plastered on the wall of Facebook’s headquarters.

This policy doesn't work in all work-related environments. I wouldn't want to see this poster in the dentist's office or the parachute packing assembly line. But for creative projects where we're trying to innovate, I find this idea compelling. For more on this topic read

The Done Manifesto

.  

If you feel that your project is a failure, I want to hear about it. What did you learn about it? Think about your science fair project. If your hypothesis was wrong, was your project a failure? Watch Kathryn Schultz’s TED Talk: “On Being Wrong.”

Don’t strive for failure, but don’t be afraid of it either!

I am very excited about all of the different things we’re going to be doing this year in English class, including the Sophomore Speeches and more traditional English-type elements like reading great literature, writing literary analyses, and composing formal poetry. But I can’t wait to be amazed, surprised, and inspired by the innovative projects this year’s sophomores will produce in the 20% Project. If you have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to email me at

kevin@york.org

.

Sincerely,

Kevin Brookhouser

Is the Nexus 7 the D in your BYOD?

Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth. The obnoxious Back-to-School signs with their patronizing chalkboards and apples are up. I hated those signs when I was a kid, and I hate them now. Come to think of it, I can't stand most of the imagery associated with my profession. After 15 years teaching, I've never used a chalkboard, and I've never had a student bring me an apple, and that's a good thing.

 When I was a kid, the silver lining to Back-to-School season was called a Lamborghini Trapper Keeper.

For some kids and parents today, Back-to-school shopping means shopping for a gadget that can help them organize their school work. Everyone is talking about the iPad, but at $199, The Nexus 7 is a compelling device for those in schools like ours that are encouraging students to Bring-Your-Own-Device. It's great, but it's not perfect.

Pros

• Speed  This thing flys. It goes from Sleep to Web in less than 8 seconds. 
• Size  The seven inch screen size is really great for browsing the web, reading a book, and checking email. I can type quickly on the keyboard in portrait mode with my thumbs, and I love that it anticipates my word, not only by the first few letters I'm typing, but also by studying the context of the previous words. 
• Smoothness  Google calls it Project Butter, and it is the element in the new Jelly Bean Android OS that makes navigating pages and content smooth. It's the first Android product that seems almost as smooth as an iOS device. 
• Battery life  Sorry, but the alliteration is over. After playing with this for a week, I am confident that this will get any heavy user through a full day of taking notes, researching the web, and reading books on a single charge. 
• Cost  $199? Amazing. 

Cons

• Lack of textbooks  Apple's iBooks textbooks are awesome. I don't know of any school actually adopting them, but I have a couple on my iPad, and they're great. If a school is adopting these textbooks, they're probably not a BYOD school. I have written a public appeal to Amazon and Google to step up their textbook offerings, but they don't seem to be listening. You can get the Kindle App on this device and you can by books in the Play store, but so far there aren't compelling textbooks. 
• No rear facing camera  When I initially saw that there was no RFC on this thing, I thought, "Who would want to use a tablet as a camera?" The answer: Students. It may look silly to take photos or video with a tablet, but the experience is awesome for students. The iPad is a legitimate video production machine. Students can storyboard, shoot, edit, and share on a single iPad. Not on the Nexus 7.
• Doesn't replace a desktop / notebook / netbook  For high school students that are writing papers, building websites, and creating other digital media, this is not going to cut it. All of my students need consistent access to a "real" computer. 

Conclusion

The Nexus 7 is a great BYOD for students who have access to a "real" computer for working on their digital portfolios. If you need one device that does it all for under $300, I still highly recommend a netbook running Ubermix.

Your collaborators can ruin your shared folders

Shared folders (which used to be called collections) in Google Drive (which used to be called Docs) rocks. I preferred the term collections over folders because the metaphor worked better. In the real world you cannot put one document into two separate folders, but in Drive you can. I'll get over it. I'm more concerned with how destructive collaborators could be in shared folders.

Last year I had all of my students submit their work to me in a shared folder. One folder for each assignment. It was great. They had the responsibility of "turning it in," and I could see all of the docs in one place. This is SO much better than having students email you their work, and it keeps everything organized. When I tell people I do this, their first comment is, "don't all students have access to other student work?" My answer is, "Yes, and that's great." Their concern is (A) they might steal other student writing and (B) they might vandalize other student writing. I'm not worried about (A) because I'll recognize it when I'm grading. (B) is not a problem either because the revision history is tracked. Therefore, if someone writes, "Billy smells" all over someone's essay, I can intervene, turn it into the dreaded "learning moment," and revert the document to its original state. 

Last week as I was working with some teachers, transferring files from one Drive account to another using shared folders, I noticed something strange. 

Sam shares a folder with Jim. Sam creates a document in this shared folder. Jim removes that document from the folder (puts it in the trash). Sam loses document. He cannot find it in his Drive list anywhere. He can search for it, but he cannot find it unless he clicks "All Items." 

Unless I'm missing something, I might no longer use shared folders to have my students submit their work, because students could delete other student work, and it would look like they never turned in their assignments. Am I missing something here? 

Some folks in my PLC have recommended that I have students create their own shared folders with me. This is not ideal for me because I always assess student work by assignment, not student, so I would have to click through different folders for each student when I sit down to grade papers. This solution also undermines the POSITIVE aspect of shared folders. I WANT my students to read (and comment) on their peers' writing. 

Susan in my PLC has contacted Google about the issue, and they replied that it's a "known issue." By issue, I wonder if they think it is a problem or a feature. The problem is solved if only the owner of a folder could remove other people's documents from that folder. Or am I missing an unintended consequence of that restriction?


Until then, I'm going to have to think hard about how to move forward next year. Perhaps I can have my students share their docs with the setting "Anyone in the domain with the link can edit this document," then paste that link into a separate form for each assignment. I could then allow my class to view the populated spreadsheet. They would still be able to access other student documents but they wouldn't be able to remove links (papers) from the spreadsheet. 


[UPDATE]


I shared with with some other Google Apps for EDU Certified Trainers and Eric Curts had a great response. 

Kevin,

Using a form to collect the links for the submitted documents is a great idea.  However, you wouldn't have to use a different form for each assignment.  Just make one of the question in the Google Form be "Assignment" and then have that be a "Choose from a list" type question.  You can type in the current list of assignments that can be submitted, and the students can pick the assignment from the drop down list.  What is so nice about this is that you can filter by the assignment when in the spreadsheet view (if you want), and see all of the submissions for one assignment at a time.  You can go back and edit the assignment list in the form whenever you need to, without having to create a new form each time and share that link. And you can delete or hide rows for old assignments that no longer need to be accessed.

I have a few more details in this section of the "Paperless Classroom" Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/a/northcantonschools.org/document/d/1s8yQv5yzlUh9AY8_h9dCnoUPxQAWzw9D7iduGHTZq_4/edit#heading=h.xtbd7b5syaa2

 Thanks, Eric. This may be my new workflow. 

Hank Thiele adds ...

One rule you must establish with your students: assignments "turned in" must be either shared with you, or anyone with the link, or they are not accepted. Otherwise smart students will submit blank or incomplete unshared work - thus buying more time to finish.Not shared = not turned in.

The Essay Machine: Demystify the Five-Paragraph Essay

If I can get my students to leave my class knowing how to write predictable, formulaic five-paragraph essays, I feel like I've done my job. I believe that before young writers can learn how to dance, they need to learn to be pedestrian, and I find that my students still have a hard time walking. I've offered handouts, lectures, activities, and group discussions about how to structure a five-paragraph essay, and when they turn in their work, still too many of their essays are disorganized messes. Then I created The Essay Machine.

The Essay Machine is simply a Google Docs template using a table in a text document. The table has two columns with my instructions on the left column and a place for students to write their sentences in the right column. I have the rows divided into six different sections. One for each paragraph and a separate section for the title. Within each paragraph section, I have rows that explicitly instruct what kind of sentence goes where. Writing becomes fill in the blank. 

Since it is a template, students click on it, and Google Drive automatically creates a copy of the template and saves it in their Drive. Once they finish filling in the boxes, they have a clear, organized, and well-defended essay. They can simply cut and paste their sentences into a separate document, format it to comply with MLA, share it with me, and they're done.

Over 150 teachers have already used The Essay Machine, and I only created it a couple months ago. Feel free to use it yourself. Sign in to your Google account and click here. Or watch this video.


My students really seemed to appreciate the structure The Essay Machine provides. They never had to face a blank computer screen, they knew what sentence went where, and their essays ended up less chaotic and more pedestrian. I'm good with that.

Google Educast #56

Had a great conversation with Chris, Fred, and Google's Tasha Bergson-Michelson about A Google a day, and the Power Searching with Google class. I also talked about my 20% project and this video of my students presenting their work.

Hate grading essays a little less with Google Forms

Watch this screencast that shows you how to create forms that will help you grade essays faster while removing some of the mystery students feel about subjective assessments. Also see how I use the iPad while I grade.

Here is a link to the Google Docs Template. You must be signed in with your Google account to view this.  

Do badge systems undermine motivation in the classroom?

The logo from classbadges.com

Could offering a students badges for doing great work actually discourage performance? Perhaps. At our school we're looking at adopting a badge system to distribute when students demonstrate various skills particularly in our technology and information literacy class. For former scouts, the badge system will be nothing new. Learn a skill, earn a badge. I recently posted on my PLC a request to find a resource that offered digital badges we could use. James Sanders replied that he is working on a site that will provide just that at classbadges.com. Awesome!

One teacher brought up an informed and thoughtful question regarding badges, which I thought I would explore here. He asks: 

For this upcoming school year some teachers and I are introducing badges and other gamelike features into the online community that our students work in. One of the teachers has raised concerns that badges will stifle the students'  intrinsic motivation, that students will focus more on getting badges than the work they're doing and that this extrinsic motivation will ultimately have negative consequences. But on the other hand, I see some of the winners from this year's DML competition and it seems all good.
What do you all think?

Here is a thoughtful post by Chris Sloan that raises the question more deeply. 


If you read this blog, you'll understand how well his concerns align with my approach to motivation and learning. Isn't a badge just a carrot, and don't carrots actually undermine motivation? The truth is, it depends on the kind of work we want to get from our students.

Once again, I'll refer to Daniel Pink's work, this time an article from The Harvard Business Review, "A Radical Prescription for Sales." In it he addresses many of the concepts he explained in Drive. He divides tasks into two categories: algorithmic and heuristic.

... The effectiveness of motivators varies with the task. In particular, they have discovered that contingent rewards—I call them “if then” rewards, as in “If you do this, then you get that”—work well with routine tasks social scientists dub “algorithmic.” Think stuffing envelopes quickly or turning the same screw the same way on an assembly line. The promise of a reward, especially cash, excites our attention, and we focus narrowly on getting the job done.

However, those same if-then rewards turn out to be far less effective for complex, creative, conceptual endeavors—what psychologists call “heuristic” work. Think inventing a new product or working with a client to tackle a problem neither of you has confronted before. For those projects, you need a broader perspective, which, research shows, can be inhibited by if-then rewards.

Badges are indeed if-then rewards, therefore perhaps we should only apply them to algorithmic tasks. Of course we're not not asking our students to stuff envelopes or work on an assembly line. I hope. However, I think some skills we want our students to acquire fit more in the algorithmic side of the spectrum. For example, I want my students to be able to identify and fix a comma splice. There is only one way to identify a comma splice and only three ways to fix them. This mechanic skill is as algorithmic as it gets. Another example in the English classroom would be metric verse. Identifying and composing metric verse is also algorithmic. Therefore, I think it would be entirely appropriate (and awesome) to have a "Comma Splice Assassin" badge and a "Metric Verse Master" badge. 

The badges that would undermine motivation, if Daniel Pink is right, are the badges that reward heuristic work, like composing a sentence that conveys a complex idea clearly or composing a sonnet that reveals insight into a subtle relationship. A "creative kid" badge would fail. A really bad way to get kids to be innovative is to tell them to be innovative. A worse way would be to promise them an innovative patch. Creativity and innovation provide their own rewards. We teachers need to create an environment where students are motivated to be innovative, and for that we must provide autonomy, mastery, and purpose. See the video below.


Am I correct in labeling the acquisition of concrete skills such as sentence mechanics, vocabulary, arithmetic, and taxonomy as algorithmic? Is there a spectrum with algorithmic on one side and heuristic on the other? If so, how do our different academic goals fit within this spectrum?

Demo Slam: Google Earth + Presentations

This is a video of my Demo Slam at the California Google Apps for EDU Summit on Thursday, July 13, 2012. In this slam I demonstrate how to overlay screenshots of Google Presentations into Google Earth to create Prezi-style presentations. Thanks to JR Ginex-Orinion @gochemonline for recording this and sending me the file.

See the history of the London Olympic Stadium Site in Google Earth

During the Google Apps for EDU Summit, I did a workshop on Getting Going with Google Earth. In it I demonstrated how you can see the history of any geographic location using the Historic Imagery feature. Here's a screencast of how it works.

Give your students 20% time to do whatever they want

"Seriously? You're going to let us do whatever we want for 20% of our time in English class?"

"I'm skeptical." 

"That's awesome."

Taking Google's lead, and inspired by Dan Pink's book, Drive, I decided to take the plunge and give my students the kind of radical autonomy they both suggest, and I gave my students 20% of their time in my English class to pursue a project of their choosing. 

Rules and expectations

1. You may work alone or with a small group.
2. Choose a project that is new to you and something you wouldn't normally do in another academic class.
3. Write up a proposal and pitch it to the rest of the class that includes a purpose, audience, timeline, and resources you will need to complete the project.
4. Reflect on the process once a week in your blog.
5. If at any moment you feel lost, overwhelmed, or uninspired, you must set a meeting with me to find a solution.
6. At the end of the year, you will present your project and reflect on the process in a five-minute TED-style talk in front of other students, teachers, and community members.

Project ideas

• build a tutoring network of high school students helping middle school students
• design a complex videogame map using Valve's SDK
• start a business selling originally designed t-shirts and accessories
• launch a web-design start-up for local organizations and businesses
• write a graphic novel
• make a stop-motion animated movie of a scene from Macbeth
• write a backpacking guide for teenage girls
• interview local senior citizens and document their history
• record and produce a full-length album

Failure is an option

In the end, many of the projects turned out exactly as they had been proposed at the beginning of the year. Epic win, as they would say. Many of them changed the scope of their projects. Some of them considered their projects a failure because they ran out of time or they couldn't make their businesses profitable. 

I asked them to consider how often successful leaders failed, and they all got a sense that even failures were successes when they could learn from their failures. 

Here is a video of clips from their final 20% talks.

My own successful failures

I learned a lot about facilitating a project like this successfully, and I made my own mistakes along the way. Here are two things I'm going to do differently next year.

Emphasize the importance of making something

Too many of my students got lost in their ideas and spent more time thinking than doing. I don't want ideas, I want products. Even if they're failed products, make something.

Institute a mentorship program

I am going to have each student seek an adult who would agree to be a mentor. I personally have  little to no experience in the disciplines they choose for their projects. Furthermore, I simply do not have the time to support all of these different projects as much as I would like. 

Final thoughts

If you're interested in learning more about 20% time, check out these resources:

• my post on Daniel Pink's Drive
• another post about motivating with autonomy
• Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner (I'll post my review as soon as I finish reading it.
• A 2007 NYTimes article on 20% time at Google

Google Educast #46

Last night I joined Fred Delventhal, Diane Main, and Sean Williams for the Google Educast. 

Google Docs for Writing Instructors: Edu On Air Hangout Conference Session

On Wednesday with over 40 other educators I hosted a Google Education On Air Conference Session.

Call for Great Digital Storytelling Assignments and Assessments

On Sunday I head up to Burlingame (or if you're gullible and from out of town, "San Francisco") to work with a team of educators to develop a new curriculum at the University of California Curriculum Integration Institute.

The UCCI Institutes bring together educators from around the state to collaborate on the creation of model high school courses that anchor traditional academic learning in real-world experience, by integrating career technical education (CTE) with “a-g” subjects. UCCI Insitute courses are designed to be rigorous and relevant, to keep students engaged in learning and to prepare them for college and career success.

I will serve on a team creating an advanced digital storytelling course. This looks like a great opportunity to expand the scope of traditional English classes beyond just literary analysis and creative writing through a UC approved venue. I am impressed by the integrated courses developed by previous UCCI teams.

What great digital storytelling assignments and assessments do you have to share?

Google Certified English Teachers Hung Out

This afternoon a few fellow Google Certified Teachers who teach English hung out on air with me in a Google Hangout On Air. We thought it might be fun to share some of the things we were doing in the classroom, and it turned out to be a ton of fun. We held a conversation across California, New York, and London with Jen Roberts, Catlin Tucker, Carol LaRow, and David Read. I am completely energized with new ideas for using Docs in the English classroom.
Here is the video of the Hangout.

Then tonight Diane Main mentioned our Hangout on the Google Educast.

Also see Jen's blogpost about the event here.

I have to say, Hangouts are amazing! This is exactly the tool we needed a year ago with the SchoolsAndTech podcast. We'll definitely need to have more of these in the future.

Informal English Teacher Hangout 4/19 3pm

A small group of Google Certified Teachers (the English variety) are going to participate in a Google Hangout On Air on Thursday, April 19 at 3:00 pm Pacific Time. We are going to talk about how we're using Google products in the English classroom. This is going to be a bit of a practice run for the Google Hosted event on May 2. If any of you are interested in watching us talk about some of the things we're doing in the classroom, just find the live Hangout on my Google+ page at that time. If you can't make it and you still want to view the event, I will post it on YouTube later. More details here. #engchat

Santa Cruz / Monterey iPad in Education Workshop May 18, 19

On May 18 and 19, I am going to present a Tri-Cue Workshop on the iPad in Education. This hands-on workshop will focus on the use of technology to support teaching and learning. The session will be intended for an audience of teachers, administrators, or anyone else interested in education with intermediate technology skills. The content will focus on the use of the iPad in the classroom, including the use of digital textbooks and an overview of the best educational apps (and web-based resources) for enabling students to create, consume and reflect on their learning. Each participant will receive a 16 GB Wifi iPad ... the New one!

Click here to register.