A Teacher’s Guide to Genius Hour: How to Perfectly Implement it in Your Class

 

According to the website "The idea behind genius hour sessions is a term you’ll recognize: active learning. As students move through the project, they’ll develop a variety of new skills firsthand. The nature of the sessions encourages creativity and collaboration. "  If you would like to read the article please click here  hopefully after checking out my amazon.ca ads below.   If you are  making any amazon.ca purchases  please click on my links below first as I will get a small commission on anything you buy even if it is something else as long as it is within 24 hours.   Thanks.  Remember you can follow me by clicking on the blue follow button. This post may contain affiliate links that earns me  a commission at no extra cost to you. 

Do you shop online?  Would you like to get money back?  Rakuten is an awesome site that gives you Cash Back when you shop online. With over 750 stores, including Hudson’s Bay, Indigo.ca, Canadian Tire, Walmart, and Sephora, you get paid to shop for things you’re already buying.  Right now get a $30 Cash Bonus credited to your account and mine when you join today and make a $30 purchase within 30 days!  We both win. Payouts are quarterly.  I downloaded their chrome extension button so when I online shop I won't forget to use Rakuten.

Rakuten Canada $30 welcome cash bonus on sign-up.

If you have Textbooks you would like to sell check this website out.  I highly recommend them.  They even pay for the shipping.  I will get a small commission if you use the above link and it will not cost you anything.

Canada's Historic Places

 

If you are doing a local history project with your students this might be a place to start.  This searchable database is a work in progress and places are always being added.  To search click on the "Interact" tab at the top and select "search".   To see the site click here.

Purdue OWL and research projects

If you have been teaching high school English for any length of time you are familiar with Purdue Owl.  If not, this is a site you should definitely check out.  It has been around a long time and has withstood the test of internet time.  Your students that are writing research papers will be able to look at style guides for MLA, APA and Chicago.  The site also has many half hour activities on plagiarism.   Check out this great site by clicking here.

Check 123

"Check 123" is a video encyclopedia that your students can use to start their research into a topic.  Each video is only 1, 2 or 3 minutes long and all videos are checked and ranked by "Check 123".   Topics include: Arts, Cinema, Earth, Nature, Science, Tech, History, Space, Human Body and more.

To see the site click here.

Famous Artist Research Mobile

On January 8 2016 I posted about "Ceiling Decorations in Your Classroom".  To see that post click here.  Today I noticed on a defunct blog by Mrs L that she had her students make mobile's of Famous Artist as part of a project.  The finished projects with all the information on the back of the art was laminated and hung from her ceiling.  I thought of the post from January immediately.  To see her website click here.

Search for Data with Google Docs

On November 11 2013, Google announced the addition of data tables in the Research drop down menu. Click here to see this announcement. Let say I am creating a lesson or if I am a student writing an essay on WWII and I decide I need to get some data on death rates during the war.  I could look to the internet or my librarian or better  yet use a data base that our board subscribes to (see the librarian) or even use the many databases available through the Windsor Public Library (see me) or I could follow this post.

To use this, first go to google docs by going here.

Click on "Create".  You will then get a drop down list.  You can now select "Document".

From here you can now select "Tools"

Select "Research".

Now select "Tables" (you could select the other choices to get other types of information).  By doing this you will now be able to obtain data.

Now I can enter the data item I am looking for.  In my example it is World War 2 deaths.

You can now scroll through the data.  Again some of this data might be bogus as it is from various websites.  However you can scroll through most of them and see if there is any patterns.  If you would like to copy and paste one into your document, just mouse over it and select "Preview"

If you like this table you can now just highlight it and then copy and paste it into your google doc.  You can now edit the tables by making the columns wider etc.  When you are done you can publish your document to the web easily by selecting "File" and "Publish to the web".

According to David Doherty, "there are several benefits to publishing a Doc over merely sharing it: Publishing a Google Doc it is viewable (but not edit-able) by an unlimited number of people; it is accessible by URL;  it can be embedded into a website or blog; it can be automatically updated as the Doc is edited, or can be a “one time snapshot” of the Doc.  To publish a Google Doc, go to the file menu and find the “Publish to the web” button at the bottom and follow instructions."