Hi, Welcome to my blog! This is "my passion sunshine". It definitely still needs work! I will add more to it later.

We watched this really cool video today, check it out! It is a really interesting video about a child who was inspired by his passion and ran with it to create an interactive experience within his community. It definitely demonstrates the way positive reinforcement, a few tools, and complete creative freedom can inspire a student!  



We also learned about Genius Hour. It is a tool teachers are using to inspire creativity and include a portion of the day that allows them to explore their own passions. Check out this video to see the basis of Genius Hour...


I personally cannot wait to try something like this with the students. I volunteer with grade three students and they would absolutely love to try a project like this. I tried something similar last year, but had to incorporate the curriculum of social studies into it, so I do not think they had the same amount of freedom. I think allowing them to pick their own topic out of anything in the world like this teacher did would be super cool. The list of topics her students came up with was hilarious! The idea of really trying to encourage students to think about things all on their own, showing them the value of their own creativity and ideas is super inspiring. It could definitely do students well to be given the freedom to think freely, instead of being given strict curriculum and expectations for every assignment. I know some students when I tried this (without knowing about Genius Hour) really sought out more expectations, and when I had no answers to what was expected other then "just give it a try!" they were absolutely lost.


Another link provided to us was the "Bad Idea Project" Read this link to check out what this teacher did. I found this article super interesting. The idea of exploring "bad" ideas in the same way we always foster good ideas was really interesting. This class had some awesome "bad" ideas, and in the end, it seems like it could teach them some real life lessons. One of the students chose to write "Experience what it's like to be homeless for one day and make a documentary about it" as their "bad" idea, which the teacher then classified as an actual really good idea. If the student was required to research that idea more, they could learn some really important life lessons along the way.


That is about it as far as this week goes. We learned a lot of new stuff, and I'm excited to improve my tech skills!
Until next week....