December 27, 2012

• The 20% Project.

  This is something I heard about at the TIES conference. I think I'd like to try something similar to what this teacher is doing below, but I may use the last week of school as the 20% time, instead of throughout the semester? And I may state that they'll receive effort points instead of just saying it won't be graded... or something like that.

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  “Google’s “20% Time”, inspired by Sergey Brin’s and Larry Page’s Montessori School experience, is a philosophy and policy that every Google employee spend 20% of their time (the equivalent of a full work day each week) working on ideas and projects that interest that employee. They are encouraged to explore anything other than their normal day-to-day job. As a result 50% of all Google’s products by 2009 originated from the 20% free time, including Gmail. Real break-through happens when we are free from others’ expectations and driven by individual passion.”

  ASSIGNING THE 20% TIME

  The day after winter break I “assigned the project”. In essence, high school students have spent most of their academic lives being told what to do. Their grades are then dependent on how well they completed the assigned tasks. Most teenagers spend their free time doing things they are “not told to do”. For example, most parents aren’t yelling at their son to play video games, or at their daughter to spend three hours on Facebook. These actions are done because teenagers want to do them (and in part because they are told many times not to do this). My class agreed that most teenagers “want to do what they want to do, and not what others tell them”.So this project, I said, was me telling them to do something that they want to do, with their time that it is usually spent doing what other people want them to do (that’s a mouthful). The guidelines were simple.

  Here is her handout: 

  The 20% Project:

  1. For the rest of the year, 20% of your time in my class will be spent working on something you want to work on.

  2. It has to be some type of learning, and you have to document it (journal etc).

  3. You’ll present your accomplishments to the class twice (and will not be graded on it).

  4. That’s it. Have fun. Find your passion. Explore it. Enjoy learning what you want.

  The comments at the end helped with responses to students' inquiries:

  Enforcing the Project: "This question did come up in my class. I said “if you do not want to take this opportunity seriously and would rather be graded on an assignment, I’ll gladly assign you a different project for the rest of the year that I will grade you on.” He stayed with the 20% project.The accountability is in the documentation and the presentations. More of a peer accountability than anything else (which I think is powerful). I’d be happy to hear any suggestions!"

  I am the Cool Project. The 20% Project.
  by: scrible77

  Now, as for amounts... I see my students for about three hours a week, for about 16 weeks. That's 48 hours, but let's use 45 since usually we miss at least a day (3 hours) due to me being sick or something. Twenty percent of that is 9 hours. And that would be 3 week's worth of time. Wow. I was just going to devote a week (3 hours) to this project, but I may have to add in another week in the middle of the semester for start-up time or something. Or MAYBE it should be an all-semester thing. Twenty percent of each week would be half of a class period, right? (Yes, 9 hours divided by 16 is .5 hours.) Huh. I think I could manage that as well, right? And have two presentation times?

  • 4:36 pm
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