
One of my goals this year for Genius Hour is to guide the students into creating more dynamic presentations to share what they have learned.  If you are a teacher, you have probably experienced the excruciatingly long  Powerpoints proudly displayed by students to a mostly disinterested audience of their peers.  A couple of my strategies to shake things up this year are to offer the students some digital sandbox time (which I am planning to discuss in a future post) and to give them some “Genius Hour Challenges.”  My 5th graders, though, just started planning their first “Missions” and I knew they weren’t in the mood to sit and listen to an excruciatingly long lecture from me about alternative presentations 🙂
I had not gotten my digital sandbox materials together, yet, but I had recently discovered a graphic called, “101 Ways to Show What You Know” from  fortheteachers.org that I thought would appeal to them.  Of course, at the exact moment I was about to project it on the screen for them, my classroom projector conked out.  In desperation, I held up the paper.  Despite my low-tech exhibit, there was instant excitement.
“Really?!!! Â I could do a puppet show?”
“Sure.”
“A COMMERCIAL?!!!! Â YOU WOULD LET US DO A COMMERCIAL?”
“Of course.”
What cracked me up about their surprise was that I’ve had them do about half of the activities on the page, at one time or another, to demonstrate their knowledge. Â But, for some reason or another, whenever they get to choose their own method of presenting, they always default to Power Point.
Not anymore.
“I’m totally doing a scavenger hunt. Â Now I just have to figure out how to do it,” one student announced.
“Hmm. Â We’ve done scavenger hunts in here before, haven’t we?” I asked him.
“Yea— Â Oh, WAIT A SECOND! Â I’M DOING AN AURASMA SCAVENGER HUNT!”
And that is exactly what he decided to put down as his “Format of Mission Report.” Â So, instead of flashing a bunch of slides about deep-sea fish in front of his half-asleep classmates, this student will be creating an augmented reality activity that will get them out of their seats and help them to learn about his topic.
I wish I had a nickel for every yawn I won’t be seeing the day he presents.
(You can find links to the Genius Hour Mission Report and other resources here.  Update:  *As of 1/2/14, you can now download all of my current Genius Hour resources in a bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers for $5.  Or, you can still download them separately (for free) by clicking on the Genius Hour Resource Page.  If you are interested in learning more about augmented reality, click here.)
