AJ Juliani on Genius Hour, PBL, Design Thinking and Student Inquiry
AJ Juliani is THE founding father of 20 Time/Genius Hour. He's been writing books and inspiring teachers for years, and in this episode he shares practical advice for increasing choice and empowerment in your classroom!
Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education · AJ Juliani the Genius Hour and 20 Time Expert, Ben Kalb, Becky Peters
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Show Notes
Connect with Vrain Waves
Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb
Connect with AJ Juliani
Twitter: @ajjuliani | Website: http://ajjuliani.com/ | Books: AJ Juliani on Amazon
Links & Show Notes
- Skip to Minute 9 to get to the Interview with AJ Juliani
- What is Genius Hour? (01:33)
- Out of Our Heads and Into the Classroom (02:07)
- Structure (02:30)
- Getting Started with Genius Hour
- Genius Hour Blueprint
- Numbers app template
- Inspiration (03:45) | Kid President on Empowerment | Jack Andraka TED Talk | Caine’s Arcade | Genius Hour Examples
- Authentic Audience (05:17)
- Three N’s (06:46) - What did you learn that’s new, what do you need from me, what are you going to do next?
- #20time / #geniushour
- AJ Juliani Intro (9:07) - Director of Technology and Innovation at Centennial School District
- Genius Hour, what it is, how AJ started with it (10:40)
- Read Daniel Pink’s book Drive - Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
- The 20% Project blog post | #20Time
- Joy Kirr, Gallit Zvi, Hugh McDonald, Denise Krebs
- The Genius Hour Manifesto
- Examples of Genius Hour projects (15:28)
- How Genius Hour works (17:42) Planning → Topic Selection → Pitch → Research → Making → Presentations → Reflection
- Topic Selection: March Madness Bracket for ideas
- Shark Tank Pitch - 1 minute
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- What they’re going to learn / make
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- Why they’re going to learn / make it
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- How they’re going to learn / make it
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- What will success look like
- Mapping to Standards (21:12)
- Managing Time (22:53)
- Getting started with Inquiry-based learning (25:35)
- Get kids comfortable talking without the teacher asking a bunch of questions: Discussion games, sentence stems, fishbowls, symposiums, etc
- Genius Hour / Passion Projects for teachers (28:34)
- Teacher Innovation Pitch in Centennial SD
- Student Innovation Lab / Centennial X
- Design Thinking (31:50)
- Launch book | co-authored with John Spencer
- Chris Lehmann quote: “If you assign a project and get back 30 of the exact same thing, that’s not a project, that’s a recipe.
- HBR Article on Design Thinking
- Stanford d.school
- IDEO
- Failures to watch out for with Design Thinking & Genius Hour (36:08)
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- Managing expectations & building early
- Project Global Inform
- Prototype early
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- Trust & Relationships - be self-reflective
- Compliance - Engagement - Empowerment Continuum (42:34)
- Empower book
- Developing choice & decision skills (44:47)
- 14,000 hours with students - how much of that time do we give them practice making choices and decisions?
- Other podcasts / interviews with AJ
- Cult of Pedagogy | AJ’s podcast, Inside Innovation | TLTalk Radio
- Homework for teachers (47:46)
- What were the last 5 things you learned and why were you excited about learning them? Then, think about how you learn best, and then think about your classroom
- Ajjuliani.com - @ajjuliani on all social media
- Post interview takeaways with Becky & Ben (49:34)