Genius hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It provides students a choice in what they learn throughout the semester. Through this project, students create a product to demonstrate their learning. Students can choose any topic that they want, so long as it follows these three rules: 1) You must have a driving question, 2) The project must involve research, and 3) The project must be shared globally. Below are some outstanding projects from the fall semester.
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1. |
Humans of Mooresville
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What I learned:
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2. |
Community Service
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Description
Ultimate Mission: To make it easier for people to volunteer in Mooresville. Where did the idea from?: Being a high-schooler, I know how many times volunteer and service hours are required. From admission into clubs, to filling out college applications, volunteering is extremely important. When thinking of this, I used to get very stressed out. Where do I start? I'd ask myself, "how am I supposed to know where I can volunteer and what I am allowed to do?" Plan: Create a website that holds information about different places you can volunteer in Mooresville and what you can do as a volunteer. Research: I have done a lot of research on senior centers, rehabilitation centers and assisted living facilities. Next I had to find all of the contact information, including phone numbers, addresses and website links. After that, I called each of the places individually and talked to their activity directors. While talking to the activity directors, I got their names, what you could do as a volunteer, and what you need to do to become a volunteer. My Hopes: My hopes for this project is to expand it and get it to be used by a lot of MHS students. Global Connections: My way of making a global connection was to make the website that anyone can access. Getting Involved: I knew that it would be wrong of me to do a project all about volunteering and do none of it myself. So to get involved, I volunteered with Operation Christmas Child. This is a christian organization that sends shoeboxes full of toys and goodies to children in third world countries. |
Reflection What have I learned: I have expanded my communication skills through this project. It has required me to talk to people over the phone who I have never spoke with before and get information. I also learned to take notes very quickly because while I was on the phone with them, I would have to right down everything they were saying. Difficulties: I difficulty I faced was issues with the website. A lot of times it wouldn't do what I wanted it to. Also, many times it would get very awkward during some of the phone calls whether I called an accountant by accident or they would stop mid-sentence (losing their train of thought) and it would be weirdly silent. |
3. |
World Foods
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Purpose: The purpose of the genius hour project was for everyone to get a chance to research something they were interested in. It took me a while to decide but I chose food. I love trying new foods, and creating foods for my family and friends to try. I created 9 different recipes and made a blog where I explained each one of the recipes and gave tips. Several people I know shared my website, and gave me very positive feedback on it. My website, and product: http://worldsfoods.weebly.com I did my presentation on a tri-fold board and it turned out very well for me. |
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Coping with Cancer
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Genius Hour was a semester long project that consisted of us picking a topic, making a product, having ten hours of research and at the end presenting it.
My topic was on Adolescents With Parents With Cancer I made a website that list information and ways to help the adolescents.
I was able to make my project global by making little business cards that I gave to the social worker and guidance counselors at our school.
Presentation Link
Website Link
Hours Worked on Project:
My topic was on Adolescents With Parents With Cancer I made a website that list information and ways to help the adolescents.
I was able to make my project global by making little business cards that I gave to the social worker and guidance counselors at our school.
Presentation Link
Website Link
Hours Worked on Project:
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Daft Punk: Music Mixing + Computer Coding
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1 - The Idea: My idea for the topic came from my love for Daft Punk. I have been listening to them for some time now and thought that I would show my love for my favorite band by making a website for them. My idea for my website came from me recently learning how to build websites (HTML and CSS) over the summer and wanting to put my knowledge to the test. My idea for the song came from me recently learning how to mix. I love to add samples together to create an interesting tune.
2- The Plan: Create a mix of my two favorite songs and make a website to inform others about the band. 3 - The Research: I researched the members of the band, Thomas and Guy-Man, their years through different studios and development of different styles, and their discography. 4 - The Goal: My hope for the product is that it gets around. I want people to look at my website, enjoy the layout, read the information, and take something from it. I want them to be able to read through it and go "I learned something that I didn't know about Daft Punk." I want to be the reason that someone decides to listen to their music. I absolutely love them and I think they deserve more credit. I hope thats what my website does, gives them credit. 5 - The Global Connection: it connects globally because it's about music. People don't have to understand a language to be able to listen to music. That's what I love about it. They can go to my website and not be able to read anything, but I'm sure that they can see that front picture and recognize them. Get Lucky wasn't only a hit in America, it was a hit around the world. I know for a fact that French people and Japanese people have heard their music before because that's where their other main listeners are. I just hope that people can read those first words on my webpage: Daft Punk, and look it up or see it and recognize it. |
6 - The Learning Curve: I have learned that the band wasn't the most popular in their home country but in Japan. I thought that was odd but also interesting. I also learned that the band has dealt with people accusing them of sampling from other's songs, that they haven't been with the same label, that their career depended on a song on a tape called The New Wave, that they only tour every 7 years, and that they've inspired many other electronic artists to make their own music. (ex Skrillex)
7 - The Struggle: My difficulties were building the website to some sort of perfection, finding the bpm and keys of the songs for mixing purposes, and dealing with code errors. Building the website was sometimes a hassle only because some code wasn't working. Finding the bpms and keys of Da Funk and One More Time wasn't so difficult as it was tedious. I had to load the songs into an app of mine and let it recognize the keys and bpms. Like I said it was mostly just annoying. The code errors were the absolute worst. At one point I had to have my programing friend show me what to do. I was having a really hard time with the albums page and getting the image to be to the left of the text. He gave me three different kinds of solutions, all of which didn't work. So when I got home I emailed them to him and had him take a look at the code. He even had a hard time with it. He fixed the image and text for Homework (the album) and sent the files back to me. As I looked through them he showed me what he did and explained what the tags and attributes that he applied did to the page. It was an experience that helped me but also showed me that I have a bit more to learn. 8 - The Success: My strengths were my abilities to code and to mix, being able to figure out how to upload my files to a domain (because that was harder then I had expected), being able to work often, enjoying my work, being patient, working hard, and overall just having time. I had such a fun time with this project that it allowed me to put more effort into it then I probably would've. Often times, while I was working on the website it didn't feel like school work. I just put my effort into it and said to myself "Hey, this looks nice. I'm proud." |
**Warning: Sound will play when product page opens**
6. |
Baking
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Through Genius Hour, I have learned that baking is a lot harder than I thought. It actually is very time consuming, just to make one thing takes at least an hour. The hardest part of this project for me would just be sitting down and putting the cookbook together. One thing that I would have changed would to be use all the time I had instead of doing most of it towards the end. I want to learn how to bake more stuff, to practice for the future.
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7. |
Making Music
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