Genius Hour Blog Evaluation

My Learning Object

This week in our technology class, we were asked to explore a variety of learning objects that we could use in a classroom. These technological tools included sites like Wordle, Popplet, Audioboom, and Wikis. We explored the objects and then chose one of them to explore further and create our own.

The learning object that I chose to explore was comic strips. To be specific, I used the site toondoo.com to create my comic strip. This is a great tool to help students tell a story. You could integrate subjects such as science, social studies, and/or language arts and ask students to create a fiction or nonfiction story of their own. A comic strip is an engaging and interesting way to allow students to tell readers about the information that they learned over the course of a unit or allow them to be as creative as they would like.

In order to try out this learning object, I created a very short comic strip based on my Genius Hour Project. I told a very simple story about my goal and my training for my Genius Hour, running a half marathon. It is pictured below:

I would recommend letting students try to use this site to create a comic strip in the classroom. It was relatively easy to use and you can upload your own images and backgrounds onto the site if you do not like the options provided to you. In addition, you can create a book with the comic strips in your gallery. If you wanted students' comic strips to be longer than the one that I created, it is possible to have them create multiple strips and put them together in a comic strip book. I think students would really enjoy having this opportunity to tell a story through a different type of writing, such as a comic strip. I am looking forward to trying something like this in my own classroom in the future!

Overcoming the Challenges

It is inevitable that when you begin a Genius Hour project, you will face challenges and obstacles along the way. However, the most important thing to look back on is how you overcame those challenges. When I took on the goal of running a half marathon by October, I knew that I would face obstacles when trying to achieve my goal. No matter the running goal, there are always bumps in the road that you must conquer.

For me, my challenge right now is finding the time to train. With school, volunteering, and trying to work as many nights a week as I can, working out cannot always be my priority. I have always been the type of person that will work extremely hard at school in order to achieve good marks and with the pressure of finding a full time job now that I am so close to graduating, volunteering has become important to me as well. Because of my efforts to work hard at these two major parts of my life, running does slip through the cracks sometimes.

One of the reasons that I decided to do running as part of my Genius Hour project was that I wanted to make an effort to find the time to workout, even when life got busy. This has proved more challenging than I would have thought. While I do make time to run 3-4 times a week right now, I do find it challenging to add longer distances to my training because for one, it takes much more time to do so and additionally, the weather in the winter is not ideal for running long distances. This results in my having to run on the treadmill and while running on the treadmill is great for up to 6km, it is hard for me to get my mind around running longer distances on it.

Something that I would really like to work towards for the rest of my time doing this Genius Hour is finding the time to run longer distances, even if it is just once a week. By doing this, I will be able to work my way towards my goal of running 21km overtime. I am confident that as the weather continues to get warmer, I will enjoy spending my time running outside and it will become a time when I can take a break from the other busy parts of my life.

While I am confident that I will be able to achieve my goal in the end, I did want to write this blog post to discuss the challenges that I've been facing while training. Reaching a goal is never going to be easy and there will never be a road towards a goal that does not include bumps along the way. Despite these bumps, it is important to have a positive attitude and to have a growth mindset. I strongly believe that if I do this, I will be successful and will be able to conquer any challenge that comes at me along the way.

Zantamata, D. (2014, May 10). Quote [Image]. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2kJYHIJ

An Important Message for All Educators

This week in our technology class, we were asked to find a TED Talk to watch and evaluate. After watching this TED Talk by Sal Khan, I thought that it was important that I share it with other educators out there who may not have had a chance to see it. This lecture not only highlights the importance of giving students time to achieve mastery, but it talks about teaching students to have a growth mindset. By teaching grit and perseverance, we are teaching students to see their mistakes as opportunities to learn, rather than as failures. Allowing students to have time to master the subjects that we teach will lead to less gaps in their learning and less students falling through the cracks. 

Despite all the important messages that this TED Talk touches upon, my main question after watching it was how teachers are expected to give students enough time for all of them to master a subject at their own pace, when there is so much curricular content to cover within the school year?

I hope that you find this talk as inspiring and interesting as I did. Please feel free to watch the TED Talk at the link below:

Khan, S. (2015, November). Let's teach for mastery - not test scores [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores

An Update on My Training

It is time to start training!! As I have stated in previous blog posts, running is something that is a common form of exercise for me to do. I generally run short distances, usually around 5km 3 or 4 times a week; however, in the summer it is not uncommon for me to run longer distances a couple times a week, usually 10-12km.

In learning that I was going to begin to train for a half marathon for my Genius Hour Project, my dad recently lent me a book that provides a training program for running a variety of distances. This book has a program for running 21km that I plan to follow starting next week! It is a 16 week program that is intended to build the runner up to running 21km slowly. It suggests which days to run and how many kms to run each day. Because of my busy schedule, the days that I run may need to be adjusted; however, I will aim to run 5 days a week as the program suggests. I am lucky enough to have a treadmill in my basement, so even when it gets snowy outside, I will have no excuses! Here are some pictures of the book with the pages that outline the training program. I am looking forward to getting started!

Stanton, J. (1999). To complete a half-marathon [Image]. Retrieved from 
Running start to finish book.

Stanton, J. (1999). To complete a half-marathon [Image]. Retrieved from 
Running start to finish book.

I am looking forward to next week's Genius Hour and since it's an online class, I will spend that time running and training!

Why I'm CHOOSING To Make My Life Harder

My chosen Genius Hour Project is all about staying physically fit and active, even when my life gets crazy. I have chosen to train to run a half marathon. This is no easy feat. Though I try to run at least four times a week, the busyness of life with the stresses of school, volunteering, work, and maintaining a social life can sometimes get in the way. In order to run a half marathon I am going to have to commit a fair bit of time to training. I am okay with this though, because what motivated me to start working out in the first place a few years ago was the value I placed on having an active lifestyle.

With all of this said, when I was looking through my Twitter feed this week, I saw a tweet that really interested me about a high school runner who shoveled a pathway around the track at his school so that he could continue to train. When reading this, I couldn't help but think how inspiring it was that this runner was willing to spend an hour shoveling just so that he could get his run in for the day. He was determined to run outside, instead of on the treadmill and the motivation to run he exhibited was so clear. Here is the link to the article about this student: http://wapo.st/2kF6J5m

After talking to my dad about the tweet, he told me about a doctor who created a movement entitled "Make Your Day Harder." Dr. Mike Evans believes that in contemporary times, the culture that we have created is one in which we are constantly sedentary. He advocates for movement and staying active in a time when everything is made easier for us (We have remotes that can turn on our TV so why get up off the couch? We have online shopping so who needs to go walk around a mall?) He states that medical research shows that people in this generation are living longer, but also suffer from more chronic disease, obesity, and lower self-rated health. His mission is to prove to people that maybe EASIER isn't really BETTER! Instead, we can make our days harder so that we are moving more throughout the day and staying active. His website gives readers tips for how to change their day-to-day life so that there are no excuses and people are staying active.

For more information on the movement you can visit the website at http://www.makeyourdayharder.com/about OR you can watch the video below about making your day harder.

DocMikeEvans (2013, September 3). Let's make our day harder [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPuRLil4c0

This movement has inspired me to do what I can to make my day and my life harder. I am motivated to be active in my day-to-day life. I can do this by making small tweaks during my day to get active, but also workout, run, and train when I can as well. The "Make Your Day Harder" movement is one that I will constantly keep in mind when working on my Genius Hour Project, as being an active individual was one of the key reasons I began to work out in the first place. I look forward to training for my half marathon and CHOOSING to make my day harder, every day.

What I've Learned So Far About Genius Hour

This week in technology class, we have started to choose Genius Hour inquiry topics. You must choose a topic that is important to you and that you have interest in. When choosing an idea, I wanted to choose something that I would be excited about anytime I had to work towards my goal. I have always been interested in fitness and working out. It started by playing soccer many times a week from the time I was young, all the way until I finished high school. Once I got to university, I knew that I still wanted to live an active lifestyle. Since then, I have been passionate about working out. I enjoy it and it has become my way to relieve stress. As a result, I have chosen a form of working out for my Genius Hour project. Running has always been my preferred activity of choice and I enjoyed running my first 15k in September 2015. Therefore, my goal for this Genius Hour project is to train and run my first half-marathon by October 2017. I hope to increase the number of kms I am running each week, reaching 10km, twice a week by March 2017, 15km, twice a week by May 2017, and 18km, once a week by August 2017. My ultimate goal is to run/exercise four times a week. My motivation will be my determination to maintain a healthy lifestyle, even when life with school, work, and volunteering gets busy. I look forward to conquering my goal!!!!

Skeeze (2014, December 20). Runner [Photograph]. Retrieved from
https://pixabay.com/en/running-runner-long-distance-573762/