GENIUS HOUR 2023
That’s Genius
Mile Creek students showcase their passion projects in the annual celebration.
“The most important attitude that can be found is the desire to go on learning.”
This spring Ms. Fusaro’s 5th-grade students at Mile Creek participated in the annual Genius Hour Celebration. Each student researched something they were passionate about and built a website to showcase their learning. The project culminated last week where students presented and shared their findings with each other. Get all the details below including examples of student websites.
Q: What specifically are you trying to accomplish with your students and how are you integrating technology into this process?
A: (Francesca Fusaro, 5th Grade Teacher, Mile Creek)
Genius Hour is a culminating project where students showcase all that they have learned in ELA and technology. The project began with an interest survey to help students identify potential topics. Students then developed essential questions around their interests and began researching with a graphic organizer. Safe and effective Google Search techniques were discussed and practiced as they researched. Individual Google Sites were then created to reflect learning in a visual medium.
Q: What specific technology are you using and what does this technology do?
A: (Francesca Fusaro, 5th Grade Teacher, Mile Creek)
Google Sites is a simple web page creation tool available to all Google users. No need to be a professional designer or programmer to put together a website to convey an idea, an initiative, a product or anything else. Designing is easy and intuitive due to the layout and template options provided.
For Genius Hour, each student built a Google Site to express their new learning. Focus on the design process was also implemented to address theme, color, mood, and purpose. Students had first-hand experience incorporating images, audio, and video into their sites while sourcing all material.
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards were incorporated including several strands from Global Collaborator, Creative Communicator, and Digital Citizen.
GENIUS HOUR WEBSITES
Q: Can you provide any feedback or reflection from students or other participants?
“This was really fun! I liked seeing everyone’s topics they chose, and I enjoyed learning something new!”
“I enjoyed being able to teach others about my topic. I also enjoyed learning new things I might not have ever thought about researching.”
“I enjoyed learning about new things I might not have taken the time to look into on the internet. I also enjoyed seeing all the different ways people took Google Sites and made them their own! It was so cool to see different design ideas!”
