A Blueprint for Your Passion Project

As much as a  Blueprint is important for building a house, it is equally important for a Passion Project.  I recently read an amazing book called Pure Genius, by Don Wettrick that inspired me to step up my Passion Project Instruction. Let me start by saying this is the guy that has made Genius Hour/Passion Project in the classroom a goal for so many teachers! If you want to implement Passion Projects or Genius Hour you definitely need to read his book and follow him on twitter @DonWettrick .He has taken Genius Hour to a whole new level by creating an Innovation Class rather than just one day a week(20%). Using 100% Time rather than 20%Time. I dream of transforming my classes into true Artovation classes. It makes sense for the world we are working so hard to prepare our students for. I could go on and on but I'll leave that discussion for another day.
Here is an example of my "Passion Project Blueprint" based on Don Wettrick's ideas.

Checkout Don's book:

Student Safety and Accountability While Blogging

Student Blogs can be exciting and a little scary all at the same time.The students in my classes will have the opportunity to reflect on their growth throughout the project while practicing their basic writing skills. They will be able to share their "passion" with the world!  "What could be more amazing than that?" My students are amazing, responsible, and most of the time motivated young people.  Unfortunately, even the most responsible students can "fall from grace" once in a while. With the idea of posting for the world to see came a bit of worry on my part. "What if they post something crazy or inappropriate?" My goal was to make sure that nothing could get by me as the teacher and post for the whole world to see. I looked into different options of teacher blogs that could be submitted to the teacher first and then posted. I found that there were blog sites with optional classroom teacher regulated blog posts.  There were even district wide memberships for classroom blogs.  Unfortunately, none of the options were free and cost, as you all know, can be a problem especially at this time of year. Since our school or district does not have a membership to create student blogs this way it would be too pricey for me to justify doing that for all of my students to each have a blog. After some attempts to find out the exact district guidelines for blog writing and a meeting with my supervising administrator it was decided that I could have the students set up on their own free blog as long as there were guidelines and expectations given to the students. Let me note that my students are all between 14-18 years old, over 13. I quickly realized it was time to trust my amazing students to do what they do best...be amazing!
While I was searching out blog information and permission from the district I used our Passion Project time in class to give the students thinking about their  blog.  They wrote a rough draft of their first blog and a brief description for their profile "About Me" page.

Being that we are a Google district it only made sense to set up blogs on Blogger with their student gmail accounts.It was pretty simple to set them up in class. I had the students use their school email and add my email as an author in their basic settings and I had them add my email to the email and comment notifications in their email settings. With these settings I could easily see when they posted something and make edits if anything inappropriate was posted.

After the students had all their blogs set up and posted their first post I had them fill out a form with their blog url.  I had the form information set up to post to sheets.  This gave me a list of all the students urls.  I just made a blog list widget on my page and uploaded them all. You should notice them to the left of this blog  post.

We have had our ups and downs getting started with blogging, but most of the students have caught on.  Some are really starting to blossom as bloggers. I've also learned to let them take charge of their blogs and act responsibly.  With the right guidance and tools I'm sure they will do magnificently as bloggers!

Passion Projects with Purpose

After introducing Passion Projects and 20% Time to my classes we began generating ideas. My students had some amazing ideas for Passion Projects.As they worked through their initial ideas they struggled for purpose in their Passion Project.  For example, while they may like a particular activity such as knitting, questions about purpose arouse. Why were they knitting? Was it just for enjoyment? Could there be a bigger purpose?
I decided to ask a few questions of my students based on conversations I heard while walking around the room.

I am a firm believer that true success only comes when we find a way to solve a problem and make the world better for ourselves or others. So I added the idea of purpose to our Passion Projects.  

How can you develop purpose in your Passion Project?

Now with a passion for knitting you could teach young children to knit, sell knitted items to raise money for a charity, knit with an elderly neighbor that needs a friend, donate baby knitted items to a children's hospital, and the list goes on and on.

That's Passion with a Purpose!

Starting Our Passion Project Journey

One Friday I stood in front of my classes and told them the time in class that day would be theirs. I explained the importance of finding your passion.  I told them all they were Geniuses! I talked about Google's 20% Time and all the incredible innovations that come out of that time.  I showed motivational video clips on how to find your passion and change the world. I explained that we were going to start a Passion Project. Each one of them would be able to develop an idea based on their passion and make it happen.  I was so excited and so passionate about this idea. This would be amazing!
I had imagined my students jumping with joy at the thought of creating a project based on their likes and interests. However, I found out that when you ask a bunch of high schoolers "What's your passion?" you pretty much end up with a bunch of blank stare and a few whispers..."What is she talking about?"..."What does she mean we are going to develop a project based on our ...what?"..."She has finally lost it this time!" It was much harder for them than I ever imagined.
Who knew finding your passion could be so difficult. As adults, we all found our passion so easily, right?!? Ok, maybe not.
So I started simple. First I had to defined "Passion" for my students.

Passion: a strong feeling of enthusiasm for something or about doing something

I gave them a series of questions about themselves and their lives in hopes that it would help them narrow down their ideas.

For some it did, but there were still others lost. I knew that being lost was not always a bad thing when looking for your passion.  I kept going hoping as we moved along in the process more would have that glorious "Aha" moment.
Each Friday we dove a little deeper into the passion project idea generating process.  The best brainstorm session came when I randomly put 3-4 students together at tables and asked them to answer a few questions together based on some things I had noticed them talking about in class.

After a little collaboration the ideas started flowing.We were finally off and running...at least most of us. There were still a few, but they will get there soon.

So we began our Passion Project journey together