“My goals for this project are for students to take the research and development skills learned in academia, apply them to a personal passion, and use them to connect with an authentic, real-world audience and create something that positively benefits their community,” reports David Baroody, Middle School History and English teacher. The 20time Project “is about student engagement, honoring student interests and voice, getting students to speak with authority on a topic for which they have a passion, and connecting the work we do in school with its impact on the greater world outside school.” What exactly is 20time? It is a construct borrowed from Google, Apple, and other creative corporate giants that extend 20% of a work week as unstructured creative time to employees meant to foster ideas and innovations that contribute to a more productive and successful work culture. Increasingly 20time is being used in education to inspire and engage students.
At GA, student projects cover a wide range of topics, including the creation of a healthy sports drink, a screenplay, a do-it-yourself crafting website, sports braces for athletes with orthodontia, and a coding curricular video game and/or research project on the “gamification” of education. Students are using blogs to document their evolving ideas, have participated in pitch sessions and have been guided through an Impact Mapping Exercise, taken from the Design Thinking model of process planning. They have also reached out to community mentors and experts to test their ideas, and are gathering feedback on how to grow their project.
To read more about 20time at GA, click here.
To read about "Why 20Time is Good for Schools" click here.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-percent-time-a-j-juliani
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