Genius Hour is a kind of self-directed learning which is built around students’ curiosity. In the traditional learning model, the control of the class, lesson, units are in the teacher’s hand and they decide what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach. On the other hand, In Genius Hour the entire control is in students’ hands and they control all aspects of learning like what to study, how to study, and what they do in the classroom. It gives an opportunity to students to explore their curiosity which makes students super engage in learning resulting in improvement of performance.
Genius Hour is a concept of Google which they use effectively on their employees by allowing them to work 20% of their time on any project they are interested in or passionate about, this gives them the freedom to work on things they are most curious about and it automatically makes them happier, creative, more productive and their performance starts to go up which ultimately benefits the company.
Genius Hour cannot replace traditional learning as it’s not a full-time approach it can be used with a traditional learning method and it’s up to teachers how they implement genius hour either they can use 1 hour genius hour every day or they could use 1 full day genius hour classes per week. Teachers should use an 80/20 rule for a genius hour just make 20% of the time for genius hour. This will make students feel less monotonous in learning as the genius hour approach is student-friendly and teachers are present in class but the control is in student’s hands that either they want help from teachers or simply they don’t want to be bothered by teachers and want to do self-study.
Six Principles Of Genius Hour
1 – Sense of purpose
Students don’t actually take education in school seriously. They pay less attention to lessons in the classroom and focus more on gossiping with friends and often feel burdened by the lesson or face difficulty in doing homework. They take the classroom as a place where they have to learn lessons and complete homework just to save themselves from punishment and not to gain knowledge. Therefore, the children should be reminded that they come to school for gaining knowledge and this knowledge will only help them in becoming successful in adult life.
Students and Teachers should take the classroom as a place where they enjoy the process of learning, play with their curiosity and become as creative as they can and not take classroom education as a formality. For this Teachers should give personal motivation to students and explain to them the importance of classroom learning.
2 – Design
Students are free to choose whatever content they want to study and they can even choose the best design for that learning. Students can use multiple informational resources and achieve a special learning experience. Teachers give freedom to students so now students don’t have to do boring assignments or read textbooks.
3 – Inquiry & navigation
When students take responsibility for their learning they tend to find more about their capabilities, detect knowledge gaps, learn more about their weak areas after finding their learning capabilities. They navigate through information using multiple resources & arrange data that is related to their academic needs. Students get a better understanding of all the concepts which are more interesting and beneficial for them.
4 – Creating
Students don’t gain much knowledge when they solely focus on reading textbooks and taking notes, they only gain knowledge when they are provided with hands-on experience and practical exercises. So Teachers should make sure students get to work with real-life problems so to achieve that by giving students project-based learning, creating models, and motivating them to work on some visible products which they can see the result of their work.
5 – Socialisation
Students get to interact with teachers who help them in solving the problem, removing any doubts, and overcoming obstacles. They also work with other students to gain team working skills and lastly they work with community members by demonstrating their projects and achievements and this will help them to establish a sense of purpose.
6 – 80/20 rule
Teachers should follow an 80/20 rule by letting students at least 20% time to work on things they are most curious about within the framework of learning. The rest 80% will be of Traditional ways of learning. Teachers can choose the time for Genius hour whether they should give 10 minutes per lesson, 1 hour per day, or 1 day per week. Each teacher is free to choose whatever schedule suits the classroom.
