There are not many days in a teacher’s life when her students are seated and working before the bell even rings.

But every Tuesday at Ryan, that is what my class is like.

In our new semester-long Digital Literacy course, we set aside Tuesdays for Genius Hour. For those who do not know what that is, Genius Hour or 20% Time is a national effort to mirror the same kind of learning that is fostered by Google. There, employees are expected to spend 20% of their work time creating new programs or devising new applications. Of course, Google has everything to gain from this because whatever is created becomes a Google product. The question is, what do we as teachers have to gain?

In the classroom, Genius Hour is where students explore topics that are of high interest to them. My student Grace said that Genius Hour is the “only hour in the school day all about me.”

Essentially, they are learning about or learning how to do something that excites them–all under the direction of a teacher. Imagine what happens when students are permitted to work on the things that they choose.

My students enjoy Genius Hour. Caroline said that Genius Hour lets students “develop a deeper interest about our passions.”

And James likes Genius Hour, too. He said, “It’s given me a chance to further my skills as a wrestler. I would never have done this if it wasn’t for Genius Hour.

In my classroom, the students look forward to Tuesdays. Two days ago, the goal for the week was to continue investigating the credibility of three Internet sites about their subject. They needed to complete work that includes identifying the author, investigating the author’s credentials, determining the veracity of the information, judging the objectivity of the information, and tracing the history of updates to the site.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Well, they think it is. And trust me, although they are absolutely lovely teenagers, they are NOT nerds. Not in the least.

Students are permitted to listen to music during Genius Hour. Two days ago, however, most of them forgot their earphones. But that did not affect their engagement in the project at all.

At one point I called Rachel to come where I was standing. I told her to look at the class and tell me what she saw.

“They are all working. They are doing their assignment,” she said. She also told me she likes Genius Hour because she is “learning how to research but having fun doing it.”

I asked them, “How many of you realize that what you are doing is research?”

They didn’t stop researching long enough to answer me.

Their topics are diverse: how to play chess, how to be a better wrestler, how to become a nurse, how to play the piano, how to play the guitar, how to pair foods, how do dreams occur, how does the brain work.

Pretty interesting stuff.

After they complete the research, and after they build their own Personal Learning Community on Twitter, students will begin to explore which digital application is best suited to their purpose and their presentation. Some will write blogs, and some will create websites. Some will use prezi, and some will use Haiku Deck. Or Slides. Or educreations. Or Piktocharts.

All of them will work in Noodletools where they will create a Works Cited page and make sure that they give attribution to any words or ideas that are not theirs.

Basically, my students are engaged in a student-centered, passion-driven, project-based research presentation that requires creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, curation and all or the rest of the nine C’s of Digital Citizenship that Google Certified Teacher Alice Chen lists here.

So what do teachers gain from this?

Teachers get students like Victoria, who said, “Genius Hour teaches us that we can do anything we set our mind to.”

That’s good enough for me.