

The 20% Project (like Google) In My Class - ajjuliani
http://educationismylife.com/the-20-project-like-google-in-my-class/

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jmilloy
"Many times in education we believe the only way to hold students accountable
is by giving some form of assessment."

What is the aversion to assessment? If I did work in a class, or in any
context with a mentor, and did not receive assessment, I would feel cheated.

This is a great thing to do. I did something similar teaching English writing
abroad - 80% free time (except it had to be writing of some sort) and I
assessed heavily. This doesn't mean dry numbers tied to a near-sighted rubric.

Giving students ownership over their learning is essential, and this is the
right direction. You have to extend this paradigm to all aspects of teaching
(including assessment) rather than just leaving some parts out.

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aik
There is a difference between assessment/evaluation and feedback, and the
teacher may simply have the aversion to assessment/evaluation. That is, that
one can provide excellent feedback without the feeling of evaluation. The
focus is simply different but can have a major impact, and should result in
the complete opposite of making you feel cheated (receiving feedback for
feedback's sake, rather than for artificial reasons such as grades).

Simply receiving feedback without grades means the only factor that leads to
action is an intrinsic motivation, meaning learning and accomplishment are the
most important things for the student. Assessment/evaluation always has a
component of extrinsic motivation present (ie. an artificial targets), which
often leads to the importance of grades over learning. Importance of grades
over learning leads to shallow-learning practices, which often leads to
horrible retention and a dislike for learning... and so the self-destructive
process often proceeds.

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jmilloy
Great! It sounds like we're just using the terminology differently (and
perhaps the same is true for ajjuliani and myself).

When young students improve as writers, they broaden their executive function
in which, in large part, they learn distance themselves from the writing. They
learn to assess it independently from themselves as the writer. As a teacher
of writing, one of your goals is to develop these functions, to teach the
student how to assess their own writing. Usually this comes in the form of
pointing out when they have done in naturally, or showing them how you do it
by writing in real time in front of them (or using other students as
examples).

I think it's the same in other subjects. Giving students time and freedom is
just the start, and we agree about the importance of providing some sort of
assessment/evaluation/feedback about the work that's outside the realm of
grades and external consequences. But formal assessments done well in such a
program are one of the _most important_ things you are teaching.

To relate this specifically to the article, to just give students time and
rely (essentially) on public shaming to hold them accountable isn't enough. In
addition to giving the student ownership of the project topic and ownership of
time management, we can give the student ownership over his/her (formal and
informal) assessment, too, and of course use it.

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yonasb
I've heard from several current Google employees that the so-called "20% time"
is known in the office as "120% time". Meaning you don't get time to work on
it, you simply work on something on top of what you already do. Which actually
defeats the purpose and just gets employees to use their personal free time to
work on a company project. Nonetheless, it's a good idea for a class, as long
as you make sure to give them 20% of class time to work on it

~~~
a1k0n
Scott Adams had a take on that recently:
<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-12-19/>

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elisee
Is taking 20% of only a few hours with a particular teacher going to be
enough? It might be hard for students to do anything worthwhile with such a
short timelength split over weeks. I'd go as far as to say it might be
frustrating because the idea is awesome but they won't be able to really
achieve stuff in this context. Still a great initiative!

I wish that, starting with high school, most teaching was project-based and
schools worked to enable students to discover and learn stuff they care about,
rather than shoving knowledge down one's throat. Want to make video games?
Learn woodwork? Build an electronic device? Learn cooking? Schools should
strive to provide a framework to make those things happen!

I think teaching people to be passive and keeping them from being productive
until their twenties is a huge factor in school failure, dropping out and lots
of social issues (at least in France where I'm from).

~~~
aik
I would think that 20% would be enough to make a difference. The main thing
the students need is the catalyst -- once they get started, I could foresee
many (not all) students spent much more than 20% of their time simply because
they are actually _enjoying_ school and enjoying learning.

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qeorge
My 8th grade science teacher did this for us and it changed my life.

I chose to learn Java and then HTML. 15 years later, I'm making websites and
writing Android apps at my own company.

I cannot think of a single experience in all of my education that had anywhere
near the impact on my life as that assignment.

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guard-of-terra
You have to document it and then present it to the class. What's new there?
How is it different from "just project"?

The thing about 20% (supposedly, I don't have first-hand experience) that most
of results would go straight to the trash. Because you had this idea but it
didn't end with anything. And that's the beauty.

Also, you're not forced to do it. You can't allocate creativity in time slots.

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ajjuliani
The difference in my mind is that you are not graded on the documentation or
the presentation. Therefore, you are not being "forced to do it" for an
extrinsic reward. But I do understand your point. As teachers we are still
bound by time and curriculum.

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bmj
How are you keeping the students accountable if they are not being graded? I'm
not attempting to criticize the idea (I'm rather interested in it), but I'm
curious how you deal with the student that says "I'm not being graded, so I'm
not doing it."

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ajjuliani
This question did come up in my class. I said "if you do not want to take this
opportunity seriously and would rather be graded on an assignment, I'll gladly
assign you a different project for the rest of the year that I will grade you
on." He stayed with the 20% project.

The accountability is in the documentation and the presentations. More of a
peer accountability than anything else (which I think is powerful). I'd be
happy to hear any suggestions!

~~~
bmj
Sounds like a reasonable policy. I'll be curious to hear how it all turns out.

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eykanal
What an excellent idea. Giving free reign makes the class more enthusiastic,
and more enthusiasm will hopefully make the learning process that much more
effective.

My prediction: You'll have 1/3 of the class do something completely stupid
just to pass the course, 1/3 put in some good effort but a mediocre idea, and
1/3 who do something pretty interesting.

