Genius Hour Reflection

Reflection

Genius Hour is a project that we do in my technology class. We choose our own topic that we want to learn that’d we be interested in and learn about it. Every few classes we have a Genius Hour day where we spend the whole class only researching our topic.

We started Genius Hour towards the end of August. If recalled, in August and September there was a lot of things going on in the politic world. Such as America’s 45th president, Trump. Due to the heat in politics, I was interested and brought into the political world. I was also very interested and tried to stay tuned into what’s going on. This, giving me the idea that I should do my research on politics.

I couldn’t have just ended with Trump, it was too broad. I was able to narrow it down. I have never been in a nation that used the parliamentary system and I had no clue how it was set up. I finally decided to narrow it down. I wanted to compare what was better, a president or a queen. It could have gone in multiple ways. Since my presentation would only be limited to only a few minutes, I had to have everything on a direct path.

I had the original research question of “What is better, president or queen?” However, that was still too broad. I could’ve done it all time but still wasn’t narrow enough. I originally wanted to include bits of the path and also the future of it, however, it’d be a long presentation.  I came to the idea of doing it for the present because the final answer could be anything if I did it for the past or future. Still, then we don’t know what will happen in the future.

One thing that I learned from my Genius Hour project is that it’s not factual. For my project, I went to a website where debates could be made. I saw a debate that had my research question and I decided to check it out. I wanted to see if it could change any information I had or give me any ideas. When I opened the debate I was surprised, to say the least. There were thousands of people who voted their opinion and it was something I wasn’t expecting. I was expecting a close 49% to 51% for one or another. However, that was not the case. Queen Elizabeth II had 70% and Trump had 30%.

I think this helps me grow as a student and a person mainly for seeing the other side. Usually, when people argue they never see the other half of it. When someone says they don’t like Trump they never look into the other half and who is better. From this project, I was taught that skill and I feel like I would need it later on, especially for a class called Theory of Knowledge (TOK).

I think my project helped the small community of my class in some certain way. Some kids are from America and others are from Europe and places in Africa. This usually means they don’t know a whole lot about U.S. presidents and monarchs from the U.K. They always hear about in the news and I think doing all of this brought it towards them. Along with the fact, there is fake news everywhere nowadays and nobody can get a break from it. Sometimes we don’t know what is real and what is fake and so I wanted to go around that and find the truth along with what and who is better. However, it may not be so useful in the future but it definitely helped in the present.

The link to my slideshow made for the project: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WgFIz–NU-FeZ8loTFoKUQ8wS5A5FXQ7jawB6zMYU_k/edit#slide=id.p

For my next Genius Hour project, I am focusing on basketball. More specifically the Minnesota Timberwolves and the way they play. Being the normal human I am I have an opinion and I think the Timberwolves are one of the best teams and in the future will be the well known Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. I don’t think it will impact anyone as a person but more of their opinion. So for my project, I’m going to be looking deep into how the team plays. Then, I want to prove to people with their offense and defense along with changes to the team, how they could beat the Warriors and Cavs. I don’t think it will impact anyone too much but I think it will definitely impact their opinion.

 

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