Kevin Brookhouser

Maddie spent her #20Time spreading awareness about how buying clothing from thrift stores is smart, green, and rebellious. Watch this amazing young woman pitch her case in her #20Time Talk. The new book, The #20Time Project  is coming out in October. Sign up for your copy here. Loading...

Later this month I plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a book I will finish this summer. The working title is The 20 Time Project: How educators and parents can follow Google's formula for supercharged innovation . Before I actually launch the campaign, I'm looking for pre-backers so when I do go live, the Kickstarter page isn't sad and lonely. For a $15 pledge, you will get a copy of the book (signed or unsigned depending on whether you want my ink on it). For more, you will get more. Here are my commitments: May 1 launch Kickstarter Campaign June 1 close Kickstarter Campaign with at least $3,000 raised July 1  draft finished September 1 send book to publisher (I plan to distribute the book on my own, through the Kindle store, and through Amazon) October 1 ship books and rewards to backers  Some of you can expect to hear from me directly, so beware. If you're willing to be a pre-backer, please let me know in the comments, through email (brookhous...

One of the elements of my mid-year exam this month is going to be the 20% Project Elevator Pitch. The term comes from the notion that an innovator with a great idea might find herself in an elevator with a powerful investor. She has a very short period of time to convince this investor to buy into her idea. She needs to deliver an elevator pitch. For this assignment, I am asking my students to prepare a pitch about their 20% Project in 30 seconds. Throughout the exam, I will pull students outside and ask them to deliver their pitch to me. I’m following the model established by a cheesy video I found on YouTube explaining an elevator pitch. Sean Wise is a business journalist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto and the host of Canada's version of Shark Tank. According to Wise, good elevator pitches have two parts: the pain statement and value proposition. First the individual lays out a problem that needs to be solved. Then she establishes how her idea is going to solve it. ...

Last year I used Google Reader to keep track of all of my students' #20time blogs. I created folders sorted by section number and last name. Now Google Reader is gone, and I couldn't be happier. Let's back up to CUE Rockstar Tahoe where my love affair with a post Google Reader began. One of the greatest parts of CUE Rockstar is the two-hour lunch. These lunches that allow for extreme collaboration may be the single most valuable parts of Rockstar events. One day I got to spend almost two hours brainstorming with Alice Chen about 20% Time. We talked about how we manage the blogs we assign with our projects. I told her that I was sad about Google Reader going away, and I thought I would create a form for students to fill out that would link to their most current posts. Chen, in her usual brilliance suggested that I include a paragraph textbox so students would paste the written content of the blog into the form itself. The result: all of my students' blog posts for...

The whole purpose of The Bad Idea Factory is to come up with good ideas. Here's a short video of Denny talking about how it worked for him.

On Tuesday, September 17, I'm going to be giving a talk for The Carmel Library Foundation as a part of the Jack & Peggy Baskin Parent Lecture Series. Teachers who know about #20time, I need your help. Why does #20time make you optimistic about the future? Leave a comment or post it in this form. Loading...

Last year, in an attempt to open our minds to what a 20% Project could be, we took part in The Bad Idea Factory. Here's the original post . Since then, I 've been sharing TBIF with other teachers, and others have found it to be a useful activity including Karl Lindgren-Streicher . This week was TBIF week for York 10th graders again. Here is a sample of some of their worst ideas.

brookhouser . me/news Shownotes ! As I mentioned earlier , each week some friends and I get together to produce a YouTube show using Google+ Hangouts On Air called The Google Educast . Here's an example of the final product. Now with a Google+ and YouTube account, students can create a news broadcast show for the world to watch. Here are some instructions on how to pull it off on your own. The instructions in this post may become outdated as the technology changes. I'll try to keep them current with crowdsourced help here. Please comment in the doc. With Google Docs and Hangouts On Air, students can prepare, produce, and broadcast a news show quickly with little to no cost. Here are the steps. Planning Develop segments for the broadcast. Sample segments include … Latest news Sports reports Upcoming events Study tips Teacher feature Student on the street Service spotlight Create a shared document and develop the segments assigning re...

Here are some of the topics I reference in this session on #20time at the Fairfax GAFE Summit . Other resources: Letter to my students and parents about #20time Limbo Dan Pink's Drive The Candle Problem The Bad Idea Factory My TEDx Talk on #20time Template for the Formal Project Proposal More to come ...

Inevitably, I have students who show up to my class on the first day of school telling me what they want to do for The Twenty Percent Project. “I want to write a novel. I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I’ve tried several times to write a novel, but now I have the chance to do it for a class and I think I can do it. Can I write a novel?” “Yes, a novel is a great Twenty Percent Project. Start thinking about who your audience is, so you can interview them before you begin writing.” “I always wanted to build a website.” “Good. What kind of website.” “A website for teenagers.” “Better. You know that audience better than I do, so you would be well suited for that. Is this a website for all teenagers?” “A website for teenagers who want to raise chickens.” “Yes. Run with it.”  What’s so great about a website for teenagers who want to raise chickens is that it has a niche audience. Before the internet, media producers had to reach the broadest audience possible in ...

Thanks to all of my friends and colleagues who helped me put this together. You can read about the process of writing and delivering this talk here .

My students speak for themselves.

Over the past five years, I have spent a great deal of time shifting 20% of my class from being teacher-centered to student-centered. That was a fail. I've written a fair amount about the 20% Project  and why I believed that it was important to have class time when the teacher is off center stage while shifting emphasis on the students. This model energized and liberated many of my students, while it confused and terrified others. Either way, I was committed to establishing a project where students can take on challenges and solve problems any way they saw fit. As a result, my students are currently wrapping up some amazing projects. The problem, though, is that a 20% Project should NOT be a student-centered project. It should be a human- centered project. OK, I don't really like the term human-centered  either. Last I checked, most students and teachers at least resemble humans. I mean, what else would it be, pistachio-centered ? I'm reminded of when writers begin a ...

One of the several unpopular assignments I force upon my students is the Sophomore Speech. I am capitalizing Sophomore Speech because it has become a thing at our school … a proper thing. Every single one of my 10th grade students is required to write a personal essay and convert it into a speech to be delivered in front of the entire school during our assembly period we call Break. The word speech has fallen out of fashion these days. It’s much cooler to give a talk than a speech, but talk doesn’t alliterate with sophomore . I guess I could have called them 10th Grade Talks, but as I said, the Sophomore Speech is a thing, so I’m going with it. Of course, I don’t win many votes for Most Popular Teacher of the Year when I announce this assignment to my students. Most members of our species tend to avoid public speaking whenever possible, and you won’t be surprised to hear that some students consider this the waterboard of English assignments. “Mr. Brookhouser, I real...

For their 20% project, Jackie, Jessica, Julie, and Tori decided to work together to produce a curriculum to teach best Facebook practices to seniors at The Carmel Foundation. "Having a super fun [time] teaching people to use Facebook at The Carmel Foundation --- at The Carmel Foundation" After weeks of developing slides, resource materials, and an outline, the day came to take over the computer lab at TFC. Over a dozen eager participants showed up. The group covered topics such as creating a secure password, making sure private posts stay private, and maintaining general Facebook etiquette. They even taught me (a long-time Facebook trainer) about the "Only Me" feature in the status window. I'd never noticed it, but users can treat the Facebook timeline as a personal journal, but, as the students urge, "You can't forget to select 'Only Me' or your personal journal will go out to all your friends!" The staff pleaded the girls to...