People in the know about Google can go on for hours about the benefits of working at such an innovative company. One of the most well-advertised perks: 20% time.

From Google’s page about jobs:

We offer our engineers “20-percent time” so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about. Google Suggest, AdSense for Content and Orkut are among the many products of this perk.

The concept is pretty simple. People work best when they’re working on things that they’re passionate about. Give a bunch of creative engineers 20% of their time to work on their pet projects, and you’ll eventually come up with some amazing products. It’s just one piece in the puzzle that is Google’s philosophy built on innovation and collaboration.

In recent times, there’s been some concern that the 20% time isn’t as free or productive as it once was. That, however, doesn’t concern us.

What does? The concept.

20% Time Applied in the Classroom

To wrap our minds around this, let’s take an example that most closely approximates life as a Google engineer: a computer programming course.

It’s been some time since I took AP Comp Sci in high school, but I still remember the routine. The instructor gave us a series of problems to solve, and we went about writing programs that solved them. Occasionally she’d do a short lecture about a technique or an efficiency algorithm, but for the most part it was sink-or-swim – simple problem solving.

A lot of my classmates sank. They lacked the motivation to really tackle the problems, so if the answer didn’t jump out at them they didn’t get a lot of work done. It could also be that they lacked the skills to conceptualize the problem in an effective way.

In retrospect, this reminds me a lot of some of my current students.

Anyhow, how do we integrate 20% time into this classroom? Simple. Every student comes up with his or her own problem and devotes one day per week to working on it.

For example, a student interested in gaming could set about creating a computer game. It’s a great authentic assessment and hopefully the student is self-motivated enough to tackle the problems instead of avoiding them.

Or, the student could be required to contribute to an open source project. What better way to demonstrate your programming skills – and to learn how to work as a piece of a collaborative project – than to contribute to the development of Open Office, an Apache Project, or one of the thousands of smaller open source projects on Sourceforge.

Using 20% Time in Other Disciplines

I’d say it’s pretty simple to apply this concept in a course like C++ Programming – what we call “academies” in our school. These courses focus on professional skills, and there are pretty direct applications.

Programming students could contribute to an open source project. Web design students could create free-to-use web templates. Graphic design students could create images and contribute to the Open Clipart Library. Photography students could create libraries of royalty-free images on Stock.XCHNG.

What about your “regular” classes, though? That’s where you need to be creative.

This seems to be a great way to incorporate real project based learning – authentic tasks with meaningful products – into core classes. However, that means that you need to come up with (or, better yet, have your students come up with) meaningful products for them to work on.

A Social Studies student might create a blog to discuss the news and/or politics. Instead of a research paper, the student might create a small website to organize and disseminate information about an approved topic. The student could campaign online for a political candidate.

An English student could take a variety of paths. If the student is into the creative side of language arts, work on a novel or a poetry anthology. If the student likes to read, create a collection of book reviews (and publish them on the web, so people can read them).

Science and math, you’re on your own.

How Is This Different from PBL?

You might be thinking, “How is this different from project-based learning in general?”

Well, in large part it isn’t. It’s not something radically different – just a different approach to thinking about and integrating PBL.

“Project” is a fuzzy term. To some people, it’s an assignment that you hand out on November 1 and collect on November 30. To some people, it’s a poster that you slap together and hang on a wall. Or, it could be a research paper.

In most cases, these projects have circumcribed topics. Although there can be options, the scope is narrowed and closed around a piece of the curriculum. A project about Rome, a project about Shakespeare, a project about fractions.

Whatever it is, you are trying to teach, reinforce, and assess a particular aspect of your curriculum – which is where it falls apart. Sure, it provides your students with alternative methods of expressing themselves and demonstrating their learning, but they’re still working on your agenda.

20% time is a about giving your students the freedom to explore what they want to. Instead of a project about Rome or Greece, the student does a project about Social Studies. Instead of something on Shakespeare or Twain, the project is about Language Arts.

Now I’m not here to tell you that this works. I haven’t tried it. But the concept intrigues me, and if I can work out some practical guidelines I might try it next year. Or, I might pilot it at the end of the year with my (thankfully small) honors class, and see how it goes.