Return of #GeniusHour

One of my favorite times of year has come. We're starting Genius Hour projects again! Last year was the first time we tried this and it was an outstanding experience. With only one performance remaining, we're finally getting to dig into our projects we'll spend the remainder of the year on.

Since last year I was learning a lot of the process to help students, doing Genius Hour with them was my Genius Hour project. Now that I've got a better handle on things, I've decided to do my own project and go through the process along with them.

My first idea had been to learn some guitar basics. On top of always wanting to play it, it would help refresh some rusty theory skills which can only be a bonus.

Then this post came across my feed and got me thinking differently:

A1: In my class, students choose one of the Four Pathways to Genius.
Read about them here:https://t.co/GU8Hhp2qyF #HackLearning pic.twitter.com/VpvAdMBZBm

— Lee Araoz (@LeeAraoz) May 14, 2017

If I'm going to ask my students to step outside their comfort zone and go for a project that can have a bigger impact, why would I not do the same?

My project is going to be to create an inventory system for our school owned band instruments using QR codes, Google Sheets, and Google Drive.

Building on an idea shared in the Band Directors Facebook Group, here's what I'll try:

1. Master folder in Drive for Inventory.
2. Subfolders categorized by instrument.
3. Subfolders within those for each individual instrument, labeled with the brand of the instrument and its serial number.
4. Each individual instrument folder will have:
1.  A Sheet with information on who it was checked out to, how/whether they paid the school fee, rental contract return date, etc. 
2. Pictures of the instrument so I can track its condition
3. Copies of any repair slips.
5. The QR that I'll attach to the instrument case will link to the individual instrument folder.

My only concern is that this won't give me one master spreadsheet to track things. I've had suggestions to create a script or code to add a link in a sheet whenever I create a folder, but that's pretty far outside any of my technical abilities.

Has anybody ever done their inventory like this? Or have a different suggestion on how to do this using QRs? I'm open for suggestions before getting this started next week!