First assignment for my new course on Inquiry-based Learning (513)!
Create a blog entry that describes how your thoughts about inquiry based learning have developed over the past week. What new insights have you developed? Has anything changed? Are there any "burning questions" that you feel need to be answered?
I've been thinking a lot about what I think Inquiry-based Learning means, and how I can relate it to what is happening in my computer lab. I attended Educon this weekend, and many of the conversations were, in my opinion, Inquiry-based. We would start out with broad questions, and share what we already knew, and then share what we thought, and how we could solve these problems, or come up with other solutions. The process, as described on The Inquiry Page, was followed through all of the conversations. A question was asked, and then we would investigate through discussions among small groups, or the larger groups as a whole. Next we would create, by brainstorming for new ideas that were generated by the topic. Discussion was paramount to all of the sessions, generating even more ideas and solutions. We would reflect by reviewing what we had discussed, and personalizing the topic so it applied to our situation at our school. This occurred in every session I was in, from Using Art to Investigate Social Justice Issues to Google Earth and More, and all of the sessions in-between!
I did not-and still don't to an extent-understand the process to plan lessons based in Inquiry. I am a big fan of improvisation and conversations that generate more questions, and have thought of Inquiry as mostly composed of these two elements. I am finding out that it is not! I am anxious to learn how to "plan" lessons around our mandated curriculum, using Inquiry-based instruction models. This should be not only challenging, but, I think, invigorating for me as a technology teacher!
I would love to hear your thoughts on this-not only the process of Inquiry, but also how you already use it within your lesson plan structure for your classroom. Thoughts????
