I chose a
picture of one of my student’s head/mind for my inquiry learning visual. Inquiry learning means a deep understanding with
a hands-on as well as minds-on towards teaching and learning. Inquiry emphasizes the process of learning in
order to develop deep understanding by students.
The Keren-Kolb
article this week discussed how technology “should engage, enhance, or extend learning in ways
that traditional tools do not.” I almost
hate to admit this, but I was glad to see the confusion between the teachers on
whether their lessons were engaging, enhancing and extended learning when integrating
technology. I think we have some
problems with this understanding in our own system. We think
we are doing a good job at integrating technology into our lessons that engage,
enhance and extend learning with our students, but with a recent review from
outside observers, we learned that we weren’t doing as great a job as we
thought. The 3 scenarios provided a
better understanding to me as to how to accomplish engaging, enhancing and
extending learning when integrating technology into my lessons.
As I think-aloud about my mini-lesson, I reviewed the 8
principles of inquiry-based learning. I
have found that:
Authentic learning is real life learning. Integrating
technology into our lessons encourages students to create a tangible, useful
product to be shared. When we engage our students through authentic, hands-on
learning by integrating technology, then Deep Understanding and Performance
of Understanding of the subject can occur. Also, “research
has repeatedly shown that Assessment practices used by
teachers have a significant impact on student achievement and engagement and
that substantial learning gains can result from providing students with
frequent feedback about their learning.”
The Appropriate use of Technology can
help immerse students in engaging and knowledge building environments to
represent their learning. Teachers cannot
be expected to know everything about everything, so Connecting with Experts “play
a key role in helping teachers design inquiry around the right questions,
topics, issues and problems.” Success
for all Students can come from teachers
setting clear explanation of expectations from the lesson. Students need to make sure that they are
applying Ethical Citizenship while online
use of images, text, information, sounds and video.
I want to make
sure that I consider these principles while planning for my mini-lesson.
