Inquiry in Education

Strategies for curriculum include, assignments that encourage students to assess the need for tools, technology rich or not, to illustrate knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. Engagement is important. The Big 6 Skills Approach highlights this idea well. The importance of Inquiry “memorizing facts and information is not the most important skill today. Facts change, and information is readily available – what’s needed is an understanding of how to get and make sense of the mass data.” And “schools must change from a focus on “what we know” to an emphasis on “how we come to know.” “ (thirteen.org) Much like the Samuel Johnson quote in my week 1 post. When reading about the Information literacy movement I continue to fixate on integration among all curriculum an being paramount.  As a computer teacher, I still see a need for teaching the tools as well. In my classes, we look at current information, in the news or otherwise, and  use the tools to demonstrate understanding. I suggest possible tools, and guide their utilization of those tools. The project based learning described on the edutopia site show how kids learn what they “want to” learn about. Kids give input by being at the center of the educational process. Reading the forum discussion under the PBL article was also very fun to read. ProjectBL takes teaching good strategy and planning so that the facilitation is educational as well. The bottom line is making learning meaningful to students. Having creating products which make a contribution to a larger global community.