The displayed picture above is a short and sweet idea of what inquiry-based learning withholds. It is basically the encouragement provided by the teachers for students to ask questions, and to essentially explore and find their own answers. To learn what this was, my blog buddy (Matt) and I put together both a Google Doc and a Presentation through Google. We took great advantage of our Google Drives as a resource to work on this together, but on our own time and at our own homes. To prevent any repetition on the subject, I will leave the rest of the blog with both items we put together while apart, along with a screen-shot with us talking while we were in our last class.
Screenshot (Use of Screencast-0-matic)
After putting together our notes online, we got to class and used Screencast-o-matic, rather than a typical podcast. With this, we were able to demonstrate and view the different websites we used while explaining what constructionist and inquiry-based learning is. I found it to be a great tool and may be very beneficial to use while in the classroom! Not to mention, I thought it was pretty neat that we could have been able to even do something along these lines while not being together; such as through the use of Skype.
Unfortunately, we got cut off and started to run over our fifteen minute limit for the screencast. But it still helped to give the general idea and gave us some great experience.
Now for the Break Down...
This next section is going to provide you with what we used while doing the screencast and how we got to the point we got to.
Our work.
Lastly, below is our actual documents that were put together and worked off of for our screencast. The presentation is what was ultimately used as we transitioned and discussed the topics of Constructionist Learning, Inquiry Based Learning, Problem Based Learning, and Webquests.
Here is also a link to the Google Doc, because I realize there is a lot of information on this document and that makes it difficult to view while it's condensed on this blog. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-FraJ2g-GaP4YSYSr3oIyKzeYx-1lLGW9Nda5UEnE4M/pub
Lastly, is the presentation.
Lastly, is the presentation.
Not only did we learn valuable information about a certain way of teaching, but we also learned great ways to make use of our internet and resources while learning and sharing this information. It was a lot of fun and very convenient. It is encouraging to see how education can transform with our society's modern advances, and it can certainly change education all for the better. Communication and working in pairs or groups can be so much easier now. I remember hating doing group work for the reason of the difficulty of getting all of the group members together to work together on the project. Thanks to these tools that won't have to be an issue anymore!