Inquiry-Based Learning & the Role of Technology

Unrelated to Inquiry-Learning but I am babysitting a bulldog this week!

Coetail Course 4 Week 5: _______-Based Learning Theory
Assignment 4: Reflect on the idea of ______-Based Learning and the role technology plays in it. Fill in the blank with any one of these zillion of choices:
A zillion learning theories

PYP Inquiry-Based Learning

I have chosen “Inquiry-Based Learning”. I spent the last month learning and doing assignments about the PYP Inquiry-based framework of teaching and learning. It was a very interesting experience for me to put the two “halves” together. I’ve taught in a PYP school cobbling together what I thought was Inquiry-Learning (I didn’t do such a bad, job I realize!). I’ve spent many years as a parent of PYP children observing what they did. I enjoyed my course this month as I “married” the personal experiences I’ve had, with the actually theory—-and putting the two halves together.

I won’t go into too much detail about Inquiry-Based learning as I wrote a few blogposts about my learning already during this past month:

I was at a parent PYP “tea” which was a workshop for parents about the PYP (and strangely without any “tea” in sight lol…) The Inquiry Teaching-Learning Cycle was explained, by the PYP coordinator, in this way:

the Provocation: getting students excited and wondering about the topic
Pre-assessment: assessing where students are at (knowledge, skills, concepts, attitudes, action)
Tuning-in: the inquiry and learning begins
Formative investigations: the inquiry and learning deepens
Summative assessment: students demonstrate what they have learned

The PYP and the role of Technology

Our Coetail assignment this week is to reflect about _______-Based Learning (we fill in the blank) and the role Technology plays in it.

I taught PYP at a 1:1 school and I cannot imagine doing Inquiry-Based Learning without being 1:1. Inquiry-Based Learning means flinging open the flood-gates to the entire world out there to ask questions and to wonder about. It means being able to go where we want and as far as we want. To me, that would be paltry without the breadth of the Internet. My nickname for the www in world-wide web is “World Wide Wonder”.

We front-loaded the students with their Macbook laptops. We weren’t limited by the books we had on-hand from the library.

It’s also so much easier to find, navigate, and curate information using a laptop. (It would be much more difficult with just an iPad and this is one of the reasons that I don’t think schools should forego laptops for iPads. Ideally, a school should be 2:1 and my previous PYP school became 2:1 right after iPads were released.)

Inquiry-Learning means students have the freedom to spontaneously go towards the directions they feel inclined to. If it’s spontaneous, then a device must be accessible at any time. That could only happen easily in a 1:1 context. How many times have we wondered something and then gone to the computer to get the answers? Now, we go to our smart phones. I don’t have a smartphone so I ask a family-member to do it (then I get annoyed when they haven’t charged up their phone so can’t turn the phone on!)

PYP & Technology: an example from my classroom

In this day and age, we are not limited to producing mediocre final products. Indeed, one of my first PYP UOIs (Units of Inquiry) resulted in a production of an audio-CD of the students’ music compositions using Garage Band.

We also turned the Garage Band files into MP3 files and students uploaded their own creations to their iPods. They were so thrilled!

Our school was entirely Mac computers on wifi and we had an internal server. I shared all the students compositions with the entire school by sharing my iTunes library of their songs.

My very first “video-documentary” of a unit was for this UOI in this school. I used my cheapo camera (a freebie for opening up a bank account) so the resolution is not that great. I didn’t care about the resolution at that point. I wanted the portability and ease to take my photos and videos at any given moment.

The project was a trans-disciplinary project between the Y5 classroom teachers, the Chinese language department, and myself as the Music Specialist. The UOI was entitled “Explorations”. The students wrote Chinese poems in their Chinese classes in the style of Tang Dynasty Poems. Poems in ancient China were sung as they had melodies. We have since lost those ancient melodies and the students tried to imagine and to recreate what those melodies might have sounded like for their poems. As the music specialist, my role was to help them to compose their melodies. The link with the class UOI of Explorations was the notion that music starts on a home note, wanders around, but then must return to the home note. This was to parallel the idea of human Explorers leaving home, wandering the earth, but then needing a way to return home…

Here is the video I made about the project. It was shared during a whole school assembly. I was so proud!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technology democratizes opportunity

Technology and the Internet has democratized our ability to produce professional-looking products, the ability to publish to the public, the ability to sell to the public, and the ability to garner a following. If the students know they can go “there” in their Inquiry-Learning, then the world indeed is THEIR OYSTER. For these reasons, I can’t imagine Inquiry-Learning without access to Technology and to the Internet.

The Internet has flattened the classroom and there are no longer any barriers to studying primary sources (field-trips through Google Connected Classrooms) and consulting field-experts. Teachers no longer have to act as the fount of all knowledge when the knowledge is accessible through the Internet and through connecting with experts via the Internet. Indeed, our knowledge is paltry as compared to what can be accessed through Technology. These are more reasons that Inquiry-based Learning is great with Technology and Technology is great for Inquiry-Based Learning.

The MYP ups the ante on the PYP

If you up the ante, you increase your risks or demands in order to achieve a superior result. The origins of the word come from a gambling context. So, I would say, “Use technology to up the ante in your Inquiries!”

My daughter is in the last few weeks of finishing up her Y11 Personal Project. The Personal Project is a celebration and the culmination of all the years of study in the IBO MYP. (It is a parallel to the PYP Exhibition.) She has chosen to write and illustrate a book and to publish it through Create Space. Create Space is the indie publishing arm of Amazon.com. Her project took her through the entire authoring process from getting the idea to write a book to getting an ISBN number to deciding distribution channels for her book. Her book will be sold through Amazon.com, just like all the other “real books”. I’ll post about her book when it’s released in February 2014. Right now, we in the midst of setting up the marketing tools: She’s built a blog and she has a Twitter account now. (She’s also stopped rolling her eyeballs at me when I talk about my Twittering.)

Just last night, we talked about what prices to set her book in different parts of the world (Amazon.com and Amazon Europe which includes the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain). She’ll be donating the proceeds of her book (after subtracting production costs, taxes etc.) to a charity called Room to Read that builds schools and libraries in developing countries. We talked about possible upcoming tax issues because of the sales of her book. We talked about how we’ll have to show accountability for her finances etc. etc.

She used professional tools: Her main tools were a Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop to make her drawings. She learned Adobe Photoshop through her Design & Technology classes in school. She used Word for text and formatting.

She went through all the same research steps that any other “real” author would make. In her case, it included writing the Director of Room to Read in Asia (Jon Beaulieu) for information to write her book and also writing the Founder of the charity, Room to Read (John Wood) for support and encouragement.

We went through all the decision-making steps that happen in big corporate boardrooms as we contemplated costs, sourced her resources, found the cheapest publishing platform, worked out issues about sales, marketing, and financial accountability. This was all possible because of the power of software and the Internet.

Technology and Student Action

One day, when I have a classroom, I look forward to publishing student writing through Create Space or something similar. Twenty years ago, I bound my students’ writing in beautiful handmade books. (I made the books and they were beautiful!) Now, I look forward to seeing their books on library bookshelves around the world and as ebooks on their parents’ devices. Their voices as authors won’t be contained within my classroom in a single handbound book. They can take their places as authors alongside all the “famous best-sellers” in the world. I’m still doing the Writer’s Workshop authoring cycle (and loving it as much as before) but boy, has the context changed and the scope broadened!

OK. Big dreams. Technology opens the doors to big dreams. Inquiry-Learning hopes to be catalysts to children’s big dreams. We call this the “Student Initiated Action” portion of the Inquiry-Learning Cycle in our PYP Planners. We want our teaching to spur children to take Action in their lives and to reach for the #moonshots. The world is their oyster and sometimes the oyster is shaped like a Macbook.

My 9 year old son drew this picture of me. He was rolling on the floor killing himself laughing. I was LESS than impressed! I don’t think it looks like me at all…but I recognize the Macbook in the sketch. Am I really on my Macbook that much?!! Yikes!