Monday, February 19, 2007

If anything is possible, changes to be made

The wrap up at the end of the Technology Focus group described a community of learners that would be responsible for their own learning. The learning environment that would be available to the students could best be described as an Inquiry based learning environment.

Eduscapes (http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic43.htm) has an interesting introduction to Project, Problem, and Inquiry Based Learning.

With your understanding of Project, Problem and Inquiry Based lets discuss some negative and positives of each. I have started some new posts on each of these so that we can follow the discussion a little easier. Please post your opinions of all or some at the respective posts.

4 comments:

Annie said...

It has always been my belief that good teaching happens with good questions. Technology should not be the focus but the medium to making the search for answers more productive. Students CAN be responsible for their own learning. However, we build walls and create hoops in the name of building self esteem and hiding behind our own learning inadequacies. Teachers, responsible for their own competence; and, students, resonsible for their own learning are the key to joining the global need for "educated" adults. It's not a matter of which country outperforms another...people's brains are not based on climate or geography. Capacity to learn is kindled by expectation (by self and others), modeling, and motivation. Students today are not motivated by the same carrots their teachers hold dear. Forget everything you know about "school." Focus on student learning. Implement technology that is current. Ask good questions. Then students will learn to learn. We make this whole educational reform issue too complicated. In that, nothing changes.

AG said...

I just wanted to alert everyone to a program that will discuss education reform in the state. "Education Town Hall Meeting Agenda for Change" will air this Thursday April 19th at 8pm on ABC (channel 7). Community leaders, business officials, and educators will discuss the direction they feel Michigan/the US needs to go in in order to cultivate students who are globally competitive. They've previewed the program and the participants seem to reiterate some of our previous discussion - focus on not just math and science, but innovation and creativity; encourage Mandarin Chinese language acquisition (although I have serious problems as a language teacher with encouraging this as online study); increased private business investment in education. It may warrant a de-brief/short discussion at our next meeting.

Anonymous said...

Angela - I have asked Barbara to send this comment out in an email to make sure others see it.

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear!
Please watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv-UXJz1nCk

YouTube - search for:
Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us
or
digital ethnography