Showing posts with label SSLA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SSLA. Show all posts

Monday, October 25, 2010

Inquiry Learning at the SSLA Conference

Presentation by Carol Koechlin
http://sslalearningcommons.pbworks.com

The renewed Saskatchewan curriculum has inquiry-learning in the middle of it. The chance for students to wonder, reflect, evaluate, etc.

Saskatchewan Curriculum Aims & Goals

Inquiry is a lot more than assigning a topic. If students are engaged in their inquiry, they will construct knowledge for deeper understanding. They are involved in the discovery of new knowledge and encounter differing ideas. They will also transfer new knowledge and skills to new circumstances. (Saskatchewan Curriculum)

The metacognative piece also needs to be added so that students understand that they are learning to be better learners. The collaborative piece and the power or potential needs to be added as well.

Carol Kuhthau, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century
Carol Kuhthau, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century "Inquiry learning is a social process in which students learn from each other in a community of learners."

Shifts to Watch:
  • Information seeking and reporting to indivudual and collective knowledge construction
  • Teacher directed learning to self and participatory learning
  • classroom learning to networked and global learning
  • Standards driven to exploring big ideas and concepts
  • Teaching to Facilitating process and active learning
    Resources to consult:
    SSLA Learning Commons Resources

    Steven Johnson's video on Ted.com about Where Good Ideas Come From


    Wednesday, May 5, 2010

    SSLA Conference: Inquiry Tools Smackdown

    Presented by Donna Desroches and Carlene Walters
    Presentation wiki: http://disruptiveinnovators.wikispaces.com/Inquiry+and+Social+Media


    Tools for Inquiry:


    Planning: 
    1. Blogs and Wikis: It is very important for students to have a blog or a wiki to share their work. Setting these up at the start, provide students the opportunity to post and keep track of their work. It becomes a management tool that students have access to right at the start.
    2. Social Bookmarking: Delicious
    3. Citation: Bibme.org: Create your own bibliographies and then copy and paste it into research papers.
    4. Net Vibes: Personal Learning Environment (PLE) - have your students make their own environment to start from instead of providing that yourself.
    5. Newscred: RSS News feed - personalizing streaming presented in the context of creating your own newspaper.
    Wonder:

    1. Visualization & Clustering
    2.  Tracking Your Thinking
    • Evernote - Save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.
    • WallWisher – An online notice board. It invites social negotiation of thought as students can post questions and contribute to other queries
    • Wallwisher Tool in Science Classes
    3.  Learning from Others
     Investigating and Collaborating:
    Explore 
    Finding Information
    1. Using the social media tools in the online databases
      Gale

      Gale Widgets
      - embed in your school library Web page
    2. Wolfram Alpha for Educators> using WA in math
      example using socio-economic data
    3. Search engines> Sweet Search -
      Sweet Search for teacher-librarians
    4. GoogleForms - my favourite - so easy to create surveys
    5. Search in Twitter/Delicious/Diigo
    6. InstaPaper -Collect Web pages to bookmark or readlater.. When you find something you want to read, but you don't have time, click Read Later
    7. Readability - A simple tool that makes reading on the Web easier and less distracting by removing the clutter around the text.

    Analyze 

    Mindmapping Tools 

    Concept maps are useful tools for helping students organize information about important topics by showing relationships between concepts and standards.

    Graphing Tools

    Highlighting Tools

    Synthesize/Coalesce

    Screen Capture Tools


    Document The Process

    • googledocs
    • blog
    • wiki

    Observe and Participate 

    Backchannelling