Educational tools of inquiry

In this approach the teacher may let the students design and build their own catapults, using their own ideas and inspiration. Samples or ideas may be offered, but the students are free to create their own designs, use their imagination and be creative. As part of this type of inquiry specific end goals may be specified. For example, the catapult may need to hit a specific target at a set distance, or be a specific size.

This limits the students in some ways, but can also foster some incredibly imaginative critical thinking and problem solving skills. Guided Inquiry involves the teacher choosing the topic or questions, then the students are left to develop their own methods of inquiry and processes for moving through concepts.

With our example, the teacher may teach concepts of engineering and warfare in Ancient Egypt. From there, students research and build their choice of items from the time period, they are not limited to building a catapult. Perhaps they want to build a model of a pyramid or a ship, or maybe explore creating their own paper and ink and drawing hieroglyphs. Due to the freedom and independent approach used in Guided Inquiry, students may also chose to do their projects in a different way.

Instead of building and engineering, perhaps they want to create a presentation, develop engineering drawings instead of constructing a catapult, or even do a video report. Free Inquiry allows the students to take ownership over their learning, including topic selection, questions, methods and goals.

In this instance, the teacher lets the students chose whichever ideas they wish under the main umbrella topic of Ancient Egypt. They can delve into the topic in any way they desire and explore the concepts and ideas that appeal to them. This requires a lot of self-discipline and comfort with self-directed learning. It is best to wait until the students are comfortable with student led learning before starting free inquiry.

This technique has been especially powerful for my gifted child. Watching the growth and development that occurs when a student can take ownership of their education and chase their passions is something really magical to witness. Feel free to pivot, and take new directions as needed. The goal is learning, not following a set path. These are not set in stone, adapt as needed to suit your needs. It is also important to remember that in order to succeed in Inquiry Based Learning students will need a solid base of knowledge in the subject matter.

Lessons and teachings of core principles will still need to happen to ensure success. Students will also need time to learn key skills such as research, critical thinking, problem solving and even team work. These are all skills that may require explicit instruction, then mastery can come with practice and time. Learning how to do problem or inquiry based learning is an important part of the process.

The next step is to take action—through continued observing, raising questions, making predictions, testing hypotheses, and creating conceptual models. The learner must find her or his own pathway through this process. It is rarely a linear progression, but rather more of a back-and-forth, or cyclical, series of events. As the process unfolds , more observations and questions emerge, providing for deeper interaction with the phenomena—and greater potential for further development of understanding.

Along the way , the inquirer collects and records data, makes representations of results and explanations, and draws upon other resources such as books, videos, and the expertise or insights of others. Making meaning from the experience requires reflection, conversation, comparison of findings with others, interpretation of data and observations, and the application of new conceptions to other contexts. All of these serve to help the learner construct an improved mental framework of the world.

Inquiry involves learners in the following ways:. Below is a list of some awesome tools that can help you with your approach to inquiry based learning. With EDpuzzle you can now crop any YouTube, Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, Vimeo or other video, insert your own audio notes, narrate over the video, and best of all insert questions at any point in the video to create quizzes multiple choice or short answer quizzes. This can be a great way to add engagement in class, as teachers will find this tool very useful while revising concepts with kids.

With hands on this you can do some quick quizzing sessions to know about their level of understanding of concepts. This one is a student response system apt for asking questions to students. You simply ask a question and get response from your students. Research has shown that classroom response systems can boost student-learning outcomes through deep learning, not just recall.

This is a great platform and can be used for K and even higher education. It is a powerful formative assessment tool and intuitive student response system that allows for dynamic student-teacher interaction.

Here is how it works: Instructors ask questions through any presentation application; students answer questions with a remote or smart device; instructors display results in real-time and record responses.

A great tool to aid your teaching and know the level of concept understanding among students. It is an excellent web tool for creating study and discussion groups.

It allows students to collaborate on their homework, ask questions and interact in realtime, upload videos and share notes and files all in a secured group. The tool also supports text and video chat and provides a collaborative whiteboard to help students work on their problems. With this tool teachers can easily collect ideas, discuss on them and vote for the decision. That's how Tricider works. Now you will make decisions along with your class but a lot faster and that too without meetings or calls.