Session+2

=Session 2=

2.3 Website analysis
Questions: 1) Both websites had aspects that were convincing. The tree octopus website had pictures / videos of sightings, plus mentioned ways you could help this endangered species. The pregnant man website had quotes from reliable sources (US News, Oprah, CNN, etc). It also had a .com addres and seemed to be a hospital website. 2) The octopus website was a .net, which is a less reliable source, is not authored by an official organization, and claims to be made in cascadia (?) The male pregnancy website, while the topic seems like a complete hoax, the website is convincing. It took a lot more to determine it was a hoax. A couple things I found - when you click on Mr Lee's blog, it says it will be up again shortly. Also, when you go to contact them, it brings you to a form you have to fill out. No phone numbers, email or street addresses you can contact. Finally, on this same part of the website (Contact us), there is a quote for someone about how she can administer medications through her palm pilot. Throughout the website, you really have to scour it to find any doctors names and at no point does it mention where this hospital is located. 3) We need to guide our students to be discriminating, to ask themselves, could this information truly be real? We need to teach them to look deeper into the websites they use to determine if the are legitimate or not. We need to teach them to look at the web address, look for references, location and author. [|Evaluating Websites] This website is very useful with a lot of information, though I feel like it may have too much information. I feel like our students would start to read and would then lose interest quickly. [|Evaluating Websites checklist] I think the checklist is more useful because it is more concise.

2.3 Inquiry Based Learning Websites
[|What is inquiry-based learning?] This website is for a workshop on inquiry based learning. It has a lot of information on what inquiry based learning is and is meant to teach students how to use inquiry based learning. It is a reliable source as it is a .org website, has copyright information at the bottom. The following citation explains the company a little better : " "Concept to Classroom" is a free professional development workshop series that addresses a variety of relevant topics in education today. The workshop series is a production of Thirteen Ed Online, an online professional development site of the Educational Resources Center at Thirteen/WNET New York."

[| Inquiry-based learning in a university Spanish class:] This is a dissertation from the University of Texas that investigates inquiry-based instruction in the foreign language classroom

[|Issues in Teaching Through Inquiry] This is the write-up from a seminar that addresses many of the issues in teaching through inquiry

[|how to connect your students with the world] This is not necessarily inquiry based learning, but while I was searching for inquiry-based learning, I stumbled upon this. This is a great resource to help connect my students to other students around the world and I wanted to remember it.

2.4 Three minute pause
1)Summary: "We learn best when we are at the center of our own learning." This quote from the second website in our essential reading really summed it up for me. Inquiry based learning is an organic student-centered approach to learning in which learning is stimulated by asking questions or working through problems. The role of the teacher in an inquiry-based classroom is to act as a facilitator. Students are meant to take responsibility for their learning. Inquiry-based learning stimulates critical thinking and promotes intellectual growth. While using inquiry-based learning, It is important for us to help students build a framework through modeling, accessing prior knowledge, asking them questions as to what they want to get out of this project and asking them questions to stimulate their curiosity. It is a cyclical process, which in turn, should lead to more questions. 2) My thoughts: I love the idea of inquiry based learning and especially the idea of students becoming more independent. The more this is incorporated across the curriculum, the more successful each of us will be in our individual classrooms. In order to truly accomplish inquiry-based learning, we need to have high expectations of our students. For example, I did a project with a higher level French class. This project was inquiry-based in that students needed to choose a country that they were interested in, pretend that they had traveled there, and then report back to the class on the different aspects of their trip. I was apprehensive that it would work, as my students were not very good independent workers. But they all rose to the ocassion and presented the class with some great projects. I love the opinionaire idea to access prior knowledge on the first website ([|IBL]). It makes it into a game, which students always appreciate. I also like KWL grid because it stimulates their interest. 3) I don't have any questions, but I understand why we would discuss web research and inquiry-based learning in the same lesson. The two go hand in hand. Modern technology, if used correctly, truly stimulates inquiry-based learning. We need to teach our students to use the web correctly, so that they can actively learn independently.

2.5 Essential Readings
Questions: 1) As always, there are going to be students who do not respond to this type of learning, or who find it difficult, in turn giving up before they really start. How do we motivate these students that aren't interested? 2) How do we encourage students to participate in inquiry-based learning outside the classroom and in their daily lives, especially those who do not have access to the internet or other external sources?

Comments: 1) I love the diagram from the second website. I found a similar diagram on one of the pages I found in my search. As lifelong learners, I think we all participate in this cyclical process whether we know it or not. I think it is important that we demonstrate to our students how we use inquiry-based learning in our own lives. 2) As I started to reflect upon what we learned, I realized we were using inquiry-based learning to learn about inquiry-based learning as we completed this lesson. How appropriate. I also never realized how much I use inquiry-based learning in my everyday life.

2.6 Reflections on Student Work
I am inspired by this project and I am looking forward to incorporating wikispaces, pirate pad, and wordle into my classroom. I think it is a great way to encourage students to work as a group outside of class. It is also a great way for teachers to be able to monitor students' work. Based on the students' comments, it seemed like it was an interesting project to them because they were able to relate and reflect upon how it applied to their own lives. All of the criminals they researched were teenagers when they committed the crimes, so the students were able to reflect upon that. Each one I read seemed to get better. I did notice some typos, etc in their work. The last two seemed to be more thorough and more reflective.