Vision Post #3: Reflection an Element of Inquiry

Vision Post #3: Reflection an Element of Inquiry

My Digital Artifact

For my digital artifact I choose to do a blog post informing my co-workers of what inquiry is and how to use it. I choose this because I found that as a 21^st century learner, the skills taught through inquiry based learning such as, critical thinking, and information literacy are essential skills to have later in life. As a Social Studies teacher I was also struggling with coming up with projects that went beyond a mind dump. Initially, when I choose the topic, I thought I had embedded inquiry activities in my courses. For my Social Studies 8 class for instance, I had asked my students to create mind maps. I figured this was better than a test. What I have now learned is that by doing so all I was asking my students to do was copy facts and organize them. This did not involve them in creating meaningful essential questions, in investigating and researching their questions, during which they assessed resources. It also did not ask them to construct a project that was meaningful to them or to reflect on their learning, as a means to guide their research process. I know for a fact, I gained a wide assortment of knowledge by creating my artifact, because the first thing I said prior to writing this reflection was “oh my god, reflections are inquiry!”. In fact, reflection is the r in the C.L.E.A.R G.O.A.L.S acronym I learned.

Technology

I chose to stick to the UBC blog for sharing. I want my co-workers to be able to access it whenever. In the name of trying to develop my technological skills however, I attempted to create my artifact on a more advanced blog website. I ended up spending over 3 hours, just playing with formatting. It was a fail! Wordpress is just not for me!The one thing that I regret is that I found some amazing resource tables for my co-workers to look at. When I posted them on the blog they did not turn out as intended. I hope that my citations can lead people to the right articles, so they still have access to the resources.

The Development of the Artifact

I spent a lot of time over spring break reading articles on inquiry to understand myself what it entailed to use inquiry. What I found is that there was a lot of information out there. In fact, so much information that I had way more notes than the assignment required. I was happy with the notes I found, but struggled with figuring out what to include and what not to include so that it fit the criteria of the assignment. I will revisit the blog and continue to work on it as I have much more I can say about inquiry.

Where Am I Now?

With the knowledge I have gained, I can now create an inquiry lesson plan. In fact, a friend and I have already started to work on one. The intention is to use the points of inquiry framework, and ensure that our students by the end of the unit have developed inquiry skills, and an in-depth understanding of their essential question/topic.