Beyond Curriculum Mapping: Using Technology To Delve Deeper into Inquiry Learning(2)

Beyond Curriculum Mapping: Using Technology To Delve Deeper into Inquiry Learning
by Pamela Morehead, Ph.D., and Barbara LaBeau
During these sessions, Barbara provided information related to distance-learning programs, collaborative projects, resource sites, and software capabilities to name a few. We considered these sessions as knowledge-building, motivational, and, in many ways, belief-changing experiences for teachers. Many teachers became intrigued and excited with the idea of facilitating learning in a new context, which included technology integration.
Essential Questions and Inquiry Learning
To create this new context for learning, we encouraged teachers to start with essential questions and understandings based on curriculum content standards from the curriculum mapping process. We explained that when teachers use questions to introduce topics, students are excited about finding answers. When questions begin with "What?" Why? or "How?" teachers lead students to try to understand the world in a more conceptual and fundamental manner.
Barbara effectively challenged the teachers to reflect on "how" the students might communicate their knowledge or understanding of concepts. Ultimately, teachers began to share with us their thoughts about how researching and representing are facilitated through technology use. They also came to the realization that products created by the students could serve as a form of performance assessment. During subsequent grade level meetings with the teachers, Barbara encouraged the teachers to accept the role of facilitator to assist students in understanding how the information gained is applied. In other words, in the process of their creating inquiry-based learning experiences, teachers began to see that they could not supply all of the needed information to the students without giving them predetermined answers to their questions or the essential questions.
Furthermore, students would need to be the searchers of information, and the teacher‘s role would need to change to a facilitator of the learning process. Moreover, she highlighted the importance of teachers supporting the students‘ understanding by scaffolding learning as students gathered and sorted information. We suggested that one way of accomplishing this goal was through student-teacher conferences. Some teachers soon discovered that by conferencing with the students individually, in pairs or groups, the students communicated their desire to present their learning in a variety of ways. Students became more actively engaged as learners as they researched and presented learning very differently from the way they had done in the recent past using technology as a tool to this aim.
Addressing Teacher Concerns Through Professional Development
Barbara and I discovered that when teachers first begin inquiry learning, they face many challenges. For example, a second grade teacher posed these questions as she struggled to implement her yearlong focus on community:
How do I construct questions that take children beyond literal understandings? How much can I expect the students to come up with, and what do I need to do in order to make sure that the curriculum objectives are covered? How do I decide which resources I should use and provide to the students? How can I help children plan, organize and present the information in a meaningful way?
To address the concerns and questions posed by the second-grade teacher, Barbara and I met individually with her to share a model of inquiry learning referred to as project based learning. Our goal was to provide direction and organization of curriculum content leading to technology integration through an inquiry process.