The Importance of Inquiry in the Age of Technology

Bertram C. BruceLibrary & Information Science

U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Harold Kroto

• Creating opportunities to engage students in active learning based on their own backgrounds and interests

• A learner-centered process• A cycle of asking, investigating,

creating, discussing, and reflecting• A process in which each question leads

to further questions

What is Inquiry?

How does Inquiry work?

• Inquiry involves people as active learners. Students in inquiry classrooms may experience anything from running a business, to writing stories, to growing and hatching chickens.

• Partner projects• Resources for inquiry

teaching & learning• Lesson planning

support and idea site• Collaborative

teaching & learning community

What is the Inquiry Page?

How does the Inquiry Page fit?

• www.inquiry.uiuc.edu - Start here for an overview and introduction to Inquiry

•See images and stories of students involved with Inquiry

•Create your own curriculum units or adapt a unit someone else has designed

•Explore other projects, articles, websites, or tools to facilitate your Inquiry journey

A place to share curricula

A means for collaboration

A tool for student inquiry

Tools for many kinds of inquiry

Design through use: Collaboration

1) Create and share a unit2) Dialogue spaces: listservs, web forums3) Spin-offs4) Comment feature on units5) Multiple authors with separate logins6) Distributed IP: Style sheets7) Synchronous editing support

Participants: Design through use

• community members• teachers, librarians, museum educators• students at all levels• university faculty• scientists• others engaged in a variety of lifelong and informal learning activities

Elements

• Quote of the Day: Writings on inquiry• Collaborative technologies • Inquiry in Action: What inquiry looks like• Evaluation/Assessment resources • Collaborative bibliography• Inquiry Units: Searchable database of Units• Inquiry Partners: projects, courses, libraries,

museums, schools, community groups, …

Types of Inquiry Units

• Lesson plan• Syllabus• Student work product• Locus for collaborative investigation• Policy discussion thread• Community action plan• Multimedia digital library document• Pathfinder or bibliography

Curriculum units

• Graduate course: What are the processes and consequences of electronic publication?

• Reflection on teaching: What directions do children's interests take in story reading as inquiry?

• Activities to connect science and language: What does hatching chicks have to do with language arts?

• Workshop on poetry writing: Poetry as play

Library resources

• Multilingual needs: What library and information services are provided for librarians serving the Latino community? How can we present these in the form of a website to librarians and other information professionals?

• Policy statement on a collection: What sort of selection policy would be appropriate for developing a 'zine collection?

Independent inquiry

• How can a former language arts teacher utilize his or her experience in a library science career?

• How can one create an evaluation scheme for web sites focusing on books for junior high students?

• How can one create a pathfinder to aid students in literary reports?

Community action

• Create Your Personal SisterNet Spiritual Health Plan

Research questions

How can we

o connect learning & life?

o support lifelong learning?

o accommodate diversity & shared values?

1) Connect school and life

One earth

Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated.

John Dewey, School and Society

2) Lifelong learning

technology => solves a problem

solution to a problem =>technology

Problem-solving cycle

problem 1 => technology 1

technology 1 => problem 2

problem 2 => technology 2

technology 2 => problem 3 …

Participatory inquiry

Design through use or participatory inquiry aims to respond to human needs by democratic processes. Through creation of content, contributions to interactive elements, and incorporation into practice, users are not merely recipients of technology, but participate actively in its ongoing development.

3) Accommodate difference and shared values

• Distributed Knowledge Research Collaborative • East St. Louis Action Research Project• SisterNet Spiritual Health Plan • Latino Student Coalition

Design through use techniques

• Workshops• Inquiry group meetings• Retreats• Email/bboard discussion• Feedback forms

Active participation

every individual must be consulted in such a way, actively not passively, that he himself becomes a part of the process of authority.

Dewey, Democracy & Education

La propension des choses

In the traditional configuration (shi)…, tension is expressed by the curve of a roof…

François Jullien

Co-evolution

Knowledge

Technology Community

Meaning of technology

only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.

Dewey, Experience & Education

Next steps: Collaboratory tools

• Business & Technical Writing program• Bibliography tool• Profile management • Social agent system• Extended search: VisIT, VIBE, IKNOW• Distributed Inquiry Page• Inquiry in Action

Next steps: Partner projects

• CAMPWS• Living on the Prairie • National Science Digital Library• East St. Louis Action Research Project• Sisternet• U Chicago Lab School• Paseo Boricua• Ethnography of the University• K-12 and college courses

Next steps: Research & evaluation

• User and usability research• Online evaluation tools• Participatory design• Social network analysis• Situated evaluation

Participation

• inquiry.uiuc.edu• Weekly meetings: 5-6 pm Tue, at 131

LIS• Events:

www.inquiry.uiuc.edu/bin/events.cgi• Listservs: all, developers, DIME,

research, technical, assessment, …• Participatory design

Support

• Inquiry Teaching & Learning class• Illinois Board of Higher Education, Chickscope

Professional Development• Committee on Institutional Cooperation• NCSA staff, students at Purdue and UIUC• UI Research Board• Inquiry partners