Tag Archives: Inquiry Based Learning

Images Tell Stories

I am on an image kick lately, but here is what happened in my class today. It was powerful:

The grade sevens have been doing some research about Afghanistan for our upcoming book, Boy Overboard. We spoke in class today about the power of imagery to tell a story. We spoke about how giving a Pecha Kucha is not about delivering information, like a traditional report about food, currency, and population, but rather we want to strike a chord, make the viewers feel something. It is about emotions and forcing the viewer to think.

Here is an example. One student insisted on showing a flag. He wanted to use this:

We talked about whether or not this image was alive. Or whether it inspired emotions, told a story. The answer was a resounding no!

We searched on Flickr for some CC images and found these:

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by United States Marine Corps Official Page

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Abhishek’s Photo Essays

One student still wanted to just add the words Afghanistan Flag as the text. We agreed that we could only have three words. I told him to do some research and find out what the colors in the flag mean. We found out that the black is for occupation by foreigners, the red for the blood of the freedom fighters, and the green for Islam. The student decided to simply add the words Occupation, Blood, Islam.

We talked a bit about design, colors, and composition and came up with this:

I think this tells a much more interesting story than this:

Now we will work on what we will say for twenty seconds over the slide!

Flames With Action

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I started this blog a few years ago as a way to reflect on my own teaching (learning), build a network of like minded teachers worldwide, and to have my own space to facilitate and encourage conversations about education with teachers in the building in which I worked. That was in January of 2009 a few years ago in Doha. I would say I have been fairly successful in two out of three of my goals. You can read my first post for yourself here for a more comprehensive look at my goals.

However, I have struggled with my third goal; I do not feel I have ever had a regular readership from teachers in my own building. I have not yet created a culture of blogging within our staff. I hope this post is a first step in creating spaces where our staff can interact. I hope it will spark a spate of new blogs as well. After a great in school retreat last Thursday, I hope to revisit my third goal here at my new school in Jakarta. I have emailed this post to the participants of our five hour meeting hoping to keep our conversation and inspiration going. Hi guys! Welcome to my blog. This is where I hang out, wrestle with ideas, connect with other teachers, and work on all the things we talked about last Thursday.

This post is my attempt to lure out the teachers and administrators from my school interested in creating new learning spaces and a dynamic tech infused pedagogy. Schools that are inquiry based and use technology to lead and guide student driven pedagogy. I hope that some of you will take the time to let loose some thoughts in the comment section and see if we can’t clearly articulate and enact our school’s vision.

Before I continue let me recap the main ideas from our meeting, so my regular readers have a sense of where I am coming from. Another great by-product of blogging is that I hope, teachers from my school new to blogging, will begin to see the power of being a networked teacher. I hope that you realize the fruitfulness of a blog and the conversations that can grow here, once the seed has been planted and tended ever so lightly. Let begin…

I work at a 1:1 school. We all have shiny new Macbooks and I love it. I love the freedom to do anything that strikes my fancy on a dime with my students. I am excited and inspired by the work we are doing. I am challenged on a daily basis to make sure I am not directing too much of what they do. I am realizing that technology and a 1:1 environment does not automatically lead to a inquiry based school. As a matter of fact, often it could hinder the shift. I am starting to realize that schools need focus and vision. I realize that not everyone on our campus understands what it means to be 1:! We need to be open and honest about what our staff is willing to do and learn. We need to hold our staff accountable for how they understand and implement the vision of the school. We need to train and support. We need conversations about who we want to be and how we can get there.

Through a series of manipulations, suggestions and hard work I am somehow got myself invited to a meeting where we were going to be having these exact conversations. There were about fourteen of us present: administrators, teachers from every branch of the school, and two students. We examined our vision statement, and through a google doc, answered a few questions about what it means to be a 1:1 school. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the conversation. Many of us are on the same page and have a lot to say on the subject. Here the gist of what we said:

So often we forget that our schools are filled with passionate teachers who want to learn and grow, but only need the venue and chance to do so. This meeting was a great example of that. Now I invite you to keep the momentum going. Look back at our Google Doc and synthesis what we discussed there. Add your comments on the document, process your thoughts and join me on this blog post. Leave a comment here sharing your ideas and/or excitement. Let’s find the best tools and spaces where we can join our energies and find out how to move our faculty and school forward. Learning begins with passion and curiosity; it is clear we have no shortage of either here at our school, so now we need to tend the flames with action. I would love comments from other readers as well. How have you created a tight group of passionate teachers to move your schools toward change? What advice do you have for us?

Call This Progress

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We say we have a new kind of student, but we want them to be like we were, share our values and find what we find important, important. Then we say we want to change and be more like them. We are all growing and changing and learning, but then we discredit what they do, what they like, who they are becoming. They are distracted and can’t read a book! Gasp! We want to teach them new things, what they want to learn in new ways, but really we just teach them what we want them to learn in the ways we were taught, with new tools and call this progress.

We say we want to be inquiry driven and constructivist, but we get through curriculum we design, assess by our standards and bore them to death. Just exactly where does student inquiry fit into teacher planned curriculum? We say computers are good. We say they are bad. Connected, disconnected. We teach writing and reading, but can’t say why and most of teachers seldom do either.

Do as I say not as I do is still the backbone of most school environments.