"Inquiry-based learning" is one of many terms used to describe educational approaches that are driven more by a learner's questions than by a teacher's lessons. It is inspired by what is sometimes called a constructivist approach to education, which posits that there are many ways of constructing meaning from the building blocks of knowledge and that imparting the skills of "how to learn" is more important than any particular information being presented. Not all inquiry-based learning is constructivist, nor are all constructivist approaches inquiry-based, but the two have similarities and grow from similar philosophies.

How is inquiry-based learning different from traditional approaches? In the traditional framework, teachers come to class with highly structured curricula and activity plans. They act as the source of knowledge and as the person who determines which information is important. There is certainly creativity and flexibility in how each teacher runs his or her class, but the topics and projects are driven and evaluated based on what a teacher, administrator, school board, or bureaucracy have decided what children should know and master.

In contrast, inquiry-based learning projects are driven by students. Instructors act more as coaches, guides, and facilitators who help learners arrive at their "true" questions—the things they really care about. When students choose the questions, they are motivated to learn and they develop a sense of ownership about the project.

Because inquiry-based learning is premised on helping children ask questions, instructors themselves must learn the art of asking good questions.

What kinds of questions make for good inquiry-based projects? As we said, they must first be questions that the kids truly care about because they come up with them themselves. In addition, good questions share the following characteristics:

·           The questions must be answerable.

·         The answer cannot be a simple fact.

·         The answer can't already be known.

·         The questions must have some objective basis for an answer.

·         The questions can not be too personal.

Actually I usually use this techniques in my classes and the students enjoined to do it but I was not  know the name of this techniques.  

Flipped Classroom

 

 

 

"The way we were taught is not necessarily 

the way we should be teaching students."

                                - Stacey Roshan, HS Algebra Teacher, Bullis School

 

The days of the teacher as "sage on the stage" are numbered.  Instead, the teacher becomes the "guide on the side" where students are using the class/school experience as a fully interactive experience WITH the teacher  - - instead of the teacher being the one-way traditional talking head.   This way, students are asking questions and solving problems with the teacher or fellow students -  instead of just sitting compliantly and listening - where the teacher can spend more time addressing specific questions and personalized attention, rather than just the one-size-fits-all lecture.  some advantages of "Flipped Classroom" for students:

• downlaod and learn from recorded lectures at their own pace and time, including features such as pause, rewind, watch again, and review.
• much more time to "do" than just listen.
• Improve students skills in technology field.
• working in groups help students to improve their communication skills.
• teach students how to be a learner.
• help students to be a creative one.

One problem that not all the student can access the net, so the school could allocate time and lab with net for those students.

Every teacher knows that when it comes to student learning, face - time is an invaluable limited resource. How can we gainfully leverage what little face -time that we have so that it best benefits students? As technology emerges to help us answer that question in new ways.
Some advantages of "Flipped Classroom" for teachers:

• Teacher have more interactive face -time with students.
• Teacher can see the benefits and drawbacks to the work they're assinging.
• Parents can follow and participate in their child's learning without being obtrusive.
• Allow teacher to play a more active role in facilitating the learning process.

Although the "Flipped Classroom" model would allow students to ask the teacher a question on class later on if they don't understand, this might also lead to wasted time. If a student does't understand a fundamental concepts, the rest of the video will not make sense. In the event that the teacher has to explain it over again in person, there was no point to listening to the video in the first time.

I think not all the topics can be in flipped classroom espacially that topics with fundamental concepts, the teacher should be careful about the topics that he will make them in flipped classroom model, it shuold not cantain fundamental concepts.

Using Computers as tool, tutee and tutor

There are three modes of using computers in education, which labeled as tutor, tool and tutee. When being used as a tutor the computer presents some subject material, the student responds, the computer evaluates the response and from the results of the evaluation, determines what to present next.

 Once I remember I use "Trace Maker" program, When I was teaching networking, it's a simulation program where the teachers can build their networking between a group of computers depending on the IP for each computer and also they can try to see whether their IPs are correct or no by sending messages between computers and see if it have been sent or no, if it is okay then they build the real network, also I taught an ICDL program where the students can practice using ICDL ATS Primer and also doing their exams online using the same program.

When being used as a tool the computer has some functionality that saves that saves the learner time and allows the teacher to focus his intellectual energy on higher orders tasks. For me I use a lot e.g. I use word processing programs to write my lesson's plane, tests, ice break activities, also I use spreadsheets to find calculations of mark, using computers as a tool make the tasks more easier and accurate.

When being used as a tutee the computer is taught something by being programmed by the learner, before I joined government's schools, I was teaching in different institutes I was usually teach C++, the students were faced a challenge that they have to learn what they are trying to teach the computer, because they can't teach something they don't know.

Now I'm in government schools, the students face the same challenge but in Visual Basic, and I don't know in future how the challenge will.

Intersting

I like whate I have learn today about blogs , it's seem intersting and useful.