Reflection

Learning how to develop inquiry-based research projects has been an eye-opening experience for me as I have never created such a unit. Providing students with the opportunity to become investigators, to create their own questions to research, to use the Internet to uncover their answers, and then create a way to demonstrate their learning is what the 21st century learning environment should look like (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009). From the resources I read and the multimedia videos I watched, I was able to learn how beneficial this type of learning is for the students. Previously, I had provided students with the topics or the questions they needed to research. I realized, however, that teachers need to facilitate learning, but the students are the ones who need to become in control of how they learn. As stated in Reading the web: strategies for internet inquiry (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007),“A resourceful person may not know all the answers, but she is strategic and tenacious at finding them…when stumped a resourceful person does not give up but rather tries to think of another resourceful consult.” (119). Teachers need to teach their how to become a resourceful person in life. Students need to acquire the necessary skills such as: how to evaluate a web site to ensure the information is reliable, how to summarize the information, how to synthesize the information read in order to record it in some fashion, and how to deepen their questioning skills in order to proceed on their journey through the inquiry-research. Once the students master these valuable literacy skills, they will be able to use them for many reasons throughout their lives.

I have been greatly influenced by the amount of information I have learned in this course about web literacy and inquiry-based research projects. I realized that the learning that takes place during a lesson does not have to be contained to the classroom. Once students have mastered the necessary skills to embark on the inquiry-based research, they are ready to travel far and wide through the magic route of the Internet. In gaining this knowledge of the 21st century classroom and learning environment, I have been planning on executing next school year the inquiry-based research unit I created. In this unit, students will be exploring questions related to the Great Depression in preparation for the reading of two novels that occur during that time period. Students will get the opportunity to become active learners and explorers. I also would like to develop an inquiry-based project for my 7th graders in their writing class. I will be modifying the research project that my students do in December on a cultural holiday tradition or celebration. Previously, I provided them with questions to help guide them in their research; however, I now plan on teaching them the necessary skills to develop their own questions. I also have learned new ways to teach them how to be stronger investigators such as how to use search engines that are geared towards them, how to be more conscious of the words or phrases they type in the search engine, how to develop stronger questions that will expand their research (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007). With this knowledge, I will be able to better meet the needs of my 21st century students.

I have created a professional developmental goal that I would like to achieve for the 2010-2011 school year related to the use of web literacy. I would like to create a communication forum between my students and another class from a different state. In order to achieve this goal, I need to carefully plan out the process. I will first have to get approval from my school district to ensure we are allowed to use a blog forum as currently no teacher in my district is using technology in this manner. I will have to then connect with another teacher who is willing to arrange his or her time to plan the unit with me as well as be willing to teach the unit the same time that I do. After we create the unit, I will have to teach my students the essential literacy and web skills that I previously mentioned to be able to communicate through the use of a blog forum with students from the other class. Lastly, I will have to ensure the communication between the two classrooms continues until the end of the unit, or students will not remain motivated. Although many problems could occur, these are risks I am willing to take to expand the realm of the learning environment. Students will be able to learn that communication and learning can extend beyond the walls of our classroom as they connect with other students their age who are learning the same unit.
-Lauren Cogan

References:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Armstrong, S. (Speaker). Program Nine. Project-based learning. [Motion Picture]. Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore: Author.