Blog Assignment # 2 - week 9

1. How can teachers find balance between knowledge- based content standards and process oriented skills?

I feel that while teachers are still being evaluated on knowledge based content standards, they need to be integrating the process oriented skills now, into their current lessons, without dropping the knowledge-based content for now. Since this is going to be the new way of evaluating, once common core standards "are common" they do need to look at their lessons differently now and start to incorporate the process oriented skills in their instruction. Not wait until the complete standard change date to look at it.

For some educators, they already use process oriented learning in their teaching and have all along, if they support this pedagogy, and for others, this is a complete shift in "how they have always done things." I am hopeful that the latter group of educators won't fear asking the first group how they integrate this new way, common core standards, into their lessons. It is crucial that educators work together during this transition, and not as their own island, as I have seen in schools so often.

2. What are the key factors that help improve the success of inquiry-based lessons?

Wikipedia states the key factors are:

Specific learning processes that students engage in during inquiry-learning include:

• Creating questions of their own
• Obtaining supporting evidence to answer the question(s)
• Explaining the evidence collected
• Connecting the explanation to the knowledge obtained from the investigative process
• Creating an argument and justification for the explanation^[6]

• The topic, problem to be studied, and methods used to answer this problem are determined by the student and not the teacher 

3. What role can technology play in assisting those factors? Give specific examples.
I think that technology can play a key role in inquiry-based lessons in that using the internet can allow one to research any topic or subject one chooses.  The students need some guidance on searching techniques, and analyzing information, but with that, there research possibilities are wide open.

Ideas for using technology:
To create their own questions, students can create a survey, using google forms, for another student to take, or simply technology to begin a PowerPoint.

To obtain supporting evidence, the student can use internet searches, carefully defined.

Explaining evidence, and connecting the explanation to obtained knowledge can be done using a PowerPoint presentation, or a blog. Their supporting argument can also be included in the PowerPoint or blog.

All of the above must be student determined.