This morning, during our staff professional development time, we all talked about inquiry-based learning. Inquiry is already embedded into our school’s philosophy and practice. Just as we do with students, we spent time this morning reflecting upon our own practice:

• What does Inquiry look like?
• What are we doing already in our learning with our students?
• What is the process?

We also discussed the challenges of an inquiry classroom. Sometimes, the learning is messy and chaotic. Sometimes, the amount of freedom that the kids have overwhelms them, and they don’t always make good decisions. And sometimes, loose deadlines are too much in the “grey area” for those kids who really crave structure and boundaries.

Ultimately, though, those challenges help kids to understand that the process in learning is often more important than the outcome. Mistakes happen. We all make mistakes, and we learn from them. Through inquiry, we reflect on our learning, and we make choices about what we learn, how we learn, and how we demonstrate what we learn.

Our students are thinking critically about decision-making, problem-solving, and sometimes, even behavior choices. They are always asking questions. A LOT of questions! When we have guest speakers or when we go on learning trips, I’m always so pleased to hear our speakers/tour guides remark about the types of questions our kids ask. “Wow, your kids have such great questions!” “Hmm… that’s a really deep question. I’m glad you asked that.” “Boy, you guys sure are curious!” (I’ve heard these three statements in the last two weeks.)

My kids are currently struggling with completing projects. They often have these wonderful ideas, but those ideas don’t always manifest into completed projects. We sometimes have a difficult time, at 8-10 years old, with using our work time to the fullest. Sometimes, we get distracted by each other, by the learning tools we have at our disposal, or by absolutely nothing at all. The latter is what one of my students calls his “spacing out time.” Parents occasionally wonder how we keep our kids accountable if they don’t always finish things during school. Parents like to see neat, high quality, completed projects. I get that, because I do, too. However, as the teacher in the classroom, I have the fortune of also seeing the process – the questions the kids have about different topics, how they decide what they’re going to investigate, and the choices they make in what they do with their learning. Mistakes are made, but again… I get to see how they problem-solve those mistakes. The kids blog about their learning, including what they learned during the process, but they’re not always able to articulate exactly what that process was. My biggest challenge is capturing the process to share with parents and other people. I need to get better at that.

So, my plan today was to come to my classroom, share what we (their teachers) talked about this morning, and then listen to their thoughts about inquiry. Before the kids came to our room, I checked Twitter and noticed my friend, Deirdre Bailey, tweeted about a post she had just written. I clicked on the link and almost fell over. She had just written about the exact same experience in her inquiry-based classroom at Calgary Science School in Calgary, AB. Here’s her post: Savouring the ISH: Outside the Lines: Student Perspectives on Inquiry Learning.

She had just done the exact same exercise with her class that I was planning on doing with my class this morning! I think “serendipitous” might be a new word to share with my class.

I decided not to share Deirdre’s blog post with my kids until after we had done our own reflection.

Questions I asked my students and their responses:

• What exactly IS Inquiry? learning, questions, research, more questions, individual interests.
• What do we use for our research? internet, movies, books, podcasts, speakers, friends, “experts.”
• How do we share our learning? papers, posters, videos, books, drawing, poems, oral presentations, skit/plays, songs, persuasive writing.

After that discussion, I asked them how we learn differently than they did in other schools. They told me that “old school” is very different than “new school.” <– that’s how they decided to categorize them.

Old school is:

• teacher lecturing
• copying work from the teacher (taking notes from the information the teacher gives them)
• worksheets
• lists to memorize for tests
• teacher=the expert
• teacher corrects their work, but the students don’t always understand what they “got wrong.”
• homework that seems like busy work
• less freedom, less choice

They described “new school” as:

• more discussion in large and/or small groups
• sometimes, the teacher models or gives us stories that provide examples (replaces lecture).
• we ask a lot of questions.
• teacher answers questions with questions, and this used to frustrate us. Now we know it helps us think for ourselves.
• teacher asks us, “What do you think about…” which makes us feel like we have an opinion that matters.
• we problem solve more.
• more freedom, more choice
• more responsibility on us to do our work

I then asked them which “school” they prefer, and they all said “new school.” Then we skimmed through Deirdre’s post together, and they were really excited to see that someone else does what we do. When I asked them if they understood the point that Mrs. Bailey was trying to make, a few of my kids realized that it was showing how much responsibility is on them as the learners.

I asked, “if you have freedom, and you don’t use your time to your best ability, what happens?”

One student replied, “We waste time, and then our projects get rushed. We don’t always do our best work.”

Then I wondered aloud, “Hmmm… does it matter if we do our best work?” They all responded that it did, so a short discussion launched about quality of work, learning, accountability, and responsibility. As a teacher, my heart was overflowing… and my mommy heart skipped a few beats, too. THIS is what I wish my own children had been able to do in school.

Today was an inquiry activity about learning through inquiry. They asked questions. They sought out answers for their questions. They talked to each other, and we read about another class’s experience in inquiry. They shared aloud what they learned about their learning.

It’s been a pretty good day in my book.

Every day, you’ll see several (tens? hundreds?) of Tweets and posts recommending “n reasons why x tool is the best/worst idea for education.”

I very much dislike lists.

You can find pros and cons for everything under the sun, but I think we need to stop promoting or discounting tools and focus more on changing pedagogy.

I’d like to write a bit about iPads now. Our school is a 1:1 iPad school, but students are also welcome to bring and use other devices (laptops, iPods, cell phones) to do what best helps them learn.

I’ve read a lot of posts about how iPads are NOT good learning tools, because you can’t learn to type properly on them,  they’re bad for note-taking, you can’t teach programming on them, etc. But in all those posts, we’re looking at an adult’s perspective: adults who learned to type on a keyboard, either in school or on their own. These same adults learned to take notes in school. If they were taught programming at all, it was done on some type of computer with a keyboard.

So, iPads are bad because adults can’t type as quickly on them, and they don’t know how to program on them. Hmm. So, are we saying that students must learn to use specific tools because those are the tools that work best for adults?

What I find interesting about this advice is that no one considered asking a child how they might use an iPad.

What if we asked kids how they would use a device? What if we got out of the way and let them explore? That’s what I have the privilege of doing every day.

One of my students, a 9 year old girl, types more quickly on an iPad than most adults type on a standard laptop. Another one of my students, a 10 year old boy, has his iPad “keyboard” split, and he types like he texts… with his thumbs. Neither of them prefer using a standard keyboard. A couple of my students learned early to type on a keyboard, so they have an iPad case with keyboard. And then there are those students who struggle with typing and writing. Although they practice those skills daily, they also have access to dictation apps that help them as well.

The beauty here is that the students have the option to choose what works best for them, and there is no need for my intervention.

My kids also document their learning in different ways. They have a camera on their iPads that they use to photograph evidence of their learning. They often switch to video mode and record what they’re experiencing while narrating simultaneously. They’ve become documentarians without an adult telling them what they should do.

They create videos to share what they are  learning. During one experiment, while they were making race tracks, the students noticed that the toy race car kept flipping off the track. It was happening so quickly, however, that they couldn’t SEE where their track was failing. One student decided they should record the car racing in slow motion to troubleshoot the problem with their track. Within five minutes, they had the problem solved, because they used their iPads to record using an app called Slow Pro. All of this happened while I watched and said nothing. They had access to a tool that allowed them to quickly grab an app and begin recording immediately.

When we go on learning excursions, they don’t grab their laptops. They grab their iPads so they can take photos and videos easily.  When they take notes, they use an app that not only allows them to type their notes, but also provides options for adding photos and voice recordings.

Some of the kids in our school are learning programming. Did you know there are apps for that too? For my own learning, I’m checking out ScriptKit right now.

iPads work in our school for a number of reasons:

1. Our leadership had a plan in place when making the decision to include iPads as learning devices.
2. In our inquiry-based classrooms, students have a lot of choices in determining what the will learn and how they will demonstrate what they have learned. Every kid is different, and what works for one may not work for another. Their iPads and other devices provide them options.
3. Our teachers were provided iPads to use as well. Everyday, we work together to share what we’re doing and learn from each other.

My purpose in writing this post really isn’t so much about how I love iPads. If your school or district rushes out to purchase large volumes of these devices without any plan, time for learning about the devices, and how those devices will support teaching and learning, then ANY tool will fail.

Additionally, if the tool isn’t used to transform learning, then you’re just wasting money. If you purchase a netbook for every child in your district, but then continue only lecturing while the students take notes, is learning transformed? Or did you just buy a really expensive substitute for paper and pencil?

The tool isn’t the problem. WE are the problem. If we don’t know how to provide options for students and then get out of the way, we aren’t transforming their learning. In my opinion, children need to have access to MULTIPLE devices so that they can make decisions about what best suits them for a specific learning activity.

iPads in the classroom are neither the problem, nor the solution. iPads are tools. However, if you choose to write a list about why iPads are not good for learning, maybe you need to rethink that list. I know a school full of children who can refute your arguments by what they do every single day.