The Inquiry Page

1
The Inquiry Page

• inquiry.uiuc.edu

2
Support

• Inquiry Teaching Learning class
• Illinois Board of Higher Education, Chickscope
  Professional Development
• Committee on Institutional Cooperation
• NCSA staff, students at Purdue and UIUC
• UI Research Board
• Inquiry partners

3
History

• Course website
• Project website
• Ease of use issues
• Increasing support for collaboration
• Shift to community focus

4
What is Inquiry?

• Creating opportunities to engage students in
  active learning based on their own questions.
• A learner centered and learner driven process.
• A cycle where each question leads to an
  exploration which will then lead to more
  questions to investigate.
• The process of asking, investigating, creating,
  discussing, and reflecting, and then asking again.

5
What is the Inquiry Page?

• Partner project
• Resource for inquiry teaching philosophy
• Collaborative teaching learning community
• Lesson planning support and idea site

6
How does Inquiry work?

• Inquiry involves students as active learners.
  They may hatch chickens, run a business, or
  investigate evolution.

7
The Inquiry Page

• is designed to foster inquiry-based learning.
  Participants include community members, P-12
  teachers, museum educators, librarians,
  university students and faculty, scientists, and
  others engaged in a variety of lifelong and
  informal learning activities. The development of
  the site has been design-through-use The
  processes of creating, using, and critiquing the
  site and the resources within it should exemplify
  the open-ended aspects of inquiry and social
  participation that the site itself is encouraging.

8
A collaboratory, where users

• find resources to support inquiry-based learning
• share, discuss and build upon each others' work
• use tools offered by Inquiry partners
• explore new ways to assess inquiry-based learning
• dialogue with others about new approaches to
  teaching, learning, and community problem-solving
• participate in the institutions that affect their
  lives

9
Elements

• Quote of the Day Writings on inquiry
• Collaborative technologies
• Inquiry in Action What inquiry looks like
• Evaluation/Assessment resources
• Collaborative bibliography
• Inquiry Units Searchable database of Units
• Inquiry Partners projects, courses, libraries,
  museums, schools, community groups,

10
Types of Inquiry Units

• Lesson plan
• Syllabus
• Student work product
• Locus for collaborative investigation
• Policy discussion thread
• Community action plan
• Multimedia digital library document
• Pathfinder or bibliography

11
Curriculum units

• Graduate course What are the processes and
  consequences of electronic publication?
• Reflection on teaching What directions do
  children's interests take in story reading as
  inquiry?
• Activities to connect science and language What
  does hatching chicks have to do with language
  arts??
• Workshop on poetry writing Poetry as play

12
Library resources

• Multilingual needs What library and information
  services are provided for librarians serving the
  Latino community? How can we present these in the
  form of a website to librarians and other
  information professionals?
• Policy statement on a collection What sort of
  selection policy would be appropriate for
  developing a 'zine collection?

13
Independent inquiry

• How can a former language arts teacher utilize
  his or her experience in a library science
  career?
• How can one create an evaluation scheme for web
  sites focusing on books for junior high students?
  
• How can one create a pathfinder to aid students
  in literary reports?

14
Community action

• Create Your Personal SisterNet Spiritual Health
  Plan

15
Next steps

• Partners National Science Digital Library, STC
  Water, Living on the Prairie, East St. Louis,
  Sisternet, Chicago Lab School, visualization of
  web
• Search VisIT, VIBE
• Use in courses
• Collaboratory enhancements
• Business Technical Writing program
• Bibliography tool

16
Participation

• inquiry.uiuc.edu
• Weekly meeting Tuesday, 500-600 pm at 131 LIS,
  501 E. Daniel
• Events www.inquiry.uiuc.edu/bin/events.cgi
• Listservs all, developers, DIME, research,
  technical, assessment,
• Participatory design