Podcast

Podcast

media type="file" key="Linnea's podcast.m4a"

Script:

3 Actions for Change

The practice of scientific inquiry has been batted around for decades. My school used this approach way back in the 70s. We were a small group, motivated and self selected. It will be a bit of a challenge to bring true scientific inquiry to large groups of students of varying levels of ability and interest. If I agree with the first assumption stated by Mortimer Adler in his Paideia proposal then I have to agree that all children are educable. And if I also agree with the fourth assumption-multiple types of learning and teaching must be utilized-then I'm required to offer all students the same opportunities. The scientific inquiry to which I'm committing is open-ended, evidence-based, and demands collaboration. It is the foundation of true science. This brings me to my second action. I will commit to determining and using appropriate technology to document the learning through scientific inquiry in my classes. Learning occurs in reflection. Diverse students do best with diverse modes of reflection. Some will collect and process their evidence in the conventional verbal/linguistic manner. Others will use a more visual process, perhaps concept maps, Comic Life, or digital photography, while others may use sound recordings. The scientifically oriented questions will be the common curriculum in the practice of inquiry, but the documentation of the learning will be unique to each student. Key to this process is the fact that at any point the student will have an authentic, self generated product to which they can refer. At any point they will be able to answer the three basic questions: "what have I done?", "if I do the same thing again will I get the same results?", "what can I conclude?". The level of complexity will vary with the student and with the different projects. The edorigami wiki has a great page on Bloom's Digital taxonomy, with an extremely helpful graphic summarizing the continuum from lower to higher order thinking skills in terms of digital technology. This does not mean that they will have acquired the same body of knowledge in the lab component of their biology class. In fact I am merely going to provide them the opportunity and the coaching to determine their own answers to these questions. Again, learning occurs in reflection. My third commitment is to use appropriate technology to allow the collaboration among biology classes. This commitment brings together a question from class discussion on June 30, and two statements engraved in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The question asks, " is school to teach a body of knowledge, or is it liberating and empowering? “. The statements in the Jefferson Memorial are "Knowledge is power.", and more interestingly "Knowledge is happiness." The scientific enterprise requires that investigators communicate and justify their proposed explanations. Depending on our success with technology, students will be able to team up with students in other classes to perform their investigations and answer the three basic questions. They should be freed of the artificial constraints of the schedule assignments and class sorting. Ideally, individual students will realize that they are the experts about their own investigations. Ideally they will gain confidence from their own work and development of their products, as well as being challenged by other students to justify and explain their conclusions.

Photo credits: Banana slug - Mac hard drive, UMF Mac Lab, Rm 104 Computer Center Squid - Linnea Koons Mathews