inquiry based learning thoughts

At first I was going to write an outline of IBL, just like we did in an assignment for UDL, but I figured it would just be too many postings about the same thing. Besides, not having internet at home was delaying my life.
So I just used Inspiration for my outline, and the blog will just contain my thoughts and the reply to the assigned question.

As I read the text I thought that both UDL and Inquiry-based learning seem great approaches, and also seem to take much more preparation on the teacher's side to make sure everything will work properly. i wonder how a teacher could possibly apply both approaches in the same classroom.

I actually wonder if inquiry-based learning is meant to be done on a 100% basis, or if it is just for a certain part of the day, or certain parts of the content of each discipline. It sounds like it is a lot of work, and time-consuming work, to be done all the time. Good-bye co-mingling.
What I liked the most about the teacher's role in this IBL is that the teacher asks many Why? How do you know? and What is the evidence? type of questions. I do believe that children in general, not only in school should learn to ask themselves these questions as dealing with any learning experience in life.

When I tutor my little brother I often ask him these type of questions, because I believe that that is what will make him successful both in school and in life, I believe asking those questions makes mastering the content easier, because you understand it and understand how to get to it. I guess that brings me back to the point of IBL.

I am trying to remember if this inquiry based learning as a student. I believe so, to a certain extent. Not in Science though. Science has always been, pretty much just paper and pen and formula memorization... Which as fun sometimes, because it was a lot like a mind game. Some other times it was just boring and confusing. Considering I haven't heard the interview on the website yet, I am not sure what is the span of inquiry based learning, and if what I remember is it or just something close to it.
I do remember though, that when I was in elementary school I had teachers who did not want us to memorize stuff, because "it is more important to understand than to memorize" they'd say. But in the end, I ended the term without knowing the facts. I specifically remember ending the year without knowing how to name the states in my country. I was quite upset about it. According to the text, IBL is not some sort of excuse not to accumulate knowledge, it just places the emphasis on the developing of investigative skills, but it also consider important to learn the facts.

Today I teach adults at a language learning center. Teaching adults to speak English is sometimes really tough, some times extremely rewarding, but it does include a lot of work trying to make your students see they CAN actually learn (teaching my boyfriend to speak Portuguese is not that different I guess). Our methodology is based on making everything as easy as possible, but I do try to make my classes as inquisitive as possible, because my goal is that my students will be able to function in a language-speaking setting, even when the words or structures used are unknown to them. I try to ask questions that leads them to realize how to find the meaning of things and not only how to get by for that specific lesson. For instance, when explaining the meaning of a certain line, I try to ask questions that lead them to think what caused that character to say that, go deep in that situation and talk about the matter being talked about in the story, not only learn that line. I think that has a lot to do with Inquiry-based learning.

Quoting the text "Ultimately, the importance of inquiry learning is that students learn how to continue learning. This is something they can take with them throughout life -- beyond parental help and security, beyond a textbook, beyond the time of a master teacher, beyond school -- to a time when they will often be alone in their learning." (http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index_sub2.html)

standard for content area.

The standard I have decided to focus on is language arts K-4.

I am actually gong for my Masters in TESOL. Since I found no TESOL in the content area page, I figured Language arts would be the closest one, since we're dealing essentially with English language learning.

Currently I do not teach school children, but EL adults, in an ESL language course. I did teach Children EFL in Brazil for a little while. Most children in a continental-sized portuguese speaking country (as it is the case with most children in a continental-sized english speaking country) do not really take seriously the task of learning another language. I wonder if that is the case with children in multi-language East-coast. But being an au pair I had the opportunity to see first graders bringing home site words and little reading projects, which inspired my choice of K-4.

I think that at grades K-4, visual learning is actually not only something to consider when thinking about kids who are mainly visual learners. Every children at that age can greatly benefit from visual learning techiniques. Looking at objects and learning their names for instance, learning the sound of the letters and seeing the letters in the word and how their sound changes. Maybe that's the whole concept behind sight words.

As I browse through the resources webistes provided, a lot of uses for digital imagery seem to pop up and I am trying to figure out which ones are more linked with visual learning.

I believe young learners can benefit from digital imagery when the have a chance to complete sentences with words or phrases. I saw a website that talks about a Flash poetry tools - it looks like this is a program that allows students to match words provided by the program to form a small poem. I thought that was a great idea. I remember having my students doing that with pieces of paper in an EFL class.
This helps the students make up their own sentences as they can quickly visualize what is being done.

I have also used a similar technique to identify grammar and structure mistakes. A sentence is put up on the screen with a mistake in it - the stundents must identify the mistake and correct it.

Another idea I got from the web resources was the concept of digital story telling, which helps the students visualize the story they just read, organize the idea in their minds and present it in a way that makes sense to others, more immediately to the rest of the class.

With Inspiration visual learning can be aided as a way of simply showing the students how ideas link to each other, how words link to concrete objects, how concepts link to images.

There is a number of different things that can be done. The possibilities are just endless.

Copyright.... words or phrases

It says in a few articles we've read for the copyright activity that words or small phrases are not copyrightable.
I wonder if that means one can't patent them. I think so.
I would love to say that to Paris Hilton.

My brother could probably patent the phrase "sue me!" and I'd had to quote him a lot, so he would not sue me.

"Whatever" , that should probably be credited to Shania Twain. at least that's the first time i heard that in song, so I guess she could. But "whatever"(S.Twain)

THAT'S HOT!

GIMP - the massacre

ok, now I did it! I figured out the whole nine yards - so I can do layers, change images sizes, and even save it in the right format to preserve the layers (well, yes, this part took a little help from miss Cerino).
Now I just have to remember that before I post the image here I have to change it into jpeg again.
Here's the pic - me and the love of my life - isn't photo editing a ticket to the land of dreams? (someone should tell Renee Zellweger that I have had a crush on him before she even dreamed of it)

talking about webdesign

Proximity - when things are similar , group them together

Alignment - keep margins clean (justified text is actually not the best way to read) unify and organize the page

Repetition - of visual elements - using a theme that repeats throughout he website - Ex. a particular font. it is critical in a multipage document.

Contrast - pick a title font (serif) and a different one for your text body (sans-serif) - it frwas out eyes into it. they cannot be similar

technology portfolio's Dos and DON'Ts

Navigable - clear
text color/background color
links embedded in text
consistent
personal - personality

too busy
hard to figure out what is going on or where to go
vertical text

the GIMP part 2

still trying to figure out how to work with gimp... i cut the bottom of the image here on paint brush - easy way out.

on image 2, i added a text box. that was so complicated too. ONce I had the text tool selected I went to tool options , under dialogs i could edit the text.

still haven't figured out how to save that image in multiple layers...